Cruising
A Gay Fictional SPH Story by LilPP33.
Not that anyone would call it a cock. Soft, it was an inch of foreskin-shrouded nothing, tucked against his sac like it was hiding from the world. Hard—which it was now, straining against his nylon shorts—it stood a proud two inches, thin as a thumb, with a flushed little head no bigger than an acorn. He was thirty-four years old, and he’d stopped pretending years ago. He didn’t have a dick. He had a nub. And the only thing that got him off anymore was watching other men notice.
Kestrel Woods on a Saturday afternoon. The reservoir trail, past the fallen oak, where the regulars cruised. Colin took a breath, stepped out of the car, and headed up the path in running shorts and nothing underneath. The fabric hung flat in front of him, empty, and that flatness was the whole point. He wanted them to look. He wanted them to see.
The first man he found was leaning against a birch, thick arms crossed, beard going gray at the jaw. Terrence. Colin had seen him here before—had watched him disappear into the brush with a twink and reappear twenty minutes later, buckling his belt with a satisfied grunt.
“Hey,” Colin said, and hooked his thumbs in his waistband like it was casual. “You, uh. Want to see something?”
Terrence looked him up and down. “Depends what it is.”
Colin pulled the shorts down to his thighs.
There was a pause—a long one. Then Terrence’s face crumpled and the laugh came out of him like a bark—loud, delighted, echoing off the trees. “What is that?” He pushed off the tree and slowly circled Colin, examining him like a carnival exhibit. “I thought you were tucking, man. That’s—it’s out, right? That’s hard?”
“P-pretty much, yeah.” Colin’s nub twitched under the attention, which made it worse, which made it better.
“Pretty much,” Terrence repeated, wheezing. He cupped his own crotch through his jeans like a point of comparison, and there was plenty to compare—a fat, heavy outline down his thigh. “Hold on. Hold on.” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled toward the brush. “Hank! Get over here, you gotta see this guy!”
Colin’s heart slammed. This was it. This was the part he came for.
Hank emerged from the trail, wiping dirt off a big hand—broad, sunburned, trucker cap pushed back on his head. “See what?”
“This.” Terrence gestured at Colin’s crotch like unveiling a sculpture. “Tell me what you see.”
Hank squinted. Then his whole weathered face split into a grin. “Aw, hell. That’s a dick? I got moles bigger than that.” He crouched down to get a closer look, which somehow made Colin’s whole body burn. “What is that, an inch?”
“Two,” Colin whispered. “Two and a quarter.”
“Two and a quarter.” Hank looked up at Terrence, and they both lost it, laughing so hard that Hank had to brace himself on his knee. “He measured. He knows the fraction.”
“Stand next to him,” Terrence said, already dragging out his own cock through his fly. Semi-hard, it was seven thick inches, veined, with a broad wet-tipped head, and he laid it over his forearm and sidled up beside Colin. “Look at this. Look at the two of us standing side by side. That’s you, and that’s me, and you’re—” He lost it again. “You’re like a clit with delusions.”
Colin’s nub was pulsing now, drooling a thin thread of clear fluid that hung and swung. Hank pointed at it.
“He’s leaking. Look, he’s getting off on this. Little guy’s little guy is crying.”
“Of course he is,” Terrence said, and his voice dropped into something warmer and meaner. “Ain’t that right, nub? You didn’t come out here to get your rocks off. You came out here to find out what you’re for.”
Colin swallowed. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I came to find out what I’m for.”
Hank stood, still grinning, and spat into his palm. “Well, it ain’t fucking that, that’s for damn sure. Nothing to fuck with.” He wrapped one huge fist around Colin’s entire package—nub, sac, all of it—and it vanished. Just a man’s hand, holding nothing. “See that? The whole thing fits in one hand, with room left over. You’re not a man, son. You’re a hole that came with a decoration.”
Colin’s knees nearly buckled.
“Here’s the lesson,” Terrence said, gripping Colin’s jaw and turning his face up. “Real men have cocks. Real men use cocks. ” And a thing like you—” He flicked Colin’s nub with one finger, a sharp little snap that made Colin gasp, “—a thing like you exists to make real men feel bigger.” We’ll explain what that means. You want that? Say yes or say walk away.”
