The Ballad of Jaxon Bronstein

I first met Jaxon Bronstein a year ago; it was the night before he graduated high school. He was nineteen, and as he walked into the pizzeria where I work, I couldn't help but appreciate him - visually. He was tall - with dark brown eyes, a big nose, and cute, textured hair. Sure, his teeth were yellower than I'd have preferred, I could tell it was from smoking rather than lack of dental hygiene. He had come in to get breadsticks - and see my coworker, Mariana; once I told her that I thought Jaxon was hot, she let him know. He didn't seem totally uncomfortable with it, but he also didn't give me any green flags.

We became Snapchat friends - I got his username from Mariana - and it didn't take long before he was my top friend. I should have been put off when his snaps revealed that he listened to Christian rock - on purpose - and was almost always too high to function, but aside from his looks - I am really into his geeky features - I felt a kindred soul - in a way - with Jaxon Bronstein. It seemed like he didn't have a great relationship with either of his parents - he mentioned how much he hated his mother - even worse, it looked as though he didn't have any friends; he called Mariana his best friend even though she admitted to me that she couldn't stand him, just used him for his weed pen. Maybe we were just two weirdoes who had found a safe-ish space with one another.

Over the course of that summer, he became a regular customer. At first, it was obvious that he was mainly coming because he wanted Mariana, but the more she avoided him and flat out ignored him, the more he started to glom onto me. I started taking him shopping with me when I wanted company; we even went to see the live action How to Train Your Dragon together. He didn't seem remotely uncomfortable going in public with me while I was wearing my Givenchy diamonds, silk Versace shirts, and had my face done up with sparkly blue eye shadow, eyeliner and mascara, and a thick coating of lip gloss on. I'm sure that anyone who saw us together assumed we were a couple - and that Jaxon was 'the guy' in the relationship.

As Jaxon became more comfortable with me, he opened up about his life a little bit more. He had been dating a girl for about a year when she cheated on him - and left him for the other guy. As much as I could sympathize with and understand how hard that could be for anyone, let alone a guy who clearly didn't have a lot of friends, what made it even worse was that Jaxon and his ex-still worked at the same store, and his ex's new boyfriend came to see her often. I can't imagine having that rubbed in my face day after day. Jaxon didn't talk about it often, but when he brought it up, he divulged a little bit more information each time. He showed me pictures of the holes he'd punched in his bedroom ceiling, angry and hurt because of his ex's betrayal.

Jaxon lived a few blocks from me, in a house he shared with his father, his stepmom, his stepbrother, and a few assorted semi-permanent housemates. Jaxon's father used to order a lot when he was still married to Jaxon's mom but stopped once they got divorced. Through Jaxon I learned that his father was a bus driver for Metro, a pastor at a church, and the owner and operator of a small shipping product company; he was also proficient in martial arts. It had always appeared to me when Jaxon's dad and future stepmom started coming in to get movies together - while both still married - that they were having an affair, which, in a small town like Pinconning, wouldn't be a secret for long. Jaxon hasn't confirmed or denied that his dad and Ronda were having an affair, but at the end of the day, it isn't my business, I just love the hypocrisy of overly religious people.

One late afternoon when I was driving Jaxon and I to Bay City to go shopping, he started complaining about how his dick hurt. He said that he hadn't done anything sexual in over a year - since his ex had dumped him - and was going to have to take a break from jerking off, that he was doing it too often. When I asked him why his penis was bloody and sore, he confessed that he had masturbated eighteen times in day; whether that was a usual occurrence or a one-off, I still can't be sure, but I did know that that was insanely excessive. Even as a teenager, the most I'd ever masturbated was maybe four or five times in a day - eighteen times? Yikes!

Keeping my eyes on the road, I said, "You know, if you were smart, you'd find yourself a gay friend who was willing to suck your dick for you when you were horny, then you wouldn't have to jerk off. You wouldn't have to do anything except lay there and enjoy it."

I cast a quick side-long glance at Jaxon in the passenger seat: he was smirking. He was definitely getting what I was putting down. I wasn't brave enough to make any kind of move without him fully making it obvious that he wanted it, so I returned my focus to the road and filed that one away for future reflection. On another car ride to Bay City, Jaxon told me that his member was seven inches long - he'd measured it. A seven-inch penis is perfect for me, though I couldn't help but wonder why he had felt the need to divulge that information to me when I had made it - I thought - plainly obvious that while I considered him a friend, I would happily blur the lines between friend and lover if he consented. As far as I was concerned, he was almost twenty and had graduated from high school, so any inappropriateness about me pursuing him was null and void.

Through Mariana, I learned that Jaxon didn't really have any friends, that he was always the 'weird kid' at school that everyone avoided. While I thought Jaxon was, in fact, weird, I felt like he was weird in the good way, not in the Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy kind of way. Mariana told me that once a few years previously, Jaxon had been at the park with her friend Lily and was pushing her on the swing. When Lily told Jaxon that she was good, that he could stop pushing her, he continued. I don't believe that Lily would lie - or exaggerate - but I don't want to think about Jaxon making a girl = especially one four years younger than him - uncomfortable like that.

I still haven't gotten to take care of Jaxon Bronstein's 'little' problem, but I do see him several times a week - it's not uncommon for him to come in for breadsticks at least four times a week, though he has been known to stop in all six days we're open. Sometimes he has me deliver the breadsticks since he doesn't have a car. I often tease him about how unhealthy his diet of breadsticks is and ask if he's autistic - he laughs it off and insists that he just really likes breadsticks. He likes them so much, in fact, that before he left town for a two-and-a-half-day trip with his older brothers and their wives, he'd ordered eleven orders of breadsticks to take along - now that's dedication!

Time will tell if he will let me help him out; in the year that I've known him, he's become far less religious - he no longer listens to Christian rock, nor does he attend his father's church regularly; I got the impression that one obstacle in my way was his religious beliefs. He's currently still my number one friend on Snapchat, which says a lot, because I still talk to Zane frequently as well as my regular roster of gays - and Mariana. To be clear, I don't think that I have romantic feelings for Jaxon Bronstein; I don't want to date him, I don't think I would ever want to date him, but I do find him attractive and I wouldn't mind a friends with benefits situation with him if he'd allow it.