Cedric Abel

Cedric Abel.

How would I describe him? 

Arrogant, exaggerated sense of machismo, and wholly spoiled. Taught all his life that he could do whatever he wanted, Cedric lounged himself lazily upon everything and everyone. He was the most lethargic slob and slacker I had ever met. But what I hated most about him was his stubborn sense of pride. He acted however he wanted because he assumed someone else would solve the world’s problems for him. Places, objects, people–he believed that if it existed, he owned it. I couldn’t help but thank the powers above that he didn’t own me.

So how did I come across Cedric Abel? It was a stupid random apartment assignment for grad school. Both of us had been accepted for full rides (which I now find as insane in his circumstances knowing he never completed any assignments), him for Business Management and myself for Organic Chemistry. One of the school’s rules however was that we had to live on campus for free housing, an area I didn’t have a problem with until I’d met my roommate. I just wished I could meet whoever had set me up with this barnyard prick. Cedric was everything that I held myself not to be. Rude, entitled, and aggressive. I just wanted to slide through college and start my career quickly, but living with Cedric proved that to be quite difficult.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked. I had found Cedric sitting in the living room in just his underwear, his full body sprawled across the entire couch. His body odor was prominent from yards away. I felt my lips twitch angrily as he purposefully groped himself enough to let a few droplets of pre slide down onto the cushion.

“Dude, take a pill!” Cedric sneered. “I have the day off. I’m just doin’ what any man does.”

“‘Man’?” I shot back. “You’re just a boy who doesn’t know how to clean up his own filth!”

“You oughta learn to respect me bro.” I held back an urging ambition to punch the kid before he continued. “I think it’s time you learn to chill out and come to my point of view. I am acting like a man of the house, and you’re whining like a boy.”

“You privileged little-”

My cuss word was conveniently cut off by the sound of Cedric letting a huge fart rip on the couch. Furious, I stormed off to my room to try and distract myself with homework. It had only been a few weeks and yet I’d felt like I’d been living with this intolerable disaster for months. I just hoped that if I dug into inorganic compounds I’d be able to escape reality for a while.

— —

After an hour or two, I heard a faint noise come from the living room. It didn’t strike me at first, but moments later I heard it again. And again. And soon, I realized it was a string of noises. A melody almost. It truly didn’t captivate me that much, but I decided that it was best to take a break from my work anyway. Quietly, I got up and followed the tune. I was eventually brought to Cedric back on the couch in the exact same position as before, only this time with earbuds in.

“What…” I started awkwardly, never having had a normal conversation with my roommate before. “What are you listening to?”

Cedric, amused, paused the track and took an earbud out. “Sorry, what?”

“You were playing your music so loud I could hear it. I was just curious what the song was.”

“Oh,” he looked at his phone. “It’s a song by Men II Boyz.”

“Do you mean Boyz II Men?” I clarified, referring to the 90’s boy band.

“No, it’s a different group,” Cedric replied nonchalantly. “Men II Boyz is far more underground and brand new. They’ve only released this one song so far.”

“Oh,” I responded softly.

“Do you want me to send you the song?”

“Uh…sure. Thanks.”

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Instantly, I grabbed it and followed the link Cedric had sent me. It brought me to a YouTube video called “Track 1” that was over five hours in length.

“Woah!” I shouted, surprised. “Why is it so long?”

“Oh yeah that.” Cedric seemed to be getting bored of me. “The song is only a few minutes. The rest is just the band talking and giving a background on the production.”

“But still, I mean that’s…” I trailed off, noticing Cedric had decided to forget about me and the conversation. Realizing that was that, I stumbled back to my room and shut the door. I took a seat back at my desk and decided to keep plugging away at my homework. Earbuds in, I pushed play on my phone and began calculating equations.

The song started out slow with a soft background of piano and violins. The melody I had picked up earlier immediately started swinging in, sweeping chords filling my ears pleasantly. I couldn’t help but applaud the band. Sure, their name was awful and probably would cause a flurry of lawsuits, but they did know how to make music. At least an orchestral entrance.