“Yes,” Colin said instantly, hoarse. “Please. Yes.”
“Please,” Hank mimicked, and shoved him down to his knees in the dirt. “Then open up, sweetheart. Let’s see if your mouth works better than your crotch.”
Terrence’s cock filled his mouth the way nothing of Colin’s could ever fill anything—thick, hot, alive, pushing back to his throat while Hank knelt behind him and worked his shorts the rest of the way off. Colin knelt bare-assed in the leaves, choking happily, while two strangers laughed above him.
“Look at him go,” Hank said, working two blunt fingers into Colin’s hole, opening him with spit and patience. “Cock’s useless but the throat’s a champion. It’s always like that with these nub-boys. All their manhood went into making a warm hole.”
“Should’ve been born with a cunt,” Terrence agreed, fucking deeper, making Colin’s eyes water. “Would’ve saved everyone the confusion. That thing between your legs already looks the part.”
Colin moaned around the meat in his mouth and pushed his ass back onto Hank’s fingers, and that’s when the third one arrived—Bruno, a massive hairy bear of a man in a tank top, drawn by the laughter. He took one look at the scene, then one look at Colin’s crotch, and put his hands on his knees.
“Oh, you’re kidding me. What do we got here, a field mouse?”
“Nub-boy walked right up and asked to be seen,” Hank said, scissoring his fingers wide. “Now we’re teaching him his purpose.”
“His purpose is snack-sized,” Bruno said, and crouched to get a face-level view, close enough that Colin could feel his breath on his little twitching stub. “Hi, little guy. You doin’ your best down there? That’s adorable. That’s fucking adorable.” He stood, shaking his head, and hauled out his own cock—heavy, dark, uncut, swinging like a weapon. He slapped it against Colin’s cheek while Terrence’s still filled his mouth. “Two of us, one of you. That about sums up the whole situation, don’t it.”
They traded him back and forth like that, laughing, comparing notes—he gags real pretty; give him the head, make him earn it—while Hank’s fingers became three, became four, became “this bitch is gonna be easy.” Colin floated in it. Every laugh landed on his skin like sunlight. His nub bobbed and leaked and did absolutely nothing else, and that uselessness was the sweetest thing he’d ever felt.
Then Hank pulled his fingers out, lined up the fat blunt head of his cock, and pushed in.
Colin came apart. Hank was thick and unhurried and deep, hands clamped on Colin’s hips, and every stroke shoved Colin forward onto Terrence’s cock so the two of them fucked him from both ends in a lazy rhythm while Bruno narrated.
“Look at that little stub bounce,” Bruno said, filming nothing, just narrating for the joy of it. “Every time Hank hits home it just jiggles. It’s like his whole body’s trying to perform and his dick forgot to show up to work.” He leaned down close to Colin’s ear. “You feel that, nub? That’s a real cock in you. That’s what’s supposed to be in a man’s hand, in a man’s pants, in a man’s hole. And you got a hole and nothing else. That’s the lesson. You getting it?”
Colin pulled off Terrence’s cock just long enough to gasp, “I’m getting it,” and both men above him cracked up.
“He’s getting it,” Hank panted, hammering harder, balls slapping Colin’s taint—which was about the only thing his own equipment was good for, a landing pad for better men. “Smartest thing about him is his ass.”
“Can—” Colin’s voice broke on a thrust. “Can you film it? The—the part where I come? I want to see it after. I want to see what I look like.”
Dead silence for a second. Then Bruno howled. “He wants documentation! He wants evidence! God, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to this trail.” He had his phone out before Colin finished nodding. “Say hi to the camera, nub. Tell it what you are.”
“I’m a hole,” Colin slurred, drooling around Terrence’s cock, eyes rolling as Hank ground in deep. “I’m a hole with a—a decoration—”
They switched. Bruno took Hank’s place, and Bruno was thick—thick enough that Colin sobbed, hands scrabbling in the leaves, nub flinging droplets with every brutal shove. Terrence came first, pulling out of Colin’s throat to paint his face in thick ropes while Bruno filmed it, zooming in past the cum to the tiny bouncing stub below. “Get the money shot,” Hank said, and Bruno angled down.
