Here's another repost from omorashi.org. Chapter 3 in particular features one of my favorite kinds of scenarios. I chose those chapters since they're the ones that feature male desperation, but you can find the rest at the original website.
Golden State
by Justin20
*****
Chapter 1: The Trouble with Trains
July 2023
Northern California shouldn’t be this hot, Marco Vigil had decided. It was well above a hundred degrees in Sacramento, a simple fact that he nevertheless couldn’t wrap his head around. He would have expected weather like this in Phoenix, or in Austin, or in Atlanta, but not in Sacramento. Marco was eager to get out of Sacramento and away from the terrible heat, but that wouldn’t happen if he missed his train, an outcome that was looking more and more probable as he rushed to get to the platform before the departure time.
Marco had gone to Sacramento to visit a friend who’d moved back home for the summer. He’d lingered in the air-conditioned oasis of his living room, with the result that he was now racing through Sacramento Valley Station in a desperate attempt to make the southbound Capitol Corridor train before it pulled away from the platform. In his mad dash through the station, as he struggled to hoist his backpack over his shoulder while holding on to his phone and mostly-empty water bottle, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he’d sprinted right past the restrooms.
Now he was running flat out, and he must have been quite a sight: All 5’6” of his frame was leaning into his stride, and his unkempt black hair bounced with each footfall. His eyes were narrowed and his jaw was clenched with determination as he rounded the last corner to the platform.
There was the train! With one last frantic burst, he leapt into the closest car and gasped for breath. The air conditioning was so refreshing that for a moment he felt weak in the knees, but he collected himself and gulped down the rest of the water. Still panting from his mad dash, he refilled his water bottle before making his way upstairs and claiming a window seat just as the train pulled out of the station.
“Welcome aboard southbound Capitol Corridor train #273, with southbound service terminating at Jack London Square in Oakland. Please have your tickets ready…”
Marco put in his earbuds and relaxed, eagerly taking a few more swigs from his water bottle as he thought of the immense heat outside. It would be nearly two hours before the train got to Oakland, and then for Marco it would be longer still before he got to his destination. That’s because Marco was a student at Rockridge University in Oakland, and at this time of day the bus back to campus would probably be caught up in traffic. Marco didn’t mind; he was content to sit right there in the train, enjoying the air conditioning and rehydrating himself after a scorching hot weekend.
In fact, come to think of it, his bottle was almost empty again. Time for a refill, he thought.
…
After the train stopped in Davis, Marco went to the café car and bought a soda, since the water still hadn’t quenched his thirst. After the train stopped in Fairfield, Marco refilled his water bottle yet again. And when the train stopped in Suisun City, Marco realized that he had to pee.
Well, no matter. Marco may have been shy, but he definitely wasn’t going to wait until Oakland to relieve himself – he knew he wouldn’t be able to wait that long. The only question was what to do with his bag: Take it with him into the bathroom, or leave it on the seat? After a moment of thought, he decided to leave it. The bathroom would probably be cramped, and there were plenty of people on the coach who would notice if a would-be thief tried to make off with some dirty clothes and a toothbrush.
And besides, Marco thought to himself with a smirk, what kind of idiot would steal something in between station stops? He’d be trapped on the train, and then I’d just have to track the thief down… ‘Mystery on the Capitol Corridor.’ That sounds like a good short story!
By this point, he’d got to the bottom floor of the car and made his way to the bathroom. He opened the door and peered inside. He’d never been inside a train’s lavatory before, but it reminded him of the one on an airplane. It was a bit larger, and furnished with stainless steel instead of plastic, but it was still familiar.
There was only one major difference that Marco discovered: He closed the door behind him, moved to lock it, and ended up gesturing ineffectively at the handle. How does it lock? The door’s handle clicked into place, but there was no obvious way to lock it. Marco prodded at a small knob next to the handle, thinking that it might be the lock, but even after twisting it, pulling it, and sliding it, he could tell the door was still unlocked.
I’m an engineer. I can figure this out. The experience reminded him of trying to turn on the shower in an unfamiliar hotel room; it seemed that there was always a different sequence of levers to control water temperature, actuate the drain, and turn on the shower head. The only difference was that Marco’s current situation was a bit more stressful than trying to turn on a shower, a fact that was reflected in his tense stance as he became more and more aware of the contents of his bladder.
Nervously, Marco moved away from the door and faced the toilet. Glancing over his shoulder, he unbuttoned his shorts and moved down the zipper. Best to get this over with quickly before somebody comes in. Then, as he unzipped his pants, Marco’s mind was suddenly seized by the image of another passenger opening the door and disturbing him as he did his business.
Maybe he could wait until Oakland after all.
He zipped his shorts back up and sighed as he returned to his seat. With his thighs pressed together, Marco prepared himself for the uncomfortable ride home.
…
“Attention passengers… due to an open drawbridge, we’ll be delayed for about ten minutes. Next station stop is Martinez.”
As the train loitered at the foot of the bridge across the San Joaquin river, Marco knew he was in trouble. For now, the discomfort in his bladder had subsided to a dull ache, but with every small movement he felt the mass of liquid shifting inside him. There was nothing to it but to press his knees together and lean back in his seat.
The train was stopped next to a stand of trees on a steep hillside. Marco found himself thinking of the last time he’d had to pee this bad, during a run in the hills above campus. It had been during the heat wave last fall, and with his class schedule leaving him no choice but to run in the afternoon, he’d kept hydrated… perhaps a bit too eagerly. Just after crossing Grizzly Peak Road he’d ducked into a stand of trees, pulled the front of his shorts down, and watered a tree. The smell of urine, sweat, and eucalyptus sap that had combined on that hillside was surprisingly agreeable, and Marco made a game of it: He stepped back and angled his penis upwards, managing to soak the bark nearly four feet above the roots. Then he stepped to the side a bit and tried to project his stream as far as he could on the downhill slope. Then he was done, and he was quite satisfied to stand there watching his puddle trickle downhill.
It was the shock of his life when Marco stepped out from behind the tree and saw, not thirty feet away from him, Riley Conrad standing shirtless with his back towards him, watering his own tree. Riley Vigil, who Marco knew because they were both on Rockridge’s rocketry team… Riley Conrad, who looked pretty good without a shirt on… Riley Conrad, who was pissing on a tree.
