I didn’t get a chance to discover whether Luke and I had anything in common during the whole of that first year. When the four of us were out together our conversation was general, laddish, and I seldom spent time with Luke alone. During our second term Jack and Mike switched from rugby to hockey, while I did not. I was quite relieved in a way. It gave me an excuse to drop out of rugby. I’d never enjoyed the sport that much, to tell the truth, but I had the build, the strength and the skill, and at five foot eleven I looked the part. I’d played at school as a matter of course, and I’d gone along when Jack suggested I join the team that first term at uni. But now that I’d stopped, and Jack and Mike were into a different game, played on different days, those beery four musketeer evenings became less frequent and finally petered out altogether. By that time Jack had got himself a girlfriend anyway, and Mike was trying hard to follow suit.
I’d never had a girlfriend; never even flirted with girls, never felt the need. If I occasionally asked myself if I was attracted to men I tried to kick the question into the grass. I didn’t think that if it came to it I’d be very good at sex. At the age of eighteen I’d never even had a wank.
That wasn’t strictly true. I got my rocks off, from time to time, like any boy. Sometimes I’d find involuntary relief in the course of a wet dream. Occasionally, very occasionally, I’d well up and bubble over in the scrum during a match, inside the appallingly tight confines of my jockstrap. This was mortifying in the extreme, as well as uncomfortable, but bent double as I was, and huddled in the melee, at least nobody saw. Sometimes too it would happen in the classroom (later, at university lectures) inside my trousers, hidden by the desk, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But when I did want to do something about it—I mean, when I chose to make myself come, as happened from time to time—I could never bring myself, for some reason, to use my hand. I’d rub my trouser front—hard-on conveniently standing vertical inside—up and down the wall of a room (an empty room obviously) rising onto tiptoe on the slow upthrust and then back down until I’d scored my private goal. Or in bed, naked and face down, I’d rub myself off along the bottom sheet.
Why, for all those years, from the age of fourteen till I turned nineteen, did I never use my hand? I ask myself now. Everyone else did, it’s so obviously the most convenient thing to do, and it’s something that I do quite naturally now, with others or on my own. But I know the answer of course, and even though I wouldn’t have admitted it I knew it back then too. I was ashamed, quite simply, of my size. Despite my height, muscle and build, at the age of eighteen I was still kitted out with a penis and correspondent testicles that, in terms of size, looked more like the adornments of a boy of twelve.
Apart from their diminutive scale there was nothing wrong with my cock and balls at all. They were (and still are) as pretty and elegant a set of tackle as you’ve ever seen. And between them they delivered the goods. The quantity of sperm they could produce was in proportion to my size and rugby player’s physique, rather than in relation to the little funnel through which my spunk was squeezed. How did I know this, when I’d never done anything with another boy, nor seen another boy do it to himself? Well, I know now of course, but I could work it out back then also. I’d seen the stains on other boys’ sheets at boarding school at bed-making time, and they were approximately the same size—and map-like shape—as mine. Tidier, cleaner boys kept a hanky under the pillow or a small towel in a bedside drawer. One boy used an old gray sock. Nobody needed to take the precaution of keeping a jam jar beneath the bed.
Size, then, was my one concern. I measured my cock often and anxiously during my eighteenth and nineteenth years. At full stretch it remained an obstinate three and three-quarter inches. It had been nearly as big when I was thirteen. Its circumference was a tad more than three inches. Not the diameter, the circumference: do the math. It was thicker than any reasonably normal-sized pen, but not by much. When flaccid it hid like a button inside the funnel of its foreskin sheath. Even when stiff it rarely showed its head, a small ripe raspberry and just as scarlet, which had to be hauled out, protesting redly, in bath or shower for its daily wash behind the ears.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t know how big an eighteen-year-old’s cock was supposed to be. Received wisdom among us boys was that six-point-something inches was the norm. Some people boasted of having considerably more than that. And in order for there to be a norm, of course, it followed that many others—though they wouldn’t boast about the fact—must have rather less. But why me? And why a mere three and three-quarter inches? Surely no one of my size and physique had to be as far below the average as that? I’d have been grateful for five.
As I was sharing a room with Jack, I saw his cock from time to time. He was neither ostentatious nor bashful when it came to undressing to get ready for bed. I never saw Jack’s prick erect, so I had no idea of its extent in inches when in that state. But it appeared inevitably, from time to time, in off duty mode. On those occasions it hung, in a fat and jutting curve, like a big beef sausage over his two proud balls. It had a heavy, flattish head (this was very noticeable because he was circumcised) and that head was rimmed with a broad, shamelessly out-turned, flange. His balls were the size of extra-large hens’ eggs, thickly wrapped. I took care never to let Jack glimpse my own small packet. I had nothing that could compete with his. Undressing, I always made sure to turn my back. And my lack of willingness to parade my goods in the shared space of our bedroom didn’t bother him—even if he was aware of it—one bit.
I’ve said Jack’s balls were the size of hens’ eggs. So what of mine? The size of quail’s eggs. For the record, they still are. Not that that bothers me. They do their job. They deliver the goods. Nobody ever complains.
The beginning of my second term at Edinburgh saw all of us allocated to new rooms. I found mine easily. It was in the same block as last year’s, though on a different landing and, in honor of my new status as a second-year, a single. No more sharing. As I unpacked I wondered idly who my next-door neighbor would be. I had arrived early and the guy next door hadn’t turned up yet, or if he had he hadn’t got round to writing on the name card on his door. I had written my own name up at once—Rufus McCann.
A short time later came a knock at my door. Opening it I found myself looking into the eyes of Luke, Mike’s non-rugby-playing roommate from last year. Since our days of pubbing with Mike and Jack had come to an end back in the spring we’d done little more than exchange the odd hallo. Now Luke said to me, “Looks like we’re living next door to each other. Want to come in for some tea?”
If an invitation to a cup of tea seems a bit tame by way of an opener, well, neither of us was fully unpacked, and it was precisely four in the afternoon. We sat on spartan student chairs and chatted about the long summer vacs that had just come to an end, about the things we had done during that time. I had forgotten—if I’d ever properly taken it in—what a likeable, easygoing chap Luke was. I found myself regretting that we hadn’t continued to spend time together after those rugby pub outings stopped, and thinking that he was probably nicer, and more fun, than most of the new friends I’d made since then. Also I had to admit that in the last year his petite good looks were much improved. His small physique had developed, in its own small way, but nicely so. He had a cute nose and a head of dark curly hair. I’d given no thought at all to his looks last year, simply had not noticed them, and now was a bit surprised to remember that.