“So,” she said, “I’ve decided to stay in town for Thanksgiving.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The original Wanksgiving was dorm legend by now. This year we already had six confirmed participants, with two more possibles. Three of those guys were freshmen, and I had to imagine one of them told the girls. It could have been Joe. Hell, it could have been anybody. Abby has ways.
“Go home,” I told her. “Eat turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie and whatnot. Spend time with the fam.”
“They’re going to Wisconsin, Bryan. Last-minute trip. My grandma guilted everybody into it.”
“You hate Wisconsin in the winter.”
“I told them not to buy me a ticket.”
Maybe she didn’t know after all. “It won’t be much fun around here,” I said. “We’ll mostly be hanging out in our rooms. Playing video games or working on homework.”
“Yeah, I heard about what you guys do in your rooms.”
Fuck.
I sympathized with Abby. The whole reason I was staying in Tempe for Thanksgiving was because last year my parents planned a scuba-diving trip to Mexico. They figured their college-freshman son would be fine because he was coming home three weeks later after finals. But times like that I guess you just want the comforts of home.
Instead, I woke up Thanksgiving morning and found comfort in a dorm room to myself, a fast Internet connection and a tube of sunscreen. Then after a couple Pop Tarts and some SportsCenter, I did it again.
By the time Joe from across the hall called to see if I wanted to split a pizza, I was up to three. Turns out Joe’s morning had gone pretty much the same.
So we decided to make it a contest. Joe wanted to call it Spanksgiving, but we decided Wanksgiving was funnier. I won 9-8 after a late-night rally with an assist from an old VHS tape I found in my roommate’s desk drawer.
Anyway, this year was going to be a traditional family dinner back in Dallas, and I was going to stick it to them all by staying in Arizona and defending the title.
Abby had books sprawled all over the lounge table when I stepped off the dorm elevator the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I was hoping I could avoid her long enough to take the black plastic bag I was carrying upstairs and stash it in my room.
“Your roommate went home,” she said. “Said he was pissed at you for leaving the door unlocked. What’s in the bag?” I never even saw her look up.
“DVDs.” Please don’t ask.
“What’d ya get?”
Two classy movies, the kind with good production value and A-list starlets and plots that almost make sense. Also a lube the lady at the adult store said would never get sticky. I had spent way too much.
“They’re for the thing.”
“For WANKS-giving?” She scrunched up her face. “Gross. Why are boys so obsessed with porn anyway?”
“Because unlike real life, the girls aren’t total teases.” I couldn’t believe I said it. I had just spent the better part of a four-mile bike ride wondering how last Thanksgiving would have been if Abby were my age. Bundling up in oversize hoodies, walking around the deserted campus, sitting down to dinner at an actual restaurant. Maybe this year I’d have been flying to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and maybe I could convince Abby the cold wasn’t so bad.
Or maybe not. I hadn’t figured out how we managed to ditch Joe in that fantasy. Didn’t matter anyway – Abby was a freshman.
“I want in,” she said. “How’s that for a tease?”
“No way. Women have an unfair advantage. It’s a shame you couldn’t organize a ladies division, though. Just thinking about it would net me like two points.”
“You’re sick.” Abby pouted and bit her bottom lip. I didn’t say anything – I was mostly trying to remember the lip thing for later. “Fine, just leave me all alone on Thanksgiving with nothing to do.”
“You can be my personal assistant.”
“Then you’d have an unfair advantage. I want to be the judge.”
“OK, now you’re the sick one.”
“And I’ll give the winner a real hand job,” she said. “Am I still a tease?”
“That’s awful generous. Topless?”
“Depends who wins.”
“I’m the defending champion, you know.”
“Then I’ll wear a sweatsuit. And those yellow dish gloves.”
“Ooh. I’ll make sure to get some scented candles and mood music,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me …”
“Gotta go practice?”
“Oh no. I’m fasting. I’m gonna win this thing.” I spun on my flip-flop and headed for the stairs. I wondered if the store would let me return the movies.
I remember laying on my top bunk, hot and itchy, failing at sleep like a kid before Christmas. I remember wadding up my blue comforter and throwing it across the room and then trying to read one of my roommate’s Lord of the Rings books. I had forbidden myself from the one thing I knew would help me sleep, so I sat there. Wide awake, trying not to look at the green alarm clock digits that seemed to light up the entire room.
And then the banging on the door.
“Dude!” It sounded like Joe.
I looked at the clock: 12:14 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. I slid off the bunk bed and found a footing on my roommate’s desk chair. I stepped down and on my way to the door hit myself in the chest as hard as I could. I let out a gravely yell.
“You awake, man?”
I opened the door. Joe was standing there barefoot in ASU basketball shorts and a white undershirt. He hadn’t even bothered to put on the hat he always wears, but I knew he had been awake for hours.
“She said she’d disqualify me if I woke you up. I was never here.”
Joe explained I was already down four points to Eli, a freshman. Abby was up at 8 to verify this, using a system that involved showing her a tissue and then flushing it down one of the community toilets as she supervised. Pretty smart, really.