Marco fled with swift but silent footsteps and set a new record on his downhill sprint back to campus. He’d already made plans to meet Riley for lunch the next day, and when they both sat down at the restaurant Marco was so nervous that he could barely read the menu, but Riley seemed normal. Obviously he hadn’t caught Marco peeing, and he hadn’t caught Marco watching him pee.
After all, it wouldn’t do to let lust or piss get in the way of what was already a good friendship.
…
When the train stopped in Martinez, Marco had to direct his attention towards his bladder and penis every few seconds to keep himself in control. At this point, he was filled with almost as much worry as urine, and he figured that there were only two ways that his situation could get worse.
The first way was that somebody would sit next to him.
The second way was that she was wearing a Rockridge University t-shirt.
“Oh, you’re another Rockridge student?” she asked.
Marco tried to make himself look less tense. “How did you know?”
“Water bottle.”
Marco looked at his bottle, which he had purchased from the student store. It had the university seal printed on the side.
“What’s your name?” Marco asked.
“Elizabeth.”
“Marco.”
Elizabeth was wearing athletic shorts, a tank top, and sandals, and she had shoulder-length brown hair. Marco thought she looked familiar in a vague sort of way, as if they’d crossed paths on campus a few times before. As they talked some more, Marco learned that Elizabeth was a fellow sophomore, studying physics. He told her that he was majoring in mechanical engineering. Marco tried not to squirm in his seat, but with Elizabeth sitting next to him all he could do was sit and suffer as he tried to keep his pants dry. Luckily, the conversation was distracting him a bit; the train was now rolling through Richmond, with the factories and railyards of the East Bay moving outside the windows.
Elizabeth interrupted herself to point out the window. “Look, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.” Marco turned in his seat to see that, yes, in between the treetops, he could see the distant San Francisco skyline and the bridge off in the distance.
“You know,” Elizabeth said, “I have kind of a funny story about the bridge… A few weeks ago I had a friend visit from out of town. She’s a transfer student who’ll be starting at Rockridge next fall, so she wanted me to shower her around. We went into the city, and one of the things she wanted to do was walk the length of the bridge, all the way from San Francisco to Marin. I’d never done it before either so we went across the bay and stopped in San Francisco for a coffee before heading to the bridge. Of course, it was a hot day, so I was also drinking lots of water… I didn’t realize there was a bathroom in the visitor center on the San Francisco side, so we just started walking across.”
Marco stared at her. “That’s… interesting…” He shifted his legs around some more. The train was making a stop in Berkeley, and as the people passed by in the aisle he tried to lean forward as casually as he could and crossed his arms over his thighs. His new hunched-up position took some pressure off his bladder, but he couldn’t think of a way to change the subject.
He really wanted to change the subject. And he really, really wanted to pee.
“Anyway, all that ‘hydration’ was catching up to me. I had no idea how long the bridge was, so by the time we were halfway across I had to piss bad. It was getting hard to walk. So you know what I did? I walked up to the railing, pulled down the waistband of my shorts a few inches, and got my underwear out of the way.”
“But what about the people?” Marco blurted.
Elizabeth laughed. “What people? Tourists don’t go that far out onto the bridge, and the bike path was on the other side. And I was hidden in an alcove behind one of the support towers; from the road, none of the drivers could see me pissing off the side of the Golden Gate Bridge.. Oh, it was great. I tell you, when you have to go that bad, it feels so good to just let go of your inhibitions and take an amazing leak.”
“Yeah.” Marco winced. “That does sound nice.”
“Of course, some people are more timid. I mean, my friend also clearly had to go when we were walking the bridge, but she didn’t want to join me when I pissed over the side. She managed to wait until we found some bushes on the Marin side of the bridge. She gave them a good watering!”
Marco just crossed his legs again as the train rolled south.
…
Marco knew he was in trouble. His legs bounced. He resisted the urge to grab himself as he twisted in his seat. Finally, he grabbed his legs and pulled his knees up to his chest, scrunching himself into a ball. His only consolation was that Elizabeth didn’t comment on his apparent desperation; if she had, he might have died of embarrassment. Her silence allowed Marco to pretend that she thought he was just trying to find a comfortable sitting position after spending nearly two hours on the train.
Elizabeth was telling him about her work in Rockridge’s Turbulent Flow Lab. He didn’t understand fluid mechanics that well, but she told him that her work could have engineering applications for nozzle design. She even offered to help Marco get a position in the lab, since they’d probably need help from an engineer for their upcoming experiments. However, he declined, saying that he was more interested in robotics and aerospace engineering.
And after being drawn in to such an interesting conversation, Marco was shocked to feel the train slowing down as it pulled into the station in Oakland. Finally! He grabbed his bag and stood up – and that made him realize that he truly was on the verge of wetting himself.
“Will I see you on the bus back to Rockridge?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t think so,” Marco replied hesitantly. “I have, uh… errands to run downtown.”
Elizabeth smiled. “If you say so.” She saw right through the lie, but she pretended to believe Marco because it seemed important to him that nobody would find out how badly he needed to relieve himself. Honestly, she thought, if I had to go that badly I’d find some quiet alley to squat in as soon as I got off the train.
She also rose from her seat to disembark, but Marco was already gone, sprinting down the stairs and onto the platform with stiff legs. With a stiff gait, he made his way towards the station building, devoting all of his energy towards holding his it in. Hobbling across the lobby, he spotted the door to the men’s room, and-
No! Locked! Marco was could have cried in frustration. His face was red and he was sweating with the effort of trying not to wet his pants. He dashed out onto the street, and saw the taillights of the Rockridge shuttle bus as it pulled away from the station.
“Shit!” He’d have to wait another thirty minutes for the next bus back to Rockridge. Naively, he thought for a moment that he could wait that long, but the brief lapse of concentration to check the bus schedule on his phone took its toll. Marco felt a brief spurt of urine leak out of him and soak into his underwear.
No, it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to wait. Marco had been desperate before, but he’d never been so close to wetting himself that he started leaking. Out of options, he ran for the closest secluded place he could find, a mostly-empty parking garage next to the station.