“Alright, nub, here’s your final exam,” Bruno grunted, sweat rolling down his hairy belly onto Colin’s back. “Nobody’s touching that little thing. Not a finger. You’re gonna come from this—” he slammed in, “—or not at all. Show the camera what a real man’s cock does to a boy with a clit.”
Colin didn’t even need long. The laughter had been edging him for an hour. Six strokes later his whole body seized, his hole clamped down, and his nub spurted—three thin, feeble jets that barely cleared his belly and dribbled pathetically down his own stomach while three men howled and the camera caught every second.
“Look at that load,” Hank wheezed. “Fucking pitiful. It’s like a sneeze.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever filmed, and I’m keeping it forever,” Bruno said, and slammed home, burying himself to the root as he came with a groan, flooding Colin’s guts while Colin’s nub gave one last twitch and went soft into its little shell.
They left him sprawled in the leaves, wrecked, face striped, ass dripping, and stood over him lighting cigarettes like farmers admiring a field.
“So,” Terrence said, nudging Colin’s thigh with his boot. “Lesson learned, nub-boy? You know what you are now?”
Colin blinked up through the cum, chest still heaving, and gave them the most honest smile of his life. “I know what I am.”
“Good,” Hank said. “Then you got no business coming back here dressed like a man. Next time, wear something with easy access. And lose the shorts entirely.”
“Maybe some panties,” Bruno offered. “Since the equipment’s decorative.”
They walked him back to the parking lot on wobbly legs, still giggling, and one of them—Colin never found out which—scrawled ACORN and a phone number in marker on his left ass cheek before he drove home.
—
He lasted six days.
Saturday afternoon found the trailhead lot holding one familiar car, and Colin climbing out of it in a pair of cut-off denim shorts so short the pockets hung below the hem, the front flat as a board, and underneath—per instructions—a scrap of pink lace that did nothing, hid nothing, meant nothing except yes.
He found Terrence first, at the birch tree, same spot. Terrence took one look and burst out laughing.
“You have got to be kidding me. We taught you a whole lesson last week, nub. Whole curriculum. And you’re back?”
Colin’s nub was already straining at the lace, all two and a quarter useless inches of it, and his grin was shameless.
“I must be a slow learner,” he said. “Guess you’ll have to teach me again.”
Terrence put two fingers in his mouth and whistled toward the brush.
“BOYS!” he bellowed. “ACORN’S BACK FOR REMEDIAL CLASS!”
And from three directions at once, the sound of laughter came through the trees, along with the sound of zippers.
—
Remedial Class
They came through the trees like he’d whistled up demons. Hank first, adjusting his trucker cap. Bruno next, already laughing before he’d seen anything. Then two faces Colin didn’t know—a wiry man with a gray-flecked goatee, and behind him a mountain in a grease-stained tank top with hands the size of dinner plates.
“Everyone,” Terrence announced, “meet the star pupil. Acorn, say hello to Otis and Wes.”
“Hello,” Colin said, and waved. Actually waved, like a kid at a birthday party, standing there in his denim cut-offs with pink lace underneath and his nub already stiffening against the fabric.
“Show them what you’re working with,” Terrence said.
Colin unzipped the shorts and pushed them down. The lace did nothing, hid nothing—the tiny stub sat behind the pink mesh like a thumb poking through a curtain. Wes leaned in, squinted, and let out a low whistle.
“See, I thought Terrence was exaggerating,” Wes said. “Terrence exaggerates.”
“I never exaggerate about a tragedy,” Terrence said.
Otis, the mountain, crouched down. He was a diesel mechanic with forearms like bridge cable, and he examined Colin’s crotch the way he’d examine a part too small to be worth installing. “That’s the whole thing? Soft or hard?”
“Hard,” Colin whispered.
“Hard.” Otis shook his head slowly. “I’ve pulled bolts bigger than that out of engines. Rusted bolts.” He looked up at the others. “What do you even do with that?”
