Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [44]
We shake, and then Raoul pulls me close in a hug. “And you feel great,” he tells me. “Man, you must work out all the time, you’re just all muscle.”
I am deeply flattered by this, much more flattered than I should be. My feeling is, now I will follow him anywhere.
As we walk, Raoul tells me a little more about himself. He feels that life is an adventure and that if you want something, you just have to go out there and get it. “I wanted to have enough money to retire at thirty-three, and that’s what I did,” he says. “I’m living proof that you can’t fail if you have a plan. You only fail if you don’t have a plan.” As we walk past bushes, Raoul extends his hand to touch the leaves, often identifying them by their Latin names. He wants to know if I am where I want to be in my life. “Are you on course?” he asks.
I can’t help feeling that if he were standing now in front of a jury of my friends and acquaintances, they would all whisper and scribble the word “odious” on their legal pads.
Finally we reach a small clearing. Here in the middle of the woods is green grass, a pool of sunlight, and an old log overturned and perfect to sit on. Raoul walks over to a large ancient oak tree and places his palms on the trunk. Then he leans forward slowly and kisses the bark. “This is Beth,” he says. “She’s my favorite tree.”
Okay, I officially despise Raoul now, so I reach into the flap pocket of my cargo shorts and pull out a box of Marlboro Lights. I light a cigarette and blow a plume of smoke into the air. “Nice to meet you, Beth.”
Raoul is horrified. “You smoke?” he asks, with utter disgust.
“I’m trying to quit.”
“Well, you either smoke or you don’t. You don’t ‘try’ to quit; you either do or you don’t.”
“Okay,” I say, “you’re right. I’m thinking about quitting but haven’t really tried, so, yes, I smoke.”
“Well I wish you wouldn’t smoke here in the woods,” he says.
I remove the cigarette from between my lips, toss it on the grass, and mash it into the earth with the tip of my hiking boot. “Okay,” I say.
The corners of Raoul’s mouth curl into a frown of distaste. “Let’s head back,” he says.
Somehow we end up in bed. It seems clear that we have nothing in common, but Raoul invites me up to his apartment—a two-bedroom on Central Park West—and I accept because his muscular calves seem to have a curious power over me. Once upstairs, he tells me again how sexy I am.
I am ashamed that I am so easily swayed by this compliment. All my life I have felt bad about my skinny body. So I have worked out for years and have grown much larger and stronger, and although my own mirror still reflects back to me the image of a skinny kid, other people see somebody else entirely and sometimes want to sleep with him.
Raoul takes his shirt off, and his chest, muscular, hairy, masculine, engages my interest. And within ten minutes we are undressed and in bed.
It turns out Raoul has a condition known as micropenis. This means his penis is less than three inches long, fully erect. It looks like a large clitoris, sticking out above two balls.
“Suck my big, fat cock,” he tells me. “You like that big dick?”
I am dizzy. I am literally dizzy. I was so shocked to encounter the micropenis and now am even more shocked to encounter his apparent lack of knowledge about the micropenis. I grip it in my hand, and it’s lost, so I use my thumb and index finger to jerk it.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, man, stroke that long, hard cock. Work it.”
I am now engaged in what I consider volunteer work. I am jerking him off purely out of pity. This is really no different from donating five percent of my paycheck to the United Way every month, and it occurs to me that maybe now I don’t need to give to the United Way and instead can keep the cash for myself for dating, which I am obviously going to have to do quite a bit more of.
He comes. “I need to wash up,” I say.
Raoul is distant, cool. “Go ahead,” he says, standing and slipping into a pair of briefs. Then he says, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I say, drying my hands on his expensive towel.