The darkness detonated, players leaping, shoving each other, screaming. The dancer laid the coruscating handcuffs on the towel and stood, making her way to Reshawn once again. She took his hand and tried to pull him toward the towel, looking coy, as if to tell him all had been forgiven. But Reshawn yanked his hand away and stood. He pushed through the crowd.
A couple players halfheartedly tried to stop him on his way to the door. As he stepped outside, the dancer placed her hands on her hips and shouted:
—Later, faggot!
For a moment she kept looking in Reshawn’s direction, recalibrating. Behind her closed lips I could see her tongue contemplatively run over her top row of teeth.
—So, she finally said, turning to the rest of the recruits. Which one of y’all wants his money’s worth?
She’d barely finished asking the question when two strong hands gripped my right biceps, trying to force me to raise my hand. I looked up to see Chase. His pale face was flushed, and the beads of sweat suspended in his blond hair rained onto me as he tried elevating my hand. He wasn’t smiling. There was nothing playful in this. As I struggled to keep my hand down, I recalled that this was Reshawn’s fifth official visit. No doubt the other schools had hired strippers, which meant there must have been good reason why he’d refused to get a special lap dance.
I was saved by Charlie, who glugged down the rest of his beer, threw the empty cup to the ground, and stood as tribute. Chase released my arm and reabsorbed back into the crowd while the dancer smiled at Charlie and beckoned him over with her index finger. Long-limbed, knobby-kneed Charlie obeyed, standing in the center of the circle while the dancer laced around him. She removed his polo shirt and then unbuckled his belt, dropping his khakis to his feet. She sauntered behind him and hooked her arms under his armpits, sliding her hands along his pale bare chest. Her fingers turned downward, bumping along his ribbed abdomen, fingertips kissing the waistband of his boxers and sliding beneath the elastic band … But just as her fingers seemed about to dive, she retracted her arms and shoved Charlie forward so he was kneeling on the towel.
She used the handcuffs to secure his hands in front of him, prayer-style, and pushed him over so he was resting on his elbows with his ass in the air. I hadn’t noticed until now that on top of the boom box stood a tube of Vaseline, which the dancer must have rubbed onto herself before she started the performance. She coated Charlie’s body with the jelly as she circled him, streaking her hands across his back. Charlie closed his eyes, and though his torso was taut and his triceps flexed from taking all his weight, his face was placid—you would have thought he was receiving an unconventional deep body massage.
There was a ragged hunger in the voices of the players behind me, a collective urging for the dancer to do what it was clear she was about to. Standing to the side of Charlie, she laid the lubed heel of her hand on the top of his spine and skated it down the muscled half-pipe of his back. She plunged her hand beneath the band of his boxers, and I saw her fingers extend beneath the cloth. From how Charlie winced, I knew the fingers were working inside him.
An erection was rising from me, and to hide it I leaned forward in my seat, making it seem like I was trying to get a better view of the dancer.
Early the next morning I woke with a start and lay apprehensively in my hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. I waited to realize I hadn’t been offered yesterday, that it had all been a dream—an experience I’d had more times than I could count over the past two years. But the details of what happened in Coach Zeller’s office weren’t crumbling in my mind’s fingers, as those dreams had. The details remained, cool, firm, strokeable stones I could turn over as many times as I wanted without fear of them losing a gram of their materiality. I had my offer. I relaxed, my body drinking in the softness of the sheets, and soon fell back into a deep sleep.
When I woke again it was from my shoulder being shaken. Reshawn was standing above me, dressed.
—You need to leave.
I sat up and looked at the clock.
—Is the shuttle—
—Somebody needs to talk to me. Get breakfast and I’ll be done by the time you’re back.
No “please,” no “can you do me a favor.” I considered refusing just to show this kid I couldn’t be ordered around; but Reshawn was still much too intimidating for me to dare something like that.
I dressed and entered the hallway, where housekeeping crews were wheeling pushcarts with fresh linens. The elevator bay stood catty-corner to our room, and when the doors parted I made way for a burly white man in a polo shirt with the King crown on its chest. With his build, clothing, and the purposeful way he stepped off the elevator, he resembled a coach, and yet all the coaches I’d met had stopped to introduce themselves, whereas this man swept right past me without looking and knocked peremptorily on our room’s door. Maybe he was a coach? But then why would I have to clear the room for Reshawn to talk to him?
The restaurant downstairs was filled with hungover recruits. I sat at