“That,” Terrence said, “is the question of the day. Because here’s the thing, nub.” He stepped in close, hooked a finger in Colin’s waistband, and snapped the lace against Colin’s hip. “You sat through a whole lesson last week—a full curriculum. And you came back. Which means the lesson didn’t take. So today, we’re not teaching you.” He reached down and flicked the stub through the lace, once, sharp, and Colin’s whole body jolted. “Today we’re teaching it. If that thing refuses to be useful, it can be entertainment. Corporal punishment for the whole class clown.”
Colin’s nub twitched so hard the lace visibly moved, and every one of them saw it.
“Oh, he likes that,” Hank said, delighted. “Look at it. It’s raising its hand.”
“Words first,” Bruno said, and his voice went briefly serious—the one ritual they kept sacred. “Nub. You know the drill?”
“Green, yellow, red,” Colin recited, breath already short.
“And where are you right now?”
“Green,” Colin said. “So green.”
“Green it is.” Bruno grinned. “Otis, you’re up. Show him what those hands do all day.”
—
Otis didn’t start rough. That was the worst part. He cupped Colin’s entire package in one palm—nub, sac, all of it—and just weighed it, like a grocer with a bad shipment.
“Lighter than a spark plug,” he announced, and the group lost it. Then he closed his fingers, slow, and squeezed.
Colin’s knees buckled. It wasn’t pain so much as pressure everywhere at once, a slow crushing grip that made his nub throb and his balls ache up into his belly, and Otis just watched his face the whole time, increasing by degrees, a mechanic torquing a bolt to spec.
“Careful, Otis,” Wes called. “Don’t lose it in your hand.”
“Too late,” Otis said, opening his fingers to reveal the little stub, dark red now and straining. “It’s trying to get away from me. Look at that. Even it knows better.”
They took turns after that. Flicking. Terrence went first, snapping his finger against the tip like he was killing a bug, and made them count out loud—one, two, three—each flick making the stub bounce and wobble while Colin gasped and gripped his own thighs. Ten from Terrence. Ten from Hank, whose thick, blunt fingers made it flop like a broken joystick. Ten from Wes, who had aim and made the little head snap sideways each time. Bruno went last and used just one knuckle, tapping the tip rapid-fire like a woodpecker until Colin was dancing in place, tears of laughter and need in his eyes, and his nub just kept leaking, a thin constant drool stringing down toward the leaves.
“He’s crying out of it,” Wes said, fascinated. “The little guy’s sobbing.”
“It’s the only way it knows how to communicate,” Terrence said. “It’s got no other talents.”
Then came the clips. Wes had a zippered pouch in his pack, as if he’d packed for this, and Colin’s heart did a somersault when he saw the clothespins come out.
“Since it’s decorative,” Wes said, crouching, “we should accessorize.”
The sac took four—one on each side, two across the front, the little pouch of skin stretching to accommodate them. Colin hissed at each bite, the pain blooming hot and low. His nub got the last one, clamped on the loose foreskin just behind the head, and Wes sat back on his heels to admire his work.
“It’s got a little hat,” Wes said. “Look at that. Dressed up for church.”
Colin looked down at himself—pink lace around his thighs, clothespins studding his sac, one dangling off his stub like an ornament—and the sheer absurdity of it made his hole clench around nothing. He was so hard it hurt. All two and a quarter inches of him, straining under a wooden clip.
Hank pulled the rubber band off his wrist next. He doubled it, looped it, and wrapped it snug around the base of everything—nub and sac together—while Otis held the package steady like a man holding a part he didn’t trust.
“There,” Hank said, tugging the band tight. “Now watch.”
They watched. The stub swelled. The band bit in, and within a minute Colin’s nub had gone from pink to flushed to a deep angry red, straining above the band like a balloon on a string, and every man in the circle made the same appreciative noise.
“Now it’s trying to look like a real dick,” Bruno said. “Look at that effort. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like watching a chihuahua square up to a Great Dane.”
“It’s not even angry,” Otis said. “It’s just… congested.”
The finale was the shoelace. Otis looped it around Colin’s sac above the balls, cinched it snug, and let the ends dangle. Then he reached into his pocket and produced a small brass padlock—the kind you’d use on a gym locker—and clipped it to the lace.
“There,” Otis said, giving the lock a gentle swing. “Smallest weight in the world for the smallest package in the world. Fair’s fair.”
