Read Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees Online
Authors: Michael Murphy
Rather than let testosterone rule the day—yeah, right! Like that had a snowball’s chance in hell of happening!—I decided to approach this decision carefully, analytically, and act only after giving the subject careful consideration. Let’s see. He had told me he was a doctor and that he had to cover the early shift starting at 7:00 a.m. So when did doctors have breaks to make phone calls? Did he work in a hospital? Or did he have an office-based practice? What was his specialty? Crap! So many questions with so very few answers. I needed more data, a
lot
more data. So much for the careful analytical approach. Unintentionally score two points for testosterone.
Since logical analysis had failed me so utterly, I decided to split the difference between two big benchmarks of 8:00 and noon and call him at 10:00 a.m. By then I had been at work for an hour, had checked my e-mail, dealt with the minor crises that had arisen, and was already bored—and distracted. Visions of the nipples on the man and his perfect penis kept leaping in the front of my brain, blocking out other thoughts.
So at ten o’clock I closed my office door, took out my cell phone, and dialed the number Kyle had given to me the night before. I said a few hundred silent prayers to any god that might be listening that the man himself would answer his phone. No such luck. Voice mail. I despised voice mail. The thing was a part of the modern age I could happily do without. As I listened to his message that morning, though, his voice reminded me of his lips, which reminded me of his face, which reminded me of his smile, which reminded me of his laugh… which made my dick start to get hard.
No, not in the office, please. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you later when you can come out to play.
He wasn’t impressed. Men really were totally ruled by their crotches. It was a battle with an obvious winner every time.
Even though I’d been listening to Kyle’s recording and should have had some witty message all composed in my head, I’d been too sucked into the lust his voice stirred up in me. So when the
beep
sounded and I was on, I was at a complete loss for what to say.
Great! Good way to make a first impression!
I thought.
“Hi. Kyle. This is Joseph—from the gym yesterday. And coffee yesterday. And dinner last night. Wait, you know all that. You were there. Sorry. I had fun—really. It was the best time I’ve had in a long while.”
Shut up! Don’t sound so fucking desperate, loser!
“I would love to continue our conversation. Since we seem to be able to talk about just about any subject”—
Desperate, try not to sound so desperate, idiot!
—“I would love to get together and… talk some more.”
Right, what you really want is to suck his brains out through his dick and then lick him into a coma.
“I don’t know how your schedule looks for this week, but mine is really boring.”
Wrong thing to say to a prospective date!
“You’d really liven up an otherwise plain week if you have time for coffee or dessert or… breakfast”—
or preferably all of the above!
—“whatever your schedule permits. Give me a call and we’ll see when we can get together. I had a good time yesterday. Thanks.” It was all I could do to stop myself from ending my message with some smarmy remark like “Have a great day!” I silently said thanks to anyone who was listening, gods included, that I had stopped my mouth from uttering those utterly ridiculous pansy-ass words that everybody seemed to utter a thousand times a day.
I left my cell phone number before I hung up—it would have been
really
bad form to leave a message and then forget to leave him my number. That would mean I’d have to call him again, which would make me seem really desperate and a total loser. Thank God I didn’t make that mistake. Now all I had to worry about was whether or not he would be interested enough to call me back.
Even though he had pursued me yesterday in the gym, had shown me his body-by-God, had taken the world’s fastest shower to be able to go out with me to get coffee, had taken me to dinner and had given me some of the best conversation I’d ever had in my life, I was still anxious about whether he’d call me back. Maybe overnight he’d come to his senses and realized what a mistake he’d made. Maybe his girlfriend was just out of town and he was bored. Maybe it was a dare… or a bet. Or maybe I was just plain nuts. Probably the latter. No, definitely the latter. Most likely the result of too much testosterone rotting my brain.
I reopened my closed office door and made an attempt to get some work done. No matter how hard I tried, though, I was just not able to focus. Every time I tried to write a sentence or read a financial report or look up a fact, my mind returned to that glorious penis as it dangled within such easy reach, those luscious nipples, and that smile that could melt a Republican’s cold heart.
An hour later when I had to run to the rest room, I carried my cell phone with me, something I never did—I hated to feel so tethered to the thing and had a love/hate relationship with the “convenience.”
And wouldn’t you know. I was at the urinal, and I had just fished out my dick and started to pee when—you guessed it! My cell phone rang. I tugged it out of my pocket, in the process peeing all over myself.
Way to go, slick!
“Hello?” I said, a little distracted. “Oh, crap!”
“Joseph?” I heard his laugh. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“What? No. Just peeing on my feet, that’s all.”
“Do I want to know?”
“I’m in the men’s room. I see guys standing here talking on their cell phones all the time. But somehow I didn’t seem to get the proper gene to be able to pee and answer my phone at the same time.”
“Oh, but you are talking on the phone, and you apparently just peed on yourself, so you can do both simultaneously—it’s the aim issue that gives you a little trouble. What I suspect is that guys who talk on their phones at the urinal secretly have very wet pants and shoes.”
“I’ve never checked, but I think that’s entirely possible. I’ll have to keep my eyes open. That’ll make me popular when I start studying men’s crotches in the men’s room. ‘Yo! Dude! Did you just pee on yourself? No, don’t worry, I’m not nuts. It’s all very scientific.’”
His wonderful, infectious laughter came through the phone and seemed to wrap itself around me, giving me a warm feeling—not just from peeing on myself. “Just think of the post-study paper you could write, though!”