Ducking past the toll booth, Marco ran into a quiet corner of the station. He found a bus dropoff lane that had clearly fallen into disuse; it was separated from the rest of the garage by a wall, and the chances were low that anybody else would cross his path while he was pissing a river.
Nervously, Marco walked over to a good spot with a support column shielding him from the left and a drain on the right that would hopefully keep too large a puddle from building up. Now all he had to do was unzip, pull himself out, and go. But Marco couldn’t do it; he couldn’t stop thinking about his encounter with Riley in the hills above campus, and how embarrassing it had been to nearly be discovered. Although there had been a few desperate times in Marco’s life where he’d had no problem watering a tree or a bush, he’d avoided peeing outside since the incident with Riley last fall. And now he was in a built-up environment, not out in nature like the previous times he hadn’t been able to wait for a bathroom. Pissing here seemed like an impossible task.
But all of those concerns were pushed aside by Marco’s intense desperation and a desire to salvage his dry shorts. If relieving himself here was difficult, then wetting himself was unthinkable.
Steeling his nerve, Marco unzipped his shorts, pulled his underwear waistband down, and gripped his penis in his right hand. He aimed at the wall, and immediately a torrent burst forth from him. Marco was standing less than two feet from the wall, but in that moment he was sure that his stream could have traveled three times that distance, and the pressure caused a few spray drops to ricochet back onto his ankles. That didn’t bother him at all; the feeling of relieving himself after putting it off for far too long was intoxicating. Even though Marco fought the urge to close his eyes so that he could keep glancing around for passersby, for the most part he didn’t have a care in the world as he took his badly-needed piss.
In his entire life, Marco had only ever peed in three places before: In a bathroom, onto a tree, and onto dirt. Concrete was new to him, and he was surprised by how quickly his stream flowed down the wall and into the drain. As it fell into the drain, it made a gurgling sound; the sound amused Marco, and he wondered how long he’d be able to keep it up.
He had already passed twenty seconds, and he showed no signs of slowing yet. Moving his right hand, Marco began to idly move his stream back and forth against the wall, settling on a position that provided a bit more space between his foot and the steady trickle running into the drain. His small accomplishment made him smile; it wasn’t a wide grin that crossed his face, but rather the mellow expression of relief and bliss.
So far, Marco thought that his first urban piss was going quite well. Maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about after all. In fact, maybe he’d even try it again sometime. On a few occasions over the last few weeks, Marco had missed his bus and been stranded in the remote corner of Oakland where he worked as an intern at an engineering firm. Since Marco tended to drink a lot of water during the workday, after waiting at the bus stop for a few minutes he’d have a distinct urge to go. His pride refused to let him walk back to the office just to use the bathroom – after all what if somebody saw him? – but the industrial side of town wasn’t well-served by transit, and after waiting half an hour for the next bus he’d be quite uncomfortable. He always made it home before it became a true emergency, but next time maybe he’d just find a spot behind an abandoned warehouse and water the plants.
As he was lost in thought, Marco didn’t pay much attention as his stream started to lose power. Another ten seconds or so, and he’d be finished, with an impressive damp mark on the wall and a puddle of urine slowly flowing into the drain. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw somebody walking towards him.
Marco’s good mood vanished in an instant. He couldn’t possibly let anybody see him like this! With lightning speed, he tucked his penis back into his underwear and zipped his shorts up. Unfortunately, after being lost in relief, he wasn’t able to stop his stream until a few seconds after fastening his pants, and he ended up with a small but noticeable damp patch on the front of his shorts. With no time to worry about that, he bolted for the nearest exit, which happened to take him next to the person he’d seen coming his way.
The person was Elizabeth, and she waved. Marco saw her eyes move downwards, just for an instant, and he knew that he’d been caught. He’d had an accident, and Elizabeth had seen it. Marco was overcome with embarrassment, and he instinctively turned to face away from her. And then, instinctually, he started running, sprinting back out onto the street and leaving the parking garage behind.
He’d see Elizabeth again on the bus back to campus, but for now he just needed to be alone.
Golden State, chapters 1 & 3 (fiction)
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SoakdBrute
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Re: Golden State, chapters 1 & 3 (fiction)
Chapter 3: Traffic and Texas
September 2022
Sam: hey Marco what’s up
Sam: how’s California
Marco: I got here a week ago and don’t really know anyone yet. Freshman orientation was kind of fun and also kind of a waste of time.
Sam: Yeah same at UT also
Sam: Still wish you were here in Austin
Marco: I told you before that I didn’t want to stay in Texas.
Sam: Yeah i know, just not sure why you changed your mind at the last minute about where to go to colleague
Sam: *college
Sam: I mean UT has a pretty good engineering program
Marco: I just didn’t want to stay in Texas.
Sam: Texas couldn’t be that bad, I mean it’s not like you’re gay or something
Sam: because that would be a good reason to leave Texas and go to California
Marco: Can’t talk now. I’m looking at the engineering student groups on campus.
Sam: oh you mean like SIAM?
Marco: What’s SIAM?
Sam: society for industrial and applied mathematics
Marco: We engineers like to have more fun than that. Math’s for nerds.
Marco: /s
Sam: pretty sure you’re also a nerd, Marco
Sam: and all you engineers use math to make things so you should *grovel before me*
Marco: Right now I’m looking at the Rockridge Solar Car racing team. I think this might be the one I join.
Marco: It would be kind of an electrical engineering-focused thing, which might be interesting.
Sam: so they build a solar car?
Marco: And they race it against a bunch of other schools.
Marco: Hold on.
Sam: hey
Marco: Oh, I never replied. Sorry.
Sam: how’s the solar car
Marco: I didn’t join.
Marco: I found a better team.
Sam: what do they do
Marco: They build rockets. They’re called SOAR. That’s the Student Organization for Aerospace and Rocketry.
Marco: Or maybe R is for Rockridge, I don’t know.
Marco: Anyway I’m going to be working on the recovery systems.
Sam: what’s recovery?
Marco: Parachutes and their associated deployment systems. Also in-flight events like stage separation.
Marco: I get to play with explosives
Sam: don’t get blown up
Marco: We’ll see.
…
July 2023
“Don’t get blown up,” Riley said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Marco replied. “I know what I’m doing.”