The lock wasn’t heavy. That wasn’t the point. The point was that it swung. Every breath Colin took set it swaying, tugging his balls down, a constant low ache that synced with his heartbeat, and when he shifted his weight the whole arrangement—clips, band, lock—shifted with him and reminded him exactly what he was.
“Walk to the oak and back,” Terrence said.
Colin walked. The lock swung, the clips bobbed, his banded stub jutted out redder than a stop sign, and five men watched him do a slow lap with the commentary rolling in—”look at that gait, he’s walking like the floor’s hot”—and by the time he got back to the circle his thighs were shaking, and his eyes had gone glassy.
“Green?” Bruno checked.
“Green,” Colin croaked. “Green, green, green.”
“Then assume the position, nub. Class is in session.”
—
They bent him over the fallen oak with everything still attached.
Hank went first, because Hank had earned first turn by seniority, and he fed his fat cock into Colin’s hole with the same unhurried patience as last time—one hand splayed between Colin’s shoulder blades, the other reaching around to jiggle the padlock just to hear him yelp.
Every thrust did three things at once. It split Colin open on real cock, it knocked the wind out of him, and it set the whole contraption swinging—lock tugging his sac down, clips pulling with each jolt, the banded stub bouncing above it all, too constrained to do anything but throb. Colin’s fingers clawed the bark. He was drooling. He was singing, little punched-out grunts on every stroke, and the men took it in rotation like it was a ride at a fair.
Wes took the mouth. He was longer than Terrence, liked the throat, held Colin’s head still, and fed it in slowly while Hank worked the rear. For a full five minutes Colin existed in the middle of the see-saw—cock in his throat, cock in his guts, lock swinging, clips biting, his useless stub bouncing around like a passenger with no seatbelt.
“Check it out,” Hank grunted, driving deep. “Every time I hit bottom, the little hat flaps.” He demonstrated. The clothespin on Colin’s foreskin waved like a tiny flag. “It’s cheering us on. It’s the only part of him with team spirit.”
Otis went second on the rear, and it nearly broke Colin’s brain. The man was thick—thicker than Bruno, a blunt instrument—and every long stroke dragged over Colin’s prostate and lit his whole banded crotch up like a pinball machine. The pressure built and built with nowhere to go, the rubber band holding everything in like a cork, and Colin started babbling.
“Please—please, I’m—please—”
“Please what,” Terrence said, right at his ear. “Use words, nub.”
“I need to come—please, I can’t—it’s trapped—”
“Huh,” Terrence said, straightening up and addressing the group. “He wants to come. With that? Nobody’s even touching it. It’s not even in the running.” He paused, savoring it. “Tell you what. Otis. Pull the clips. One at a time. If he can come from clips and cock alone, he’s earned it.”
Colin moaned, long and low, around Wes’s dick.
Otis reached down, took the first clothespin off Colin’s sac, and let it snap shut on nothing. The rush of blood back in was a hot white flare, and Colin screamed in the good way, hole clamping down so hard Otis swore and praised him. Second clip. Third. Each one a small explosion, pain and relief braided together, and by the fourth Colin was shaking like a wet dog.
“One left,” Otis said, fingers on the clip at Colin’s foreskin. “The little hat. Ready, nub?”
Colin nodded frantically, beyond speech, Wes’s cock still buried in his throat.
Otis pulled it off.
The flare ripped up Colin’s spine, and Hank—back in the saddle now—chose that exact moment to slam home, and the rubber band came off with a snap of Bruno’s fingers, and the sudden rush of everything—blood, pain, cock, freedom—detonated Colin all at once. His orgasm hit like a seizure, his stub jerking and spitting its three thin, feeble jets onto the leaves below, barely clearing the oak’s roots, and five grown men stood in a circle in the woods and applauded.
“Encore!” Bruno bellowed. “Bravo! Standing ovation for the smallest show on earth!”
“That was a sneeze with consequences,” Wes said, wiping tears. “God. And he came from clips. From clips. His dick is so useless his skin had to do the work.”
They finished on him and in him, one after another—Hank flooding his guts with a grunt, Wes painting his other cheek, Otis and Bruno trading his throat. At the same time, Terrence, ever the director, filmed the aftermath: Colin face-down over the oak, wrecked and dripping, his stub swollen and raw and softening back into its little shell, the padlock still swinging gently from his reddened, stretched-out sac like a wind chime in a breeze.