Then the lyrics came in, the male voices swooning with a silky undertone.

“Experience is always owned by a man, something a boy wouldn’t understand.”

I’d never really been one to interpret lyrics, I was always more focused on the melody and notes. And if the orchestrations before hadn’t lured me in, these harmonies surely did the trick. I continued doing my homework, letting the music envelop me.

“Experience is hard to find and collect, therefore a man has much intellect.”

“Experience fuels power and reputation, therefore a boy must obey without hesitation.”

I took a deep breath, finding the current problem a little difficult and moving to the next. This assignment wasn’t due for a while, so I could always come back to the question later.

“Maturity is always found in a man, something a boy couldn’t comprehend.”

The orchestra started to fade out on this next verse, with just the men’s voices gliding through my earbuds right to my brain. 

“Maturity is a hardship to contain, therefore a man must have a boy to constrain.”

“Maturity is found only in men, therefore a boy is insignificant.”

For some reason, the next question was also a little too difficult for me to figure out at that exact moment. Cedric said the song was only a few minutes long, so once it was over I would dive back in. Speaking of Cedric, I would have to thank him later for introducing me to this song.

Although I hadn’t realized it before, I noticed that my body was slowly falling asleep. I wasn’t bored of the song or tired, but I just felt so relaxed listening to the men sing that I couldn’t help but be calm. It was almost hypnotic in a way. 

“Intelligence is only possessed by a man, something a boy will never underhand.”

Wait, did that last line say that a boy will never be smart and never want to be smart? The lyrics were becoming a little too…lyrical…for me to understand. I quietly muttered the words to myself over and over again, trying to comprehend what the men were trying to say.

“Intelligence is scary and hard, therefore a man must be kept in high regard.”

“Intelligence is no silly little toy, therefore no dignity shall be given to a boy.”

The last two lines didn’t make a lot of sense to me either, but luckily the first verse came back around as the song started to repeat itself. I was too tired to check my phone and see how long I had been listening, but I also didn’t mind enough to do anything about it. I had to figure out what Men II Boyz was trying to tell me. As the lyrics swung in again, I continued to repeat them to myself out loud. With the music playing through my earbuds, the lyrics alone probably sounded like some silly chant.

The second time around helped me make sense of some lines, but I wasn’t quite clear on the whole picture. Luckily for me, the song repeated itself again, the words almost engraving themselves into my memory. It was almost like the men just kept singing the same thing over and over again until I got the message. Almost as if they were waiting for me before moving on. I laid back in my chair and fully succumbed to the music, ready to surrender myself completely in order to understand what Men II Boyz was trying to tell me through their lyrics.

Eventually, I did start to comprehend what the music was telling me. Men have experience, maturity, and intellect. Boys don’t, so they are completely inferior to men. Almost as if it was marking my progress, the orchestra moved up a half-step, bringing the band into a new key.

“Respect should always be given to a man, something a boy shouldn’t demand.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at that last line. My mind was way too dirty for its own good.

“Respect is earned by birth and place, therefore a man deserves all space.”

“Respect is given by those around, therefore a boy must always bend down.”

Although the lyrics made more sense to me this time around, I still said them out loud to myself. It was almost as if I was coding it into my own brain.

“Masculinity is what defines a man, something a boy would never countermand.”

That last word caught me off guard. It seemed like the band was really grasping at strings to make that last line rhyme, but I also hated to admit that I didn’t know what the word truly meant.

“Masculinity is something given not gained, therefore a man cannot be trained.”

“Masculinity is not provided for all, therefore a boy will never be as tall.”

I found that latter line extremely poetic. The use of a metaphor for literal height to describe a boy’s physical and mental inferiority was very smart on the band’s part. 

“Adoration is deserved for a man, something a boy will do without command.”

On its own accord, my hand dropped the pencil and moved its way down to my shorts. Slowly, it pushed itself under the layers of fabric and began groping my pouch. I should’ve been scared, confused, or at least containing some heightened emotion. But instead I smiled wearily, listening pleasantly to the men serenading me.