He and Riley stood behind a plexiglass blast wall, wearing hard hats and face shields. On the other side of the wall lay the hollow shell of a rocket, emptied of its motor and flight electronics. All that was inside was two parachutes, a pair of small explosive charges, and long wires snaking around a pressure bulkhead and outside the airframe. One end of the wires was connected to the explosives, and the other end was in Marco’s left hand.
In his right hand, there was a 9-volt battery.
Riley stood off to the side, pointing his phone towards the rocket. “We’re filming,” he said. “Ready when you are.”
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Marco shouted, and touched the terminals of the battery to the wires he was holding. With a bang and a puff of smoke, the rocket split in two, and the parachutes spilled out onto the ground.
Riley walked up to film a closer shot. “Looks like a successful test. We’re on track for a September launch.”
“Awesome. Let’s get this packed up and get back to Rockridge.”
…
SOAR, along with all of the other Rockridge student engineering teams, worked out of Alameda Field. Located on an island just south of Oakland, and a few miles away from the main Rockridge campus, it had started its life as a hastily-build Navy airfield during World War II. After the war, it had been passed around between different state and local government agencies until expansion at Oakland International Airport to the south forced its runways to close. With the polluted site too costly to redevelop, the airfield had been offered to NASA, then UC Berkeley, and then Stanford, none of whom were eager to take on the responsibility of maintaining decrepit hangars built on top of toxic landfill. Finally, Rockridge University bought the field, and its engineering students had been turning the windswept landscape and the creaky, leaky buildings into their playground ever since.
Alameda Field was pretty quiet in the summer. Off on the other end of the runway, Rockridge’s solar car team was slowly putting their new vehicle through its paces, but otherwise Marco and Riley were alone. The field was right on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, nestled among shipyards and railyards. In the distance, the skyscrapers of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge peaked through a layer of fog, but here in Oakland it was a sunny summer day.
Riley walked back to the SOAR hanger and reached for the doorknob. “Shit,” he muttered.
“What?”
Riley jiggled the knob. “The door’s locked.”
“I didn’t lock the door. Did you lock the door?”
“No. They keys are inside on the workbench.”
“These doors don’t lock themselves, do they?”
Riley shook his head. “They’re not supposed to, but all the buildings around here are falling apart.”
“Well, look on the bright side. If we can’t get in, then all of the black mold and asbestos in there can’t kill us.”
Riley laughed. “Right! Anyway, I don’t feel like trying to fix this right now. Let’s load up the rocket in my car and we can bring it back later after maintenance fixes the door.”
…
Thirty minutes later, Marco was starting to wish they’d been able to get into the hangar. Partially, it was because of the inconvenience of needing to store part of the rocket at home and bring it back to Alameda Field later. Also, he was worried that SOAR would somehow be blamed for breaking a lock that hadn’t been replaced since the 1940s.
However, his regrets were mostly because the hangar had a bathroom.
During the test preparations, Marco had drained nearly two water bottles. He didn’t trust the water in Alameda; he’d heard that sometime before the Navy abandoned the airfield, the ground had been contaminated with lead and other heavy metals. Visiting students were encouraged to bring enough water to last them through the day, and Marco had obeyed. It was like a math problem: The passage of time (several hours) and the number of bathroom trips he’d had (zero) produced the results:
The water had left the tap in Oakland.
He’d carried it to Alameda in his bottle.
The water had left the bottle in Alameda.
He was carrying the water back to Oakland in his bladder.
The water was threatening to leave his bladder at some point on the highway between Alameda and Oakland.
His saving grace was that Riley had quickly grown bored of the traffic jam that stretched off into the distance and had talked for a while about an upcoming SpaceX launch, which distracted Marco from his problem.
“…anyway, I think they’ll probably get it right eventually, but I still wouldn’t trust them to move past the satellite market for now,” Riley was saying. “There’s no way they’ll get their timeline to work, especially since they destroyed their launchpad in Texas during the last test.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marco said. “I think they got in trouble with the FAA.”
“Hey, when you’re back home do you ever go down to watch the SpaceX launches?”
Marco shook his head. “Too far. Remember, I live in El Paso, and they launch in Boca Chica. It would take thirteen hours of driving just to get there.”
“Jesus. Texas is fucking huge.”
“Yeah. I still can’t really get used to it.”
“What do you mean, get used to?”
“My family moved to El Paso in middle school. I never told you?”
Riley took a sip from his water bottle in the cupholder. “I don’t think so.”
“Huh. I thought I had. Anyway, I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My dad worked for the university, as an anthropologist studying Pueblo culture. Eventually he got really interested in pre-Columbian trade routes between Central America and the Colorado Plateau, so he wanted to spend some time closer to Mexico. Luckily, the University of Texas campus in El Paso was hiring, so the summer after eighth grade we packed up and moved south.”
“That sounds like it would have been rough.”
“I mean, kind of? I missed Albuquerque, but we still had a ton of family up there, so we got back a lot. And, you know, I’ve never been the kind of person who’s great at making friends, so it wasn’t like I was leaving behind a lot of people in Albuquerque I cared about. The real hard part was starting over with zero friends in El Paso.”
Marco took a deep breath. Why am I telling him this? Riley was his friend, sure, but Marco had always been reluctant to talk with his friends about the personal details of his life. He’d always considered it better to just talk about trivial items. At a few times in his life he’d wondered if maybe his few friendships would have felt more meaningful if he’d made more of an effort to engage emotionally, but it seemed less risky to just stay the course and talk about the little things. So why was he suddenly being so talkative now?
You idiot. Now Riley’s going to know you didn’t have any friends in high school. And who wants to talk to a friendless loser?
But Riley just leaned over in his seat, taking his eyes off the gridlocked traffic and looking directly at Marco. “Yeah, high school was rough for me too like that, with the pandemic and everything. It must have been way worse to be uprooted like that. I’m glad all that’s behind us and we can just make the most of where we’re at now.”
Marco blinked. He was expecting judgement, scorn, anything except a genuine emotional connection that had been returned with sincerity.
Another thing that he wasn’t expecting was that he didn’t have to pee as badly as he did a few minutes prior – he’d uncrossed his legs.