Otis finally unclipped the lock and unlaced him, and then—this was the part that somehow humiliated Colin worst of all—Bruno cracked open a cold can from the cooler in his truck and pressed it, gently, against Colin’s battered little package.
“There, there, little guy,” Bruno cooed, in a baby voice, rolling the cold aluminum over the swollen stub while Colin whimpered and twitched. “You did so good. You got tortured all day, and nobody even needed you. That’s a good decoration. Best decoration on the whole trail.”
Colin lay there and took the sympathy like a sacrament. It was worse than the laughter. It was so much worse. He loved it so much.
“So,” Terrence said, crouching by his head, marker already uncapped. He wrote on Colin’s right ass cheek this time, balancing out last week’s left: STILL A CLIT. “Lesson learned, nub? Second time’s the charm?”
Colin blinked up at him through the glaze on his lashes and smiled at a man with no shame left to lose.
“I think I’m starting to get it.”
“You’re hopeless,” Hank said, grinning as he said it.
—
He lasted four days.
Saturday afternoon, the trailhead lot filled up early, and when Colin climbed out of his car, he was holding a plastic bag from the hardware store. He held it up for the group straggling up the path—clothespins, a value pack. Rubber bands, assorted sizes. A two-pack of brass padlocks.
The woods rang with laughter before he’d even closed his car door.
“HE BROUGHT SUPPLIES!” Bruno howled, doubled over against a birch.
Terrence wiped his eyes, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled toward the brush.
“BOYS! ACORN’S ENROLLED FOR THE SEMESTER!”
Colin skipped up the trail to meet them, flat-fronted and shameless, the best student Kestrel Woods had ever failed.
—
Commencement
The leaves had turned. Six Saturdays, and the canopy over Kestrel Woods had gone gold to rust to the exact color of Hank’s shoulders, and the forecast said frost by Monday, which meant the season was dying and everybody knew it.
Colin came up the trail in his cut-offs and pink lace, like always, and found all five of them waiting in the clearing with a solemnity that made his stomach drop in the best possible way. Bruno’s tailgate was down. On it: a clipboard. A tailor’s measuring tape. A single birthday candle. A coil of twine. And the brass padlock, polished to a shine.
“Take a seat, nub,” Terrence said. “It’s finals week.”
“My seat’s the oak,” Colin said, already knowing.
“Your seat’s the oak. Hank’s proctoring. Any last words before the exam begins?”
“Green,” Colin said. “So green it’s embarrassing.”
“It’s been embarrassing for six weeks. That’s why you’re here.”
Hank had reading glasses perched low on his nose and looked like the world’s most corrupt accountant. He licked the tip of a pencil. “First section. Identification. Everybody line up against the tree.”
—
They lined up. Five men and Colin, hip to hip against the fallen oak, and Hank went down the row with the tailor’s tape like a man taking inventory of a store that was clearly failing.
Terrence: eight and change. Wes: eight flat. Hank: seven and a half of blunt country steel. Bruno: uncut, heavy, nine on a good day, and this was a good day. Otis: thick as a soup can, seven, and Hank measured it twice because the tape kept looking inadequate by comparison.
Then Colin. Hank crouched, squinted over the glasses, and read the number out flat.
“Two and a quarter. Same as midterms. No growth.”
“No growth,” the group echoed, like a congregation.
“Math portion,” Hank said, standing. “Nub. Percentages. Out loud.”
Colin did it, face burning, nub straining at the humiliation of arithmetic itself. “Twenty-eight percent of Terrence. Twenty-eight of Wes. Thirty of Hank. Twenty-five of Bruno. Thirty-two of Otis.”
“We rounded up,” Otis said. “For morale.”
“Motto,” Terrence barked.
Colin recited it, the one they’d drilled into him week one, the one that was starting to feel like a prayer: “Real men have cocks. I have a conversation starter.”
“Correct. Section two. Practical demonstration. Wes, you’re up. Arts and crafts.”
