I'm outside the Bar Code downtown, standing on the curb with my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my sweatpants and trying hard to look worlds more interesting than I really am, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I whirl around, stepping back, but it's only Ritchie. He's drunk and there's a wild look in his eyes, a devilish gleam that excites me, though I don't let him know it.

Ritchie's cool in a way I've always wanted to be but can't seem to attain, no matter how ripped my jeans are, or how disheveled my hair, or how worn my T-shirt. He's crazy, man, craziest guy on our floor, and I know the only reason a lot of other dudes in our dorm know who I am is because I'm his roomie. He's the kind of guy who will stage mattress fights at three in the morning, and even if you have an exam the next day, you can't help but stand in the hallway cheering him on as you watch him holding his battered twin-size mattress, a barbaric yawp escaping his lips as he launches himself down the hall at someone just as wild and crazy as he. I've stood there many times, laughing with the rest of our floormates, but I'm never quick enough to grab my mattress first and run at him from the opposite end of the hall.

He has the loudest music, shouts hello to everyone in the hall, sings in the shower at the top of his lungs as if no one else is listening, and even calls out to his professors in the cafeteria when he sees them. There's an air of casual negligence about him that I wish I could pull off half as well. He's so far out of my league, I'm still surprised when he speaks to me any time we're off campus together, but I'm his roommate, the built-in sidekick, the tagalong makeshift friend, and I'm the only guy on our floor who has a car. I suppose that makes me tolerable to some degree.

But sometimes? My throat still dries up when he catches me unawares. He has dark gray eyes that flash with mirth and when he's angry or mad, they darken like storm clouds. He wears his hair long and unkempt, dyed black and down to his shoulders, an almost scary look that my mother hates and makes him that much hotter in my eyes. He can never seem to keep his hands out of that mop of hair -- he's always pushing it up, out of the way, and it sticks out at crazed angles that make him look like some sort of mad genius. Whenever we're together, my hands clench in unconscious fists to keep from plunging into those inky depths.

Ritchie has the lower bunk in our room and some nights, after he's fallen asleep, I'll click on my lamp that's clamped to my headboard and lean over the side of the upper bunk just to watch the shadows play across his sharp cheekbones, his closed eyelids, his thin lips. Every time he comes in from the shower or changes his clothes, I watch him from the corner of my eye, without him knowing. I've seen his narrow waist, his lanky legs, his flat stomach almost concave above his ribs, the jut of his hip bones, the thick length of his cock hanging below a small brush of tight dark curls. He always drops the towel, or strips completely, then goes about the task of gathering together clothing