“Yeah. Well, to be honest, it was the little things in El Paso that were the hardest. It’s not too different to Albuquerque… It’s hotter, and there’s nowhere you can go to get out of the desert. Albuquerque had mountains. And obviously the main thing is that El Paso is in Texas, and I’ve told you before how I feel about that particular state government.”
Riley grinned. “If I recall, in addition to your legitimate complaints you also blamed the governor for getting you rejected from Caltech.”
“And I ended up at Rockridge instead, so don’t make fun of me. Anyway, the real thing is that I just felt a little out of place in El Paso. It’s weird, but… El Paso is more Mexican than New Mexico. So being Hispano, and having specific New Mexican heritage, and then coming down to Texas, it puts you in a weird in-between spot culturally.”
“How so?”
“Oh, it’s hard to explain. Just, you know, because of three centuries of history, and endless socioeconomic stuff since then, it just feels different. There’s a lot of culture shock when you’re going someplace where there’s a stronger dividing line between who is and isn’t Mexican. And, on a smaller note, Tex-Mex is not as good as New Mexican style cooking. Sometimes my family would drive north to Las Cruces just to get proper New Mexican food.”
“And what’s the difference?”
“That would also be too hard to explain to somebody who’s used to Nor-Cal slop.”
“Hey!”
Marco grinned mischievously. “Hey, I had a breakfast burrito last week with kale in it. I wouldn’t give that burrito to a dog.”
Riley laughed again. “Oh, man, I didn’t come here for a lecture. When is this traffic going to move?”
“Oh, so you’re crumbling under my vicious attacks of Cali-Mex food?”
“No, I just really need to pee.”
Marco’s smile vanished. “Oh.” His need had abated for now, but he was still anxious to get in front of a urinal. “Yeah, me too. Let me check my phone… looks like the traffic clears up right at the Rockridge exit.”
They were nearly there, but the highway was practically at a standstill. Cars inched forward, filling every bit of empty space between their bumpers; there were subway tracks in the median of the highway, and Riley watched as a train rumbled past. He really, really wished he was on it.
“I’ve never seen traffic this bad before,” Riley said. “I remember one time in senior year I was driving back to Santa Cruz and there was a bad wreck ahead of me.” He winced. “But since that was just a little mountain road I was just able to pull over and water a tree. No chance of that here.”
“What were you doing in San Jose?”
“I was going to a soccer game with my boyfriend.”
Marco perked up at that statement. “Wait, you had a boyfriend? I didn’t realize that you, I mean...”
“Yeah, we kind of just went our separate ways after graduation. He’s at Yale now.”
For some reason Marco felt very excited by this information.
“What about you?” Riley asked. “Any high school romance?”
“The exit is closed up ahead,” Marco abruptly replied.
“What?”
“The Rockridge exit. Is closed.” He pushed his knees together. “Godammit, I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.”
“Okay, don’t panic.”
“I say panic.”
Riley gripped the wheel. “Panic if you want, I’m getting us out of here.” He swerved the car into a gap and moved into the left lane. A few seconds later, they broke through the end of the jam and discovered that the backlog had been caused by a closed lane that had blocked off the Rockridge exit and choked the eastbound traffic on the highway down to two lanes. Riley slammed his foot down on the accelerator and weaved between slower cars as he moved back to the outside lane, veering towards the next exit.
They were high up in the hills now, probably over a mile from Rockridge. Marco pulled out his phone and pulled up a map, trying to figure out if it would be faster to get back on the highway or take surface roads back to campus. Looking up from his phone, he was dismayed to see that Riley had turned off the main road and started following signs for Temescal Recreation Area.
“What are we doing here?”
“Don’t worry,” Riley said, and eased the car into a parking spot next to some picnic tables. As soon as he cut off the ignition, he put his hands in his lap and started holding himself. Then he got out of the car, leaving Marco behind as he walked away from the road.
Marco anxiously looked around. He could barely sit still, the need to piss was so bad – what was Riley doing? After a moment’s hesitation, he unbuckled and set off in pursuit of his friend.
He caught up to Riley a few feet off the path. “Come on, I’m practically wetting myself. We need to get back to campus.”
“No, we don’t,” Riley said, and unbuttoned his pants. Marco froze and felt his heart accelerate as Riley’s hands worked their way down the zipper and pulled the fabric of his jeans aside. With his left hand he opened the fly on his boxers and with the other hand took aim at the trunk of a nearby eucalyptus tree.
A pale stream splashed against the bark and ran down into the dirt, where it trickled past dead leaves and Riley’s shoes. Riley leaned back and sighed.
“Aren’t you going to join me, Marco?”
Marco didn’t move. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…” He thought back to the Amtrak incident and being caught in the parking garage outside the train station. It had been hard enough to relax when he thought he was alone, but now Riley was right there. “Is that an invitation?” Marco asked, awkwardly, then blushed. You did not just say that out loud, he told himself.
Riley turned towards Marco slightly, giving him a clear view of the stream arcing towards the stream in a perfect parabola. He smiled a little and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe it is.”
Marco frantically looked around. There had to be a bathroom around somewhere! But he’d had so much to drink in Alameda, and he could hear Riley sighing contentedly, and he could hear Riley’s stream striking the ground-
There wasn’t time to find a bathroom. There wasn’t even time to find his own tree. Frantically, fumblingly, he darted next to Riley and unzipped his own pants. Soon, there were two golden streams splattering against the bark.
Marco and Riley stood about a foot apart. Each had a wide stance, and both their gazes were turned towards the point of contact between the tree and their streams. They both stood there for a moment, but then Marco redirected himself slightly and moved his stream up the tree. A second passed before Riley noticed, but then they both started laughing and trying to compete on height. Nearly twenty seconds passed and both of them were still going strong, alternately swinging their flows up to new heights on the tree and stepping back to compete on distance. In all the chaos their puddles merged and encroached on their shoes, but they didn’t mind. After spending nearly an hour cooped up in the car, dancing around like idiots in the woods felt almost as good as pissing itself.