—
Wes had been busy. The twine on the tailgate was a ripcord—a dozen clothespins laced onto one string, spaced as neat as a zipper —and Colin’s mouth went dry just looking at it.
But first, the candle. Bruno produced a lighter, touched it to the little birthday candle, and held the flame low.
“Left over from Otis’s fiftieth,” Bruno said. “We’re frugal. This candle serves two functions.”
The first drop of wax landed on Colin’s sac, and he hissed through his teeth. The second landed square on the head of his nub, and the sting bloomed hot and bright, and by the tenth drop he was dancing on his toes while five men watched a grown man get waxed like a cupcake. The wax cooled into little caps. Bruno flicked one off with a thumbnail and held it up.
“Look at that. It made a hat. Even the wax thinks it’s decorating something.”
They peeled him clean, which was almost worse—every cap ripping free with a tiny sting, blood rushing back hot—and then Wes knelt with the ripcord and went to work. A dozen pins, bit down along the stretched skin of his sac and the straining stub of his dick, twelve little wooden mouths, all laced to one string.
“Self-administered portion of the exam,” Terrence said, and handed Colin the end of the cord. “When the bell rings, you pull your own ripcord. If you chicken out, Hank pulls it, and Hank doesn’t believe in pulling. Hank believes in yanking.”
“I believe in yanking,” Hank confirmed, solemn.
Colin stood in the middle of the clearing holding the string, twelve clips biting into the most delicate real estate he owned, and waited for the worst minute of his life on purpose. His nub drooled a thin string onto the leaves. The men watched it happen and provided commentary the entire time—”look at it, it’s leaking with fear”—and then Terrence’s phone alarm went off, shrill in the woods, and Colin closed his eyes and pulled.
The zipper ripped free in one long line of fire, and Colin screamed and laughed at the same time, bucking, hands slapping against his own thighs, every pin’s ghost throbbing back to life, and the five of them gave him a standing ovation for self-mutilation by arts supply.
“Full marks,” Hank said, writing. “Section three. Endurance. Otis.”
Otis cupped Colin’s whole package in one enormous palm again—the grocer weighing the bad shipment, the ritual they all loved—and this time he didn’t squeeze slow. He torqued. Quick, precise increases, like he was snugging a bolt down to spec, while Colin’s knees wobbled and his voice climbed an octave per turn. Then Hank’s rubber band went on snug at the base, and Otis hung the padlock from the lace around Colin’s sac—and this time, he hung the little brass key beside it.
“You carry the key all exam,” Otis said, giving it a swing. “You hand it back after. Symbolic.”
“Of what?” Colin gasped.
“Of this,” Otis said, and squeezed.
Then the flicks. Ten from Terrence, ten from Hank, ten from Wes, and Colin had to say “Thank you, professor” after each one, voice cracking on the last few, his banded stub dark red and furious and leaking steadily, until Bruno finished with the knuckle-tap drumroll that had Colin dancing like the ground was electrified.
“Green?” Bruno checked, thumb on Colin’s chin, making him meet his eyes.
“Green,” Colin panted. “Green forever.”
“Wrong. Green until we say otherwise. Assume the position.”
—
They bent him over the oak with everything still attached—band, lock, key, all of it swinging—and the practicum began.
Hank took his seniority turn first, feeding that fat country cock into Colin’s hole while Wes claimed the throat. For a while Colin just existed in the middle of the see-saw, cock in his guts and cock in his throat and the padlock ticking against his stretched sac with every thrust like a metronome keeping time in the wrong key. Bruno narrated for the yearbook. Terrence filmed for the archives. Otis waited his turn with the patience of a man who knew his thickness did half his talking.
“Every stroke, the key swings,” Bruno observed. “He’s carrying the key to his own balls, and he still can’t reach it. That’s poetry. I should write that down.”
Otis’s turn nearly ended him. The soup-can girth dragged over Colin’s prostate on every stroke and the pressure built with nowhere to go, the band corking it all, and Colin went from babbling to begging in two minutes flat.
“Please—I’m so close—please—”
“Oral exam question,” Terrence said, crouching at his head. “Close to what? With what? Say it.”
