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

The two of us quietly got out of bed, both completely naked, and as quietly as possible crept out of the room to the adjoining living room area—not really a separate room but at least a separate area.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Kyle asked.

“How the hell should I know?” I complained.

“Well, I don’t know how he got here!”

“Well, neither do I!”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Give me a minute,” I said as I paced a little bit, thinking. “It’s too early to go out. We could turn on all the lights and try to wake him up as we move around to shower and get dressed. Or we could shower and get dressed and then sit out here until a more reasonable hour to wake him up. I mean, it is only 4:15 in the freaking morning!”

“We would be bad hosts if we woke him up so early,” Kyle said.

“Bad hosts? Did you invite him into our bed?” I asked.

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“Neither did I. So I see no overwhelming need to be super considerate to the naked stranger in our bed.”

Kyle had to agree that I made a good argument. “Okay. Let’s shower and get dressed and then see about waking him up to find out what happened here last night.”

“Deal.” We quietly made our way together into the shower just off the bedroom and went through our morning routine, shaving, showering, brushing teeth, fine-tuning the hair (we were gay, after all). Our clothes were in the bedroom of the suite, so to get dressed, we had to go into the bedroom.

We rummaged around a bit in the dark to find something to put on, both slightly reluctant to actually wake up Mano. Finally, though, I had had enough. I turned on one light in the room, gave it a minute, turned on another light in the room, and then started moving around, not particularly quiet.

But still our “guest” slept on. Finally Kyle stepped up to the bed, leaned down, touched Mano’s bare shoulder—he really was an attractive man—and gently shook him, trying to wake him up. But the man slept on undisturbed.

Kyle tried again, a bit more forcefully. Then again. By that point I was getting impatient, so I tried a different approach—I jumped on the bed and yelled, “Mano! Haul your lazy ass out of that bed, now!”

That worked. The man jerked awake with a start.

“What?” he asked groggily. He rubbed his face as if to wipe away the sleep from his eyes, then tried again. He looked at me on one side and Kyle on the other. “Hey, guys. Morning.” He looked around. “Where are we?”

“Our room,” I answered.

“Oh, right.”

“What happened last night, Mano?”

“You don’t remember? No, I guess you wouldn’t. You were both pretty well sloshed. Jake, my roommate—you remember Jake from the bar downstairs—Jake asked me to help get you back here. He helped me haul you upstairs. He didn’t think you’d be able to make it on your own. He was probably right.

“We got you back up here, but he had to get back downstairs to work. He was really worried that you two were going to have an accident. You kept trying to go out onto the balcony and kept leaning over. I thought the man was going to have a heart attack. He asked me to stay here with you and make sure that you both were okay. I told him I would. I finally got the two of you settled down and got you into bed—not easy, I might add—and then waited for you to get to sleep.

“I was gonna sleep out on the sofa, but I couldn’t find a blanket or a pillow, and I don’t like being cold at night. I figured you could let me share your bed—it was the least you could do since you had totally disrupted my evening. I don’t know who it was going to be, but I was intending to get laid last night.”

“I’m so sorry we got in the way of your sexual liaison with the man of your dreams,” I told him. “We really are grateful you took care of us and made sure we were safe last night. I can see why Jake would have been worried. I would have been worried too if I hadn’t been totally blitzed.”

“Oh, honey, you were beyond blitzed. You were both so totally sloshed you didn’t even know your own names.”

“Well, Jake shouldn’t have kept the mai tais coming all night long. Those things crept up on us.”

“Yes, they can do that. And he does make a killer mai tai. I’ve gotten totally smashed on them several times. It tastes like you’re drinking fruit juice, and you drink way more than you really should.”

Before either of us could object, Mano threw back the covers of the bed and rose to his feet—utterly and completely naked. Kyle and I both wanted to be upset, but at the same time, the more primitive parts of our male brains were sending stronger signals—hot! And after all, we had seen pretty much the same thing earlier in the afternoon when the man had stood in the bar in his skimpy Speedo swimming suit. That little bit of cloth really didn’t do much to cover up what was between his legs.

We were quiet while we watched the man walk to the bathroom. He didn’t bother to close the door. A few seconds later, we heard the unmistakable sounds of a man peeing. When he was finished, he walked back into the room, completely comfortable, as if he walked naked in front of strangers all the time—well, actually, he basically did that all day long, given the costume he wore for his work.

He crawled back into bed and pulled the covers back up. “Why did you wake me up so early? Do you know the sun isn’t even up yet? I need more sleep.”

“Sorry. We were just a little startled and confused,”