Despite starting later, Marco finished up first. He shook himself off and started to tuck himself away, but then his eyes caught Riley’s stream and for the first time his gaze went up to the source. He’d only caught brief glances of other guys’ cocks in the locker room in high school, and he hadn’t paid much attention then. Now, however, he blushed as he realized that he was reluctant to pry his eyes away from Riley’s body and his stream, which was finally starting to die down.
Standing next to him, Riley noticed that Marco had froze and turned to face him, dick still in hand. Quickly, his attention was also drawn downwards. Then their gazes met, and they both realized where the other been looking just a few seconds ago. Marco awkwardly zipped up his pants as fast as he could, red with embarrassment as he realized that his underwear was feeling tight. He hastily turned away from Riley and rushed back towards the car, then waited for him to emerge from the woods.
Marco dreaded the thought of Riley’s return. Marco couldn’t wait for Riley to return. Both of these feelings were true in alternating moments.
Maybe Marco wasn’t sure what he wanted.
…
The old Toyota pulled up outside of a low-rise apartment building with a brick façade. The building had recently been renovated for seismic upgrades, but it still bore a distinct mid-century aesthetic. Marco liked its architecture, which was good, because this was where he lived.
Marco and Riley hadn’t said much during the short drive back to campus, but as Marco went to retrieve his backpack from the trunk, Riley stopped him.
“Hey, uh… thanks for helping out with the rocket today.”
“Yeah,” Marco said. “It’s not like I had anything else going on.”
Riley smiled. “I had a good time.”
Marco wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Luckily, after a moment, Riley spoke up again.
“I’m going to a concert in San Francisco with a friend next weekend. Maybe you’d like to tag along?”
“I’ll be there.”
Riley grinned and started the engine. “Have a great week, Marco.”
The car drove off, leaving Marco standing alone on the sidewalk. He looked up towards the building; from the street, it was just possible to see through the window into his apartment on the third floor. Marco just stood there for a minute before fishing his key out of his pocket and staring to climb the last few flights of stairs between him and home. As he climbed, multiple thoughts rattled through his brain, but eventually one rose to the forefront of his mind:
Looks like my boring summer in Rockridge just got interesting.
September 2022
Sam: hey Marco what’s up
Sam: how’s California
Marco: I got here a week ago and don’t really know anyone yet. Freshman orientation was kind of fun and also kind of a waste of time.
Sam: Yeah same at UT also
Sam: Still wish you were here in Austin
Marco: I told you before that I didn’t want to stay in Texas.
Sam: Yeah i know, just not sure why you changed your mind at the last minute about where to go to colleague
Sam: *college
Sam: I mean UT has a pretty good engineering program
Marco: I just didn’t want to stay in Texas.
Sam: Texas couldn’t be that bad, I mean it’s not like you’re gay or something
Sam: because that would be a good reason to leave Texas and go to California
Marco: Can’t talk now. I’m looking at the engineering student groups on campus.
Sam: oh you mean like SIAM?
Marco: What’s SIAM?
Sam: society for industrial and applied mathematics
Marco: We engineers like to have more fun than that. Math’s for nerds.
Marco: /s
Sam: pretty sure you’re also a nerd, Marco
Sam: and all you engineers use math to make things so you should *grovel before me*
Marco: Right now I’m looking at the Rockridge Solar Car racing team. I think this might be the one I join.
Marco: It would be kind of an electrical engineering-focused thing, which might be interesting.
Sam: so they build a solar car?
Marco: And they race it against a bunch of other schools.
Marco: Hold on.
Sam: hey
Marco: Oh, I never replied. Sorry.
Sam: how’s the solar car
Marco: I didn’t join.
Marco: I found a better team.
Sam: what do they do
Marco: They build rockets. They’re called SOAR. That’s the Student Organization for Aerospace and Rocketry.
Marco: Or maybe R is for Rockridge, I don’t know.
Marco: Anyway I’m going to be working on the recovery systems.
Sam: what’s recovery?
Marco: Parachutes and their associated deployment systems. Also in-flight events like stage separation.
Marco: I get to play with explosives
Sam: don’t get blown up
Marco: We’ll see.
…
July 2023
“Don’t get blown up,” Riley said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Marco replied. “I know what I’m doing.”
He and Riley stood behind a plexiglass blast wall, wearing hard hats and face shields. On the other side of the wall lay the hollow shell of a rocket, emptied of its motor and flight electronics. All that was inside was two parachutes, a pair of small explosive charges, and long wires snaking around a pressure bulkhead and outside the airframe. One end of the wires was connected to the explosives, and the other end was in Marco’s left hand.
In his right hand, there was a 9-volt battery.
Riley stood off to the side, pointing his phone towards the rocket. “We’re filming,” he said. “Ready when you are.”
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Marco shouted, and touched the terminals of the battery to the wires he was holding. With a bang and a puff of smoke, the rocket split in two, and the parachutes spilled out onto the ground.
Riley walked up to film a closer shot. “Looks like a successful test. We’re on track for a September launch.”
“Awesome. Let’s get this packed up and get back to Rockridge.”
…
SOAR, along with all of the other Rockridge student engineering teams, worked out of Alameda Field. Located on an island just south of Oakland, and a few miles away from the main Rockridge campus, it had started its life as a hastily-build Navy airfield during World War II. After the war, it had been passed around between different state and local government agencies until expansion at Oakland International Airport to the south forced its runways to close. With the polluted site too costly to redevelop, the airfield had been offered to NASA, then UC Berkeley, and then Stanford, none of whom were eager to take on the responsibility of maintaining decrepit hangars built on top of toxic landfill. Finally, Rockridge University bought the field, and its engineering students had been turning the windswept landscape and the creaky, leaky buildings into their playground ever since.
Alameda Field was pretty quiet in the summer. Off on the other end of the runway, Rockridge’s solar car team was slowly putting their new vehicle through its paces, but otherwise Marco and Riley were alone. The field was right on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, nestled among shipyards and railyards. In the distance, the skyscrapers of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge peaked through a layer of fog, but here in Oakland it was a sunny summer day.
Riley walked back to the SOAR hanger and reached for the doorknob. “Shit,” he muttered.
“What?”
Riley jiggled the knob. “The door’s locked.”
“I didn’t lock the door. Did you lock the door?”
“No. They keys are inside on the workbench.”
“These doors don’t lock themselves, do they?”