“Adoration is meant for those of respect, therefore a man is always the subject.”

“Adoration means submission and unending love, therefore a boy makes a man all he can think of.”

Still fondling myself, I felt my mind fill with the words the band was whispering to me. Images began to accompany, but not of the women I was used to. In fact, none of the images were of women at all. Although I had identified as straight since puberty, I could only picture men. And the thought was making me hard–real pulsing, throbbing, every-other-adjective-to-describe-hard hard.

But I couldn’t figure out which men were the men the song was referring to and which were the boys meant to obey. Thankfully, the last three verses repeated themselves just like the previous had. As I took the lyrics in and repeated them out loud, clearer pictures began to form in my mind. I comprehended the statements quicker than before, and I only realized this because the melody jumped another half-step, bringing the men up another key.

“You are a boy, never have been a man.”

The orchestra and melody had completely dropped out. In fact, the line wasn’t even sung. It was just a single voice.

“You are a boy, never have been a man.”

A second voice joined in, repeating the line with the other. They repeated it again, with the third member of the band sliding it into my ear as well. Finally the fourth joined, and I too began muttering it to myself.

“You are a boy, never have been a man.”

“You are a boy, meant to serve every man.”

The band split into two, reciting the lines over one another in an incomprehensible pattern. I tried my best to follow them, but the words couldn’t form in my mouth. In fact, they couldn’t even form in my brain. It got even worse when the pairs divided themselves, with all four men repeating the same two lines at different tempos, different dynamics, and different tones. I sat there, eyes glazed over and mouth wide open, surrendering to the track. I didn’t even notice when one of my earbuds was removed, or when a hot breath entered my ears with the final lyric.

“You are a boy, Cedric Abel is a man.”

— —

Cedric Abel.

How would I describe him?

Adonis, healthy sense of machismo, and wholly superior. Taught correctly all his life that he could do whatever he wanted, Cedric graciously offered himself upon everything and everyone. He was the most extraordinary man and Master I had ever met. But what I loved most about him was his befitting sense of pride. He acted however he wanted because he knew someone else would solve the world’s problems for him. Places, objects, people–he realized that if it existed, he owned it. I couldn’t help but thank the powers above that he owned me.

“You know it couldn’t have been easier to make you my slave.”

I looked up and smiled, happy to make my Master’s job easier for him.

“I can’t believe you fell so easily for that trap. I obviously wasn’t listening to that track; there was no way my music would have been so loud for you to hear it from my earbuds, even with your door closed!”

Cedric then spat on me, the sticky wad landing in my hair. He knew I wasn’t going to wash it off. It was another badge of honor after all. I had earned so many over my first week as his boy.

“Doesn’t matter anyway, I knew you were an idiot from the start. Just had to show you for yourself.”

I watched from below as he grabbed a set of keys and put on a pair of his shoes. The white sneakers to be exact, one of my favorites. The way they reeked after a day of Cedric walking around campus was intoxicating. Rightfully so knowing it came from his heavenly feet.

“Your ex-girlfriend’s been asking about you lately by the way, wondering if I could give her any explanation about your sudden disposal of her. I just reminded her of what a pathetic loser you are. Wouldn’t you agree with that?”

I nodded eagerly, knowing the only person I could ever want was right in front of me. He’d shown me that, and I hoped someday he’d show me other things as well. For example, how I could please him sexually.

“I got a date tonight, one that you’ll thankfully be paying for.” He flashed me the credit card I had given him without complaint. Standing directly above me now, I had a perfect view of his immaculate figure. “I want to bring her home at the end of the night. I got a little messy around the toilet so you need to clean that up. My laundry’s also looking like it needs your special tongue treatment, especially the underwear on both ends.”

I smiled gleefully, so excited and thankful for all of the chores ahead of me.

“If you get both of those done by the time I get home, maybe I’ll let you drink from one of my used condoms.” 

Smirking with his just dominance, my Master popped the middle finger. He then lifted up his left leg and let a juicy fart rip out right onto my face.

“You’re worth nothing, boy.” 

He was right, because Cedric Abel was worth everything.