“I only got two myself, feel like I’m slipping …” I slammed the door in Joe’s face. Couldn’t step outside again until I was ready to log a point, and that first one of the day always takes a second.
Usually, anyway. The four days of fasting and the extra rest must have paid off, because I was walking to Abby’s room with a crumpled paper towel in my hand within five minutes.
She sat with her legs crossed in a dish chair outside her door, looking through some celeb magazine. She was wearing the black yoga pants she always wore around the dorms with the waistband rolled down, this time paired with low-cut tank top and a quite visible black bra. The pants proved she still had the legs and ass of a high-school track athlete, but her boobs were looking bigger than I remembered. I guess the freshman 15 were being kind to her.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she said, her big brown eyes peering up from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses I knew she didn’t need to see. She had pulled her neck-length, streaky blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she was wearing shiny pink lip gloss. I think she was trying her best to look effortlessly hot, and it was working. “Looks like you’re on the board.”
“Count it,” I said. “I was just resting up for my big day.”
“I dunno, you’ve got some stiff competition. Eli wants it bad, and Martin is closing in. I don’t think you can hang with these freshmen.”
“Please.”
“Well whatever, let’s go flush that thing. Keep this world safe from millions of tiny Bryans.”
I kept at it until long after the sun went down. I’d keep the movies rolling on the TV while poking around the Internet for more videos or searching for nude pics of any celebrities who popped into my head. I didn’t eat anything, but I drank Gatorade and protein shakes and popped a vitamin every couple hours. Abby hung around to tally every last point, and when the going got tough, I let my mind wander back to the black bra and the yoga pants.
I was a machine.
Just after 9 o’clock, I wiped up my twelfth score. It was enough to tie Martin, who had taken the lead in the late afternoon and broken my old record around dinnertime. It was also starting to hurt a little, and my room smelled like a zoo. I decided I’d log the point, and then take a quick shower.
I told Abby as much. She was working on her laptop in the lounge. As she walked back to tally my point on the whiteboard outside her room, I could tell she was losing interest. Honestly, I was amazed she hung in as long as she did. Whatever she was trying to prove, I didn’t think for a minute that it would result in me claiming any kind of prize.
I was the only guy using the showers at the time, so stood and relaxed under the water as steam filled the stall. My back and shoulders ached from sitting in a desk chair all day, and when I finally got around to washing up, I gave myself a little tug.
Nothing.
I had beaten myself lifeless and limp, and I knew I wasn’t going to recover in time to keep pace. That freshman fuck Martin would notch one more for the win, and he’d be the one teasing Abby about the prize for the rest of the year.
I squeezed and tried so desperately to picture that black bra peeking out. I recreated so many of the day’s movie scenes in my mind, all with me and Abby. Sometimes me and two Abbys.
Still nothing.
I killed the water and, sore and defeated, dried myself off. I tied the towel around my waist, threw on a t-shirt and walked back to my room. I had left the door unlocked again. Good thing my roommate isn’t around, I thought.
And then there she was, sitting Indian-style on my roommate’s bottom bunk, staring at the movie I had left on the TV. She had ditched the fake glasses and covered up that wonderful tank top with an old sweatshirt.
“I don’t know what’s weirder,” Abby said, “That they actually make zombie porn, or that you get off watching it.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“I decided it’s time for your prize.”
“Bullshit. I’m only tied for first, and I don’t think I can do anymore. You should be in Martin’s room.”
She shook out a little silent laugh. “Eli caught Martin blowing his nose and trying to pass it off for points. After that, everybody kind of lost interest and decided to go out for dinner. I think they’re at a movie now, and they’re trying to get some booze for later. I’ll probably just go to bed.”
“If Martin is disqualified, then I just jerked off like three more times than I needed to. I’m seriously worried I did some permanent damage.”
“That’s a shame, because check these out.” She held up a pack of dishwashing gloves. Pink.
“Abby, why are you doing this?”
“Oh God. If this is where you decide it’s time tell me how you really feel…”
“I like you. And I’ve been a complete dick. I should have taken you out tonight. We could have hung out and had a really great day.”
“I’m leaving,” Abby said as she ducked out from under my bunk. That’s when I noticed the yoga pants again. I could feel myself springing back to life.
I blocked the door. “OK wait. Your parents ruined Thanksgiving, and you want to get back at them by acting like some kind of sick degenerate.”
“I want to go to bed.”
“That’s why I started this stupid tradition in the first place. And, I dunno, maybe you want to prove to me that you’re not a total tease.”
“Seriously, move.”
“If you leave, then you are a total tease. And I bet your parents would be proud of how much homework you did today.”
“You seriously want me to do this?”
“It’ll be the thirteenth best I’ve had all day.”
I never participated in another Wanksgiving, although I hear Eli smashed my record the following year. Nothing else happened with Abbey, either, and I know it’s my fault. I was a complete jerk-off to her. Yeah, that’s the punchline.
I take a little solace in my back-to-back championships. And while I couldn’t talk Abby into ditching the pink gloves, I did convince her to strip back down to that glorious little tank top.
Wanksgiving by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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