Riley shook his head. “They’re not supposed to, but all the buildings around here are falling apart.”
“Well, look on the bright side. If we can’t get in, then all of the black mold and asbestos in there can’t kill us.”
Riley laughed. “Right! Anyway, I don’t feel like trying to fix this right now. Let’s load up the rocket in my car and we can bring it back later after maintenance fixes the door.”
…
Thirty minutes later, Marco was starting to wish they’d been able to get into the hangar. Partially, it was because of the inconvenience of needing to store part of the rocket at home and bring it back to Alameda Field later. Also, he was worried that SOAR would somehow be blamed for breaking a lock that hadn’t been replaced since the 1940s.
However, his regrets were mostly because the hangar had a bathroom.
During the test preparations, Marco had drained nearly two water bottles. He didn’t trust the water in Alameda; he’d heard that sometime before the Navy abandoned the airfield, the ground had been contaminated with lead and other heavy metals. Visiting students were encouraged to bring enough water to last them through the day, and Marco had obeyed. It was like a math problem: The passage of time (several hours) and the number of bathroom trips he’d had (zero) produced the results:
The water had left the tap in Oakland.
He’d carried it to Alameda in his bottle.
The water had left the bottle in Alameda.
He was carrying the water back to Oakland in his bladder.
The water was threatening to leave his bladder at some point on the highway between Alameda and Oakland.
His saving grace was that Riley had quickly grown bored of the traffic jam that stretched off into the distance and had talked for a while about an upcoming SpaceX launch, which distracted Marco from his problem.
“…anyway, I think they’ll probably get it right eventually, but I still wouldn’t trust them to move past the satellite market for now,” Riley was saying. “There’s no way they’ll get their timeline to work, especially since they destroyed their launchpad in Texas during the last test.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marco said. “I think they got in trouble with the FAA.”
“Hey, when you’re back home do you ever go down to watch the SpaceX launches?”
Marco shook his head. “Too far. Remember, I live in El Paso, and they launch in Boca Chica. It would take thirteen hours of driving just to get there.”
“Jesus. Texas is fucking huge.”
“Yeah. I still can’t really get used to it.”
“What do you mean, get used to?”
“My family moved to El Paso in middle school. I never told you?”
Riley took a sip from his water bottle in the cupholder. “I don’t think so.”
“Huh. I thought I had. Anyway, I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My dad worked for the university, as an anthropologist studying Pueblo culture. Eventually he got really interested in pre-Columbian trade routes between Central America and the Colorado Plateau, so he wanted to spend some time closer to Mexico. Luckily, the University of Texas campus in El Paso was hiring, so the summer after eighth grade we packed up and moved south.”
“That sounds like it would have been rough.”
“I mean, kind of? I missed Albuquerque, but we still had a ton of family up there, so we got back a lot. And, you know, I’ve never been the kind of person who’s great at making friends, so it wasn’t like I was leaving behind a lot of people in Albuquerque I cared about. The real hard part was starting over with zero friends in El Paso.”
Marco took a deep breath. Why am I telling him this? Riley was his friend, sure, but Marco had always been reluctant to talk with his friends about the personal details of his life. He’d always considered it better to just talk about trivial items. At a few times in his life he’d wondered if maybe his few friendships would have felt more meaningful if he’d made more of an effort to engage emotionally, but it seemed less risky to just stay the course and talk about the little things. So why was he suddenly being so talkative now?
You idiot. Now Riley’s going to know you didn’t have any friends in high school. And who wants to talk to a friendless loser?
But Riley just leaned over in his seat, taking his eyes off the gridlocked traffic and looking directly at Marco. “Yeah, high school was rough for me too like that, with the pandemic and everything. It must have been way worse to be uprooted like that. I’m glad all that’s behind us and we can just make the most of where we’re at now.”
Marco blinked. He was expecting judgement, scorn, anything except a genuine emotional connection that had been returned with sincerity.
Another thing that he wasn’t expecting was that he didn’t have to pee as badly as he did a few minutes prior – he’d uncrossed his legs.
“Yeah. Well, to be honest, it was the little things in El Paso that were the hardest. It’s not too different to Albuquerque… It’s hotter, and there’s nowhere you can go to get out of the desert. Albuquerque had mountains. And obviously the main thing is that El Paso is in Texas, and I’ve told you before how I feel about that particular state government.”
Riley grinned. “If I recall, in addition to your legitimate complaints you also blamed the governor for getting you rejected from Caltech.”
“And I ended up at Rockridge instead, so don’t make fun of me. Anyway, the real thing is that I just felt a little out of place in El Paso. It’s weird, but… El Paso is more Mexican than New Mexico. So being Hispano, and having specific New Mexican heritage, and then coming down to Texas, it puts you in a weird in-between spot culturally.”
“How so?”
“Oh, it’s hard to explain. Just, you know, because of three centuries of history, and endless socioeconomic stuff since then, it just feels different. There’s a lot of culture shock when you’re going someplace where there’s a stronger dividing line between who is and isn’t Mexican. And, on a smaller note, Tex-Mex is not as good as New Mexican style cooking. Sometimes my family would drive north to Las Cruces just to get proper New Mexican food.”
“And what’s the difference?”
“That would also be too hard to explain to somebody who’s used to Nor-Cal slop.”
“Hey!”
Marco grinned mischievously. “Hey, I had a breakfast burrito last week with kale in it. I wouldn’t give that burrito to a dog.”
Riley laughed again. “Oh, man, I didn’t come here for a lecture. When is this traffic going to move?”
“Oh, so you’re crumbling under my vicious attacks of Cali-Mex food?”
“No, I just really need to pee.”
Marco’s smile vanished. “Oh.” His need had abated for now, but he was still anxious to get in front of a urinal. “Yeah, me too. Let me check my phone… looks like the traffic clears up right at the Rockridge exit.”
They were nearly there, but the highway was practically at a standstill. Cars inched forward, filling every bit of empty space between their bumpers; there were subway tracks in the median of the highway, and Riley watched as a train rumbled past. He really, really wished he was on it.
“I’ve never seen traffic this bad before,” Riley said. “I remember one time in senior year I was driving back to Santa Cruz and there was a bad wreck ahead of me.” He winced. “But since that was just a little mountain road I was just able to pull over and water a tree. No chance of that here.”
