The Story I Couldn't Bear To Write
Looking back on my life, the tale I am about to recount is admittedly still my most provocative, exciting sexual memory of all. I don't know why exactly, probably because of the forbidden nature of it, and the major unlikelihood of it having ever happened in the first place. The fact that it (arguably) ended in disaster should alone be enough reason to keep it completely off my top ten list, but the fact is I still think about him, dream of him, and I wonder where he is and what he is doing now.
I'll skip the introductions. Those of you who have been readers here for a while will recognize my name and you know my history. Allow me to start at the top of this one.
I was in my mid/late twenties and had already been married a few years. Though my teenage life had been filled with a near free-for-all of sexual encounters with other boys, I had deftly managed to keep that part of my personality hidden from the public side of my world. To all who knew me by the light of day, my co-workers, friends and wife, I appeared as normal as could be and certainly straight as an arrow. I concluded I had managed to submerge my defective sexual urges the same way a bully would drown an invalid in a tub, pushing down on his shoulders with all his might, wild thrashing below the surface of the water but the victim not coming up for air, struggling evermore weakly till, the bully victorious, the cripple unhanded and presumed drowned for good.
Married to the prettiest girl, engaged in a climbing career, I was known as a young pillar of the community where I lived. I had surely beaten my curse at last. We were blessed with a handsome young son and had another on the way. So what if I occasionally visited the adult book shop at lunch while at work in the city, straying immediately into the section reserved for guys who liked guys, surveying the racks of cellophane-sealed magazines with lurid titles and even more graphic photographs on their covers? They excited me, I supposed in the same way that some guys were thrilled by the thought of going bear hunting or by the prospects of a night of binge drinking and chasing pussy. I knew some guys who picked up hookers, and I didn't do that! I knew for certain my twist was harmless and I was certain that every man had his own dark secrets just like I had mine.
After all, once I had even gone to talk to a therapist, concerned that my lust for seeing males undressed and aroused was a fatal flaw. Then, badly shaken, I had betrayed myself by making a pass at a younger fellow I barely knew and had been angrily rebuffed. He had called me a faggot and pushed my hand away. A week later when I saw him again I apologized, and he told me to forget about it. But for a long time after, still I couldn't sleep with worry. I had never been caught like that, never called out as a pervert before. This therapist listened to me rant for an hour spilling my anguish, he blinking at me owl-like through thick glasses while sitting nearly motionless, notebook in hand but pages left clean. Three sessions later he delivered his prognosis: 'boys will be boys' he concluded; I should not worry, he had said. Everything was alright for me, and I must realize that many people had something twisted that turned them on. I shouldn't expect to be perfect. He advised me to simply make sure that whenever I had an orgasm I was always thinking about women, and eventually a cure to my depravity would take hold.
So, it was just as I already knew it. I only had to work yet a little harder and I could be fixed. It was all within my power, and even if I couldn't really fix it, no one else ever had to know. I had kept this secret for twenty years so far and surmised I had only sixty years or so left to live, and that I could finish the marathon and die without anyone important to me ever discovering my weakness. No one would ever need to know.
I was in great shape and I felt no different inside from the way I had felt at 18. I could still run as fast, jump as high as any teenager and I felt disgusted and annoyed with my same-age peers who were slowing down, getting fat and who had seemed to have turned some unmarked corner towards middle age. When the high school boys on my street had a game of street hockey, I was out there. When the contest was who could throw the football the farthest, I needed to compete and reveled when I won. Some of the guys would challenge me to race, and I could beat nearly all of them every time. I loved my life; I was grown man but as happy as a boy, living in a neighborhood full of new vibrant friends. Everyone liked me, all the parents trusted me. I'd carry my small three year old son Brandon around on my shoulders on warm afternoons and we would talk and walk, stopping to meet children, pet neighborhood dogs and talk with moms and dads. I could get along with them all, though truthfully I felt more at ease and in tune with the teenaged guys than I did with their parents who were all older than me.
