Nice little tail

Wild!” howled Lucy Cadaver from behind the gilt rim of an Italianate mask. She sauntered over to Will Gray, smiling and nudging aside a hundred or so students. “Super Man indeed!”

“I’m Wonder Man,” said Will, eyeing the beer garden crowd. “They’re totally different.”

“I’m sure.”

“Why am I here?” whinnied Will. “How can I drink before it’s even dark out?” Standing along the length of windows, this crowd was unfortunately visible in late afternoon sunlight. Used to brunette lighting and the helpful mask of inebriation, Will balked now at the thought of socializing under such translucent circumstances.

“Beer gardens build community,” cajoled Lucy, handing him the lager she’d stolen from a passerby. “Besides, you haven’t been laid in eons. We’re all sick of the suspense. You croon around campus like Don Juan trapped in a Nancy Drew.”

“There’s nothing here for me.” He rolled his own eyes at that, before Lucy could bother, and revised his despair: “It’s unwise to fall in love when everyone’s in costume.”

“What about the tiger?” asked Lucy, blindly, and pushed Will onto the patio.

The tiger-holding a clove cigarette in one smartly turned paw-was attractive.

After a five minute charade of mutual non-recognition, the sweet light of dusk shivered around them and the tiger wordlessly passed Will his cigarette. There was something incalculably funny about a tiger passing a cigarette, and Will keeled over. He chugged the end of his beer, snorting.

But the tiger, arms crossed jauntily across his white tufted chest, was set on remaining solemn. “Are you into plushie sex?” he asked. By his tone and the seriousness in his eyes, he might have been asking whether Will had found Jesus.

Will was suddenly fascinated by his own shoes. Where had Lucy gone? “I’m not sure,” he edged. “I’ve never”

“Never made it with a tiger?” A Machiavellian grin turned up the whiskered lips. “Well I’ve never made it with Wonder Man.”

“No one knows Wonder Man.”

Nodding distractedly, the tiger purred once more. And went for the jugular: “I like the way your package sits in hero tights. Kind of a leaner, aren’t you?”

When Will said nothing back (what could be said to such leaden boldness?), the tiger extended a costumed arm for inspection. “Feel,” he offered. “It’s soft.”

And it was. Especially here, thought Will, higher up. This arm, the bulb of muscle blooming under curious touch. Will’s mouth moved as if to speak, but mutely.

He inhaled a large gulp, like a swimmer up for air. And the sky, now a damask rose, signalled the romantic onset of dusk.

The tiger bent a little, to speak in Will’s ear. “Purrrr,” went the tiger.

“You’re trying to seduce me,” observed Will. “I’ll not be seduced by a boy in a Tigger outfit.”

The tiger head cocked 10 degrees off centre, as though to express animal confusion at human words, and Will was frozen by a chocolate gaze.

“Purr,” replied Will, setting his drink down carefully.

The tiger maintained a suave confidence, crushing his cigarette underfoot, extending his paw to Will. He led Wonder Man across the crowded dance floor, out the door, and over to Gage Towers and a tiny sanctuary of a dorm room. There were tiger posters.

“Tell me I’m a good tiger,” begged the beast as the bedroom door swung shut. Now he snapped at Will’s hard-beating neck, pulled Will’s hand into the (virginal?) fleece of the underbelly.

“Good tiger,” demurred Will, tentatively discovering a zipper. “I think I like plushie,” he needlessly said, as though to confirm aloud what he had embarked on. From within the cotton folds of costume, an orange and black striped cock emerged. Will cradled the member in nervous anticipation.

“It’s non-toxic paint,” cooed Tiger. “Don’t worry. Rub my belly.”

Will did. Hard muscle rolled beneath the costume-marble under velvet. “Pull down your tights.” Here Will hesitated. Would he really fuck a random animal? Were there no walls anymore? The metaphoric qualities just seemed to obvious. But what were they again? Will’s mind was a mess of competing messages. As his own body dropped off clothing, it seemed the tiger was more and more naked, too. But none of the costume dropped away.

No time for such lollygagging in theory, though. The tiger had Will on his front, was tugging ferociously at the patch of hair above Will’s ass. “Nice little tail,” murmured the tiger.

“I call it my soul patch,” gurgled Will with bestial pleasure.

And Will, Wonder Man no more, was now gripping the sheets on all fours, growling with the best of them. “I do like plushie,” he asserted to the darkness of the dorm. “I do, I do, I do.”

“Who are you?” demanded Will in the morning, stretching lazily, fumbling into his jeans.

A boy-pale, annoyed, clammy-looked up from Saturday morning cartoons. He looked at Will blankly and said, “Oh, fuck off.”

The sky above Gage Towers was still half red with morning, or night, and a fresh wind from the ocean played around in the higher branches outside. Will zipped a jacket over his torn and cum-stained costume. “That’s right,” he said, and walked on.