“Uh huh,” I muttered.

“So… I will pay you good money to follow this kid around a little bit and find a nice opportunity to proposition him and report to me what happened. You have the weekend to make it happen. Two thousand dollars.”

This was a great deal, and we were already half an hour outside of Milwaukee, so what the hell?

“Alright, I’m in.”

Two Days Before the End of Daylight Saving Time

I hate college bars. The smell of spilled cheap beer, the chanting, the cocky swagger of the college boys, the drunken messes of the girls and the belting out of “Don’t Stop Believin.” It’s all so depressing to me. It’s like geese getting spoiled and fattened before their eventual slaughter.

But hey, at least I was getting paid four figures to simply try and hook up with a decent-looking guy. My customers usually looked worse than Christopher did.

It was barely 10 and I already my eye on my target – Bryce Miller. Good looking, but in a cliché Midwestern blonde jock way, Bryce looked a bit like the character Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell. He acted like him too – cocky, but friendly.

I locked eyes with him a few times already in the 20 minutes or so both of us had been at the bar. He didn’t seem to give my glances much thought though.

I spent the night casually pretending to hit on girls as not to draw attention to myself by being the lone guy at the bar while keeping an eye on Bryce all the while. He was friendly with girls throughout the night, even more friendly with his guy friends, but that meant nothing to masculine college guys, especially frat guys. Sometimes playing grab ass with your buddies was actually a statement of heterosexuality.

The night was starting to wind down and the fact a good-looking guy like Bryce had yet to lock onto one of the many wasted ladies gave me at least some inkling that maybe his dad actually wasn’t crazy. The good news was one of the girls I had struck up a conversation with at the bar ended up being part of a group of girls who was hanging out with Bryce’s crew of guys. Drunk and friendly, she invited me over to the group and introduced me to everyone for no reason the way only a tragically wasted person would.

I slid my way into a conversation with Bryce by noting he was drinking a Moscow mule, not the usual beer of Jack and Coke all the other guys were drinking. A former bartender, I had some tidbits about the drink to share with him which got the conversation flowing.

I was still talking with Bryce when the bar started to close down and everyone made their desperate attempts to find a bed partner before the neon lights went out. My attempts with Bryce were going fairly well, he invited me back with the girls to take some shots at the frat house.

He patted me on the back a couple of times before we all slipped out of the bar and headed up Greek Row.

Passing the time at the fraternity after party was almost unbearable. It was everything I already said I hated about college bars, but in a much more intimate setting. I had to fake not hating it all a lot more, but I made it through it till Bryce and I were the last two awake, finishing a bottle of Jagermeister.

It was time to make my move.