“I’ll take your word for it.” I had been tempted to just race back to my office with my dick hanging out of my pants, but I knew that others might frown about that. Somehow I managed to get myself tucked back inside, zipped up, and brushed off enough to make a dash back to my office. With the door closed, I sat down at my desk. “Thanks for calling.”
“Thank you for leaving that wonderful message. I had a great time yesterday. You’re a lot of fun. Smart, witty—”
“Witty? Who?
Me?
No, you’re confusing me with someone who’s… well, witty. I’m the one who pees on his feet, remember?”
The sound of his laughter was music to my ears. I loved that laugh. I loved the sound of his voice—it was infectious, wrapping me in good feelings, and for once it wasn’t all because I was sporting major wood. Although I had no doubt that with enough time, I’d move into that zone.
“You are so much fun!” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I needed to laugh. Thank you!”
“Hey, what man doesn’t like to give other men something to laugh at… no, wait. That didn’t come out right. Never mind.”
That laugh.
“Would you maybe have time to grab some dinner tonight?” he asked, catching me completely off-guard. I really shouldn’t have been surprised, because that was, after all, why I had called him in the first place. But I was still astonished that this smart, witty, attractive man—the owner of one gorgeous penis and two sensational nipples—was interested in spending time with me. But he seemed to be. And who was I to complain?
“That would be great. What time do you get off work?” I asked.
“Seven.”
“Wait, didn’t you tell me last night that you started work at seven this morning?”
“You heard me right. I work seven to seven.”
“Jesus! Isn’t that illegal?”
He laughed some more. “The glamorous life of a young doctor. I’m being paged—gotta run. Dinner?”
“Yes!” I practically yelled so he’d hear before he left to answer his page. “When and where?”
“How about seven thirty at Luigi’s? You know it?”
“Same block where we had dinner last night?”
“That’s it!”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Great. Sorry. Gotta run.” And he was gone, but I still heard that incredible laughter. And now it was hormone enhanced.
I
F
I
had been unable to work before the call, after the call I was a total basket case. There was no way I was going to accomplish a blessed thing. In my mind I had already written off the day. Unfortunately my coworkers didn’t subscribe to that listserv, so they didn’t see the message about the day being declared a lost cause for work.
At five o’clock I headed out and went home to shower and masturbate. (Only to take the edge off, of course—could I help it that it was a very sharp edge that kept poking me?) And then I faced my biggest dilemma of the last five minutes: what to wear to dinner when dining with a deity.
Okay, so I might be gay and love dick and all that, but when it came to the fashion part of being gay, I didn’t get the complete copy of the gene—it must have been the same gene that allowed you to pee and talk on the phone at the same time. I could dress myself and not look too ridiculous, as long as I didn’t try anything too different, but in terms of being able to assemble an ensemble that would take your breath away—wasn’t gonna happen. So I did the best I could, opting for a form-fitting pair of black jeans and a nice long-sleeve button-up blue shirt. Not bad. The only problem was that it was still an hour before I was supposed to meet my date.
Was he my date? I really, really hoped so.
Maybe I should masturbate again. Can one masturbate too much?
Nah. Crazy idea
. Still, maybe I should save a little for later on the off chance that I might get lucky.
Nah. Another crazy idea. What if I were to be hit by a bus on the way to dinner? Or struck by a falling asteroid as it plummeted to Earth? I would regret not having masturbated again if such a calamity were to strike. Actually, it’s not that far off base to think that masturbation would be on my mind during my dying moments. What can I say? I like sex, solo or in collaboration with others. I have always played well with others. Just how long
had
it been since I’d gotten laid? Clearly too long. Either that or my big friend had perfected a way to send pheromones through the telephone.
I still had fifty-nine minutes to go before I was due at the restaurant. I wished I’d gone to the gym to work off some excess… energy. I could have lifted weights or run a few miles on the treadmill. It was too late for that now, though. Also, I wouldn’t want to risk hurting myself just before my big… date?
Oh, please! Oh, please! Oh, please!
Too anxious to read, too chafed to masturbate a third time—did I forget to mention that I masturbated again? Oh, yeah, I masturbated again. Note to self: need to find a smoother lube for multiple-masturbation marathons. After flipping through every channel on the cable system—
How long have channels gone up into the 800s?
—I peed for the 400th time, checked myself in the mirror for the 450th time, and then left to walk over to the restaurant.
Not surprisingly, I got there before Kyle, so I waited for him in the bar, sipping a sparkling water with lime—no way was I touching alcohol when I was already so tightly wrapped.
At exactly seven thirty, Kyle walked in the door. I had no trouble spotting him—he stood above the crowd, regardless of the crowd. Unlike yesterday, when he had been dressed in jeans, today he was dressed in hospital scrubs. When I caught his eye, I saw that million-watt smile that had captivated me so the previous day. Yep, still had it. Still worked. And it was all mine again for some reason.
“Hey! Joe!” he said, shaking my hand and showing me all of his beautiful, perfect white teeth. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting. I got delayed a little getting out of the hospital.”
“No. You’re right on time.”
“Oh, good! I didn’t even change. I was so afraid I was going to be late and didn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“You’re perfect. I mean, you’re right on time—you’re perfectly on time. Okay, I’m babbling. Sorry.”
“I’m not complaining! Who complains when someone tells them they’re perfect? Not me!”
“Okay, Mr. Perfect. Let’s get a table.”
“Good deal.”
Kyle knew the maître d’ here as well, so the man greeted him by name and immediately ushered us to a nice quiet table for two.
“I definitely need to dine with you more often.”
“Good,” Kyle said. “Why is that?”
“People know you, and you get nice tables in restaurants.”
“True. Two points for my side.”