“With—with my—” Colin’s face was crimson. “With my clit. I’m going to come with my useless little clit, please, please—”
“Correct answer,” Terrence said, and to everyone’s shock, reached down and took the straining two and a quarter inches between two fingers and started working it—two fingers, that’s all it took, that’s all there was—and Colin’s whole body went rigid, the orgasm climbing, climbing, right there, right at the brink, the edge in sight—
Hank’s thumb came down flat and pinned the whole thing against Colin’s pubic bone.
Colin came anyway. Ruined. His orgasm crawled out of him instead of shooting, a slow helpless dribble that spilled down over Hank’s pinning thumb while every muscle in Colin’s body fought itself, and the sound he made was somewhere between a sob and a laugh and a prayer.
Hank wiped his thumb on Colin’s ass cheek and wrote on the clipboard: INCOMPLETE. SEE ME AFTER CLASS.
“He saw me after class,” Hank told the group. “That’s how we got here.”
They finished the practicum properly after that—Otis flooding his guts with a grunt like a dying engine, Bruno painting a stripe up his spine, Wes down his throat, Hank across his other cheek, Terrence last, as director’s privilege, all over the word he’d written there weeks ago—and Colin lay over the oak, wrecked and dripping, the key and lock still swinging gently from his aching sac, and he had never felt more decorated in his life.
—
Then Bruno cleared his throat, and something strange happened: they all got ceremonial.
Hank’s trucker cap went on Colin’s head, with Wes’s shoelace tied to it as a tassel. Bruno’s flannel went around his shoulders as the gown. Otis unclipped the lock and key and laced the padlock onto a bootlace necklace, and hung it around Colin’s neck like a class ring.
“The key,” Terrence said, holding it up, “stays with the faculty.” He pocketed it. “Symbolic.”
“Of what?” Colin asked again.
“Of everything,” Terrence said. “Turn around.”
Colin turned, and Terrence uncapped the marker and wrote the diploma across his shoulder blades, narrating aloud for the assembly:
“Kestrel Woods Institute of Higher Humiliation hereby confers upon ACORN, cum loudly, the degree of Doctor of Small Letters, awarded for completing four years of coursework in a single season, with distinction—which is more than can be said for his dick.”
They lit the birthday candle and stuck it in the wax residue on the tailgate. It guttered in the breeze. Terrence put a laminated card in Colin’s hand: KESTREL WOODS — STAFF. MASCOT. ACORN. And on the back, a phone number. The same one from the first day, the one written on his left cheek before he’d known any of their names.
“It was always mine,” Terrence said. “You never called.”
“I didn’t want an appointment,” Colin said quietly. “I wanted to be found.”
Nobody had a joke for that one. For about four seconds.
“Valedictorian address,” Hank said gruffly, and pushed his glasses up. “Make it short.”
Colin stood up on shaky legs, cap and tassel and flannel gown and padlock ring and diploma inked into his skin, in front of the five men who’d spent a season torturing his two and a quarter inches, and gave the only honest speech of his life.
“When I came out here,” he said, “I thought I had nothing to offer. And you taught me I was right. You took my notes and turned them into a full curriculum. I was the smallest thing in these woods, and you made me the reason anybody came. So—thank you. To my professors. I’ll never be a real man, and I’ve never been happier about anything.”
Hank wiped his eye with the back of his wrist. “Best speech a clit ever gave,” he said, and his voice was suspiciously thick, and then everyone was laughing and shoving, and Bruno cracked the cold cans, and Otis pressed one gently, tenderly, against Colin’s swollen, battered little package one more time.
“There, there, little guy,” Bruno cooed. “You did it. You graduated. Smallest alum in school history.”
“Winter session’s at my shop,” Otis added. “I got a hydraulic lift and a space heater. We’ll do indoor coursework till the trail thaws.”
“Every Saturday,” Terrence said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Every Saturday,” Colin said, and it wasn’t an answer. It was a schedule.
—
The frost came Monday, like the app promised. The woods emptied, the oak stood bare, and somewhere in town, a diesel mechanic’s garage stayed warm and loud every weekend through the winter, though nobody at the diner could ever say exactly why.
They tell you an acorn never falls far from the tree. Colin had fallen exactly two and a quarter inches short of one—and he’d built his whole life in that gap, and never once wanted to close the distance.
The End.
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