Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees by Michael Murphy (namjoon book recommendations txt) 📕

“Hey, what the world needs is more love.”

“But only if it comes with semen, right?”

“Doesn’t it always?”

Kyle finally stopped blushing and started participating a bit more in the conversation.

The bartender had refilled our mai tais. Kyle quickly drained most of his glass. I explained, “He’s had a stressful day.”

“Only once you started talking,” Kyle joked.

“He hangs on my every word. He saved a guy’s life on the flight in today,” I said proudly.

Both Mano and the bartender, whose name we later learned was Jake, nodded and looked inquiringly at Kyle.

“Just a guy who had a heart attack in flight.”

“And how did you save him?” Mano asked.

“He’s an emergency physician. He saves lives every day.”

“Really?” Mano said. “I want to go to medical school too. I’m working on my undergrad degree in biology at the moment.”

“While he works on his tan and his true mission of spreading love to all mankind.”

“Shut up. Why do I keep you around?”

“It’s me who keeps you around. And it’s because you love and adore me.”

“Do you know where you want to go yet?” Kyle asked.

“I wanted to go to Georgetown originally, but since living here in Hawaii, I don’t think I could go back east and deal with the snow and the cold again. Where did you go to med school?”

“Harvard,” Kyle answered simply.

“That’s an awesome school,” Mano said enthusiastically. “But I don’t think I’d ever get in there. It’s so fucking competitive. They get tons of applications for every opening they have. I’m not that good. There’s nothing wrong with me, but I’m just not in the top-top-notch caliber that would get in there.”

“What’s the med school like here on Oahu?”

“I’m hearing good things about it.”

“Do you want to specialize, or are you interested in general internal medicine?”

“I have no freaking idea,” Mano answered very honestly. “And even if I did, I’d probably change my mind seven times before I finished with med school.”

“Fair enough,” Kyle answered.

“You said, but I can’t remember—what kind of medicine do you practice?”

“Emergency medicine. I’m an ER doc.”

“That probably gives you a taste of all different kinds of medicine.”

“Oh, yeah. In the course of one day, you can have an ingrown toenail, the victims of a drive-by shooting, a schizophrenic patient who went off their meds, a heart attack, and a brain aneurism—all before lunchtime of a busy day.”

“I can’t wait to get there,” Mano said. It was obvious that the hot young man was enthusiastic. Since I had not known Kyle at that age, I could only imagine that he had been as enthusiastic a half dozen years before when he entered medical school. “Do you have any regrets?”

“Only that I’m in debt up to my nipples to pay for it.”

“And notice that he’s tall, so his nipples are high,” I tossed in.

“You should know—you’ve had your tongue on them enough times.”

“I’m an authority, but I’m always interested in gathering fresh data,” I said to Kyle with a truly lascivious smile.

Jake good-naturedly warned Mano, “Stand back. I think they’re about to hump.”

“Bite me!” I told Jake.

“No. That’s why you keep him around,” he said, gesturing toward Kyle.

Before either of us realized what was happening to us, we had become absolutely, totally, completely, 100 percent blitzed on a combination of Jake’s mai tais and our lack of adequate food to buffer the alcohol. I have absolutely no idea how many of the things we consumed. By the time we even figured out that we should slow down—well, no, neither of us ever actually fully understood that fact until much later. Well, at least until the next day. Had we realized it at the time, well, read on.

Apparently, at some point later in the evening (I was there but don’t ask me to attest to this), Jake ordered his roommate, “Mano, help me get these guys upstairs to their room, would you?” when he became worried we were going to fall off our stools and hurt ourselves.

Jake asked a coworker to cover for him for ten minutes and he and Mano together wrestled the two of us off our barstools and out of the bar. Waiting for the elevator was apparently difficult because we were swaying a fair amount and Kyle was a big tree to fall over. Mano kept a firm grip on Kyle’s waist.

Chapter 22

THE next morning I was the first to wake up at about 4:10 a.m. Time change really was a killer on the human body, with the first day often being the worst. As I stretched I noticed that the room was mostly dark—no sun yet, but there was abundant artificial light coming into the room through the open curtains at the balcony doors.

I looked to my right and saw Kyle sleeping like a baby. Feeling the need to pee, I turned to my left to get out of bed but froze midmotion. There is someone else in our bed! Oh, fuck! There is someone else in bed with us! Oh, fuck, Mano is in our bed! Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! What the hell happened last night? Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! God, I hope we didn’t fuck!

Sitting up in bed, trying very hard not to wake Mano, I leaned over and tried to wake Kyle up. Thinking quickly, I leaned over and put my hand over his mouth so that he didn’t wake up, say something, and wake up our unexpected visitor.

My hand firmly in place over his mouth, I shook Kyle vigorously and whispered, “Kyle! Kyle! Wake up! Now!”

Sensing that something unusual was up, he woke up, startled by the hand across his mouth. I used my other hand to hold a finger up to my lips to give the universal symbol of “Quiet!” When I had his nodded approval, I removed my hand and pointed at Mano.

Kyle wasn’t any more prepared to find another man in our bed, especially Mano, than I had been. “Fuck!” he said loudly. Thankfully, though, Mano never stirred.

I gestured for Kyle to shut up.