“What were you doing in San Jose?”
“I was going to a soccer game with my boyfriend.”
Marco perked up at that statement. “Wait, you had a boyfriend? I didn’t realize that you, I mean...”
“Yeah, we kind of just went our separate ways after graduation. He’s at Yale now.”
For some reason Marco felt very excited by this information.
“What about you?” Riley asked. “Any high school romance?”
“The exit is closed up ahead,” Marco abruptly replied.
“What?”
“The Rockridge exit. Is closed.” He pushed his knees together. “Godammit, I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.”
“Okay, don’t panic.”
“I say panic.”
Riley gripped the wheel. “Panic if you want, I’m getting us out of here.” He swerved the car into a gap and moved into the left lane. A few seconds later, they broke through the end of the jam and discovered that the backlog had been caused by a closed lane that had blocked off the Rockridge exit and choked the eastbound traffic on the highway down to two lanes. Riley slammed his foot down on the accelerator and weaved between slower cars as he moved back to the outside lane, veering towards the next exit.
They were high up in the hills now, probably over a mile from Rockridge. Marco pulled out his phone and pulled up a map, trying to figure out if it would be faster to get back on the highway or take surface roads back to campus. Looking up from his phone, he was dismayed to see that Riley had turned off the main road and started following signs for Temescal Recreation Area.
“What are we doing here?”
“Don’t worry,” Riley said, and eased the car into a parking spot next to some picnic tables. As soon as he cut off the ignition, he put his hands in his lap and started holding himself. Then he got out of the car, leaving Marco behind as he walked away from the road.
Marco anxiously looked around. He could barely sit still, the need to piss was so bad – what was Riley doing? After a moment’s hesitation, he unbuckled and set off in pursuit of his friend.
He caught up to Riley a few feet off the path. “Come on, I’m practically wetting myself. We need to get back to campus.”
“No, we don’t,” Riley said, and unbuttoned his pants. Marco froze and felt his heart accelerate as Riley’s hands worked their way down the zipper and pulled the fabric of his jeans aside. With his left hand he opened the fly on his boxers and with the other hand took aim at the trunk of a nearby eucalyptus tree.
A pale stream splashed against the bark and ran down into the dirt, where it trickled past dead leaves and Riley’s shoes. Riley leaned back and sighed.
“Aren’t you going to join me, Marco?”
Marco didn’t move. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…” He thought back to the Amtrak incident and being caught in the parking garage outside the train station. It had been hard enough to relax when he thought he was alone, but now Riley was right there. “Is that an invitation?” Marco asked, awkwardly, then blushed. You did not just say that out loud, he told himself.
Riley turned towards Marco slightly, giving him a clear view of the stream arcing towards the stream in a perfect parabola. He smiled a little and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe it is.”
Marco frantically looked around. There had to be a bathroom around somewhere! But he’d had so much to drink in Alameda, and he could hear Riley sighing contentedly, and he could hear Riley’s stream striking the ground-
There wasn’t time to find a bathroom. There wasn’t even time to find his own tree. Frantically, fumblingly, he darted next to Riley and unzipped his own pants. Soon, there were two golden streams splattering against the bark.
Marco and Riley stood about a foot apart. Each had a wide stance, and both their gazes were turned towards the point of contact between the tree and their streams. They both stood there for a moment, but then Marco redirected himself slightly and moved his stream up the tree. A second passed before Riley noticed, but then they both started laughing and trying to compete on height. Nearly twenty seconds passed and both of them were still going strong, alternately swinging their flows up to new heights on the tree and stepping back to compete on distance. In all the chaos their puddles merged and encroached on their shoes, but they didn’t mind. After spending nearly an hour cooped up in the car, dancing around like idiots in the woods felt almost as good as pissing itself.
Despite starting later, Marco finished up first. He shook himself off and started to tuck himself away, but then his eyes caught Riley’s stream and for the first time his gaze went up to the source. He’d only caught brief glances of other guys’ cocks in the locker room in high school, and he hadn’t paid much attention then. Now, however, he blushed as he realized that he was reluctant to pry his eyes away from Riley’s body and his stream, which was finally starting to die down.
Standing next to him, Riley noticed that Marco had froze and turned to face him, dick still in hand. Quickly, his attention was also drawn downwards. Then their gazes met, and they both realized where the other been looking just a few seconds ago. Marco awkwardly zipped up his pants as fast as he could, red with embarrassment as he realized that his underwear was feeling tight. He hastily turned away from Riley and rushed back towards the car, then waited for him to emerge from the woods.
Marco dreaded the thought of Riley’s return. Marco couldn’t wait for Riley to return. Both of these feelings were true in alternating moments.
Maybe Marco wasn’t sure what he wanted.
…
The old Toyota pulled up outside of a low-rise apartment building with a brick façade. The building had recently been renovated for seismic upgrades, but it still bore a distinct mid-century aesthetic. Marco liked its architecture, which was good, because this was where he lived.
Marco and Riley hadn’t said much during the short drive back to campus, but as Marco went to retrieve his backpack from the trunk, Riley stopped him.
“Hey, uh… thanks for helping out with the rocket today.”
“Yeah,” Marco said. “It’s not like I had anything else going on.”
Riley smiled. “I had a good time.”
Marco wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Luckily, after a moment, Riley spoke up again.
“I’m going to a concert in San Francisco with a friend next weekend. Maybe you’d like to tag along?”
“I’ll be there.”
Riley grinned and started the engine. “Have a great week, Marco.”
The car drove off, leaving Marco standing alone on the sidewalk. He looked up towards the building; from the street, it was just possible to see through the window into his apartment on the third floor. Marco just stood there for a minute before fishing his key out of his pocket and staring to climb the last few flights of stairs between him and home. As he climbed, multiple thoughts rattled through his brain, but eventually one rose to the forefront of his mind:
Looks like my boring summer in Rockridge just got interesting.
-
Fred
- Site Staff
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- Joined: 20 Sep 2016, 12:37
Re: Golden State, chapters 1 & 3 (fiction)
Great post! I like stories with happy endings, and it looks like Marco has some exciting experiences in his future!