When we had first married and moved in to the neighborhood, Nick's family lived just a few doors away. Nick was just a kid then, and he went to Catholic school evidenced by the uniform he wore when he walked by early each morning, slacks and a red sweater-vest in winter, shorts and a white polo in the spring. His folks were older, nearly as old as my own parents I had guessed. Nick was the last in line, an afterthought for sure, his older siblings all long grown and gone. Nick's dad yelled a lot: at the dog, at his wife, but mostly it seemed he yelled at Nick. Sure, Nick was mischievous, but he wasn't bad at all. Dishwater blond hair curly, tangled and matted, chipped front tooth, dirt and grass stains on the knees of his school uniform, shoes untied he'd come running home from school with book bag flying behind him, shouting and yelping with the other boys, oblivious to anyone else around. He'd reappear somewhat later, having changed into play clothes, still running and shouting with the other guys his age. 'Nick' was a perfect name for him; a word in synonym used to describe a small gash in a tabletop or other damage that left a formerly perfect article less than pristine, but one that gave it recognizable character. Nick exuded character.
He was too small to play football with the older boys and me. Sometimes he'd watch for a while but he was likely too shy to try to join in, and it was just as well. Elbows flying and sneakers scrambling and slapping on the hard asphalt, cries of 'go long' before two or three thundering, stampeding boys jumped at once, coming down in a heap of tangled arms and legs on a lawn or sometimes even in the street. Rarely did a game end without some blood being drawn, an ankle twisted or a shirt torn. I loved every minute of it, even looking forward to the after dinner games played in the fall dusk. Hearing their fists bang on my door in the middle of dinner was like a symphony to me, an aphrodisiac to know I was wanted and accepted by them as one of the team.
My wife would hold the baby sometimes and watch us for just a little while, but would leave shaking her head. 'You're going to get hurt' she warned. But I was too happy to listen. 'You're too old to be playing out there', she would say other times, but I knew better. I never felt more alive than when I was running my fastest, tracking a thrown ball that sailed through the air in my direction, knowing I could time it just right get there to catch it before it landed, outrunning boys eight or ten years my junior, knowing that I even had even more speed in reserve if I really had needed it.
Only seldom did I feel out of place, and those were the times I inadvertently hurt someone with a poked eye or a misplaced elbow of my own. The game would stop and suddenly I'd feel sad and sorry that I had hurt one of these boys unintentionally, for a fleeting moment I was a parent who had hurt someone else's son, anxious as to what I could say, lending him my handkerchief to quell his bloody nose, then leading him home to personally apologize to his mother, fearful that the mother would say to me the same thing as my wife had said... 'You're too old to be playing out there.' But no one ever got banged up badly enough for repercussions to have happened.
Sometimes when our games ended, Nick and his friends would take over the street, playing a junior varsity version of our sport, their high voices calling out the same plays we used. 'Go long!' Nick would holler in his church choir soprano, and a herd of smaller sneaker-feet would thunder down the street in chase, as he hurled the ball half as far as I could.
I imagined I was so happy. In equal parts I loved the sport, the companionship and the smells and sounds of adolescence that surrounded and immersed me. Shirtless and musky, hot and wet; sweaty and salty, giving and getting pats on the butt, playful cuffs on the head, bear hugs after big plays, wrestling on the lawn when we were through. Tasting their heat, soaking up their energy, absorbing their sexual power so that the nights with my wife were even more vital and powerful... vivid images of the touch of feel of their skin and the smell of their sweat filled my brain so fully, as soon as I closed my eyes it was as if they were there in bed with us, urging my passion, fueling my lust.
It was springtime the next year when Nick first spoke to me, one afternoon while I was washing my car. 'Hi' he said meekly. 'Hey little dude' I greeted him, and I was amused that he sat on the grass to watch. 'Grab a sponge and help,' I offered, and he did. He was cute as a button, sort of small for his age, but 100% male. Scraped knees and elbows, his tangled curls fell over one blue eye. He had a small scar on the underside of his chin, I noticed, a proud battle scar of boyhood it was, and I wondered what circumstances it was earned under. I easily imagined he did it roughly playing somewhere he wasn't supposed to have been, and that when he was brought to the emergency to have it stitched up he was brave and didn't cry even a single tear.
You got tall! I said to him, and he smiled revealing that chipped white front tooth. 'Thanks' he said. 'I know I did.' We engaged in small talk, about school and sports and stuff, till I heard his dad call him for dinner.
'See you later Brad!' He said dropping his sponge and running off on his strong but slender legs in the direction of the call. I was amused; I didn't even realize he knew my name.
That Fall the street football games resumed, and I was surprised when this year Nick joined right in. I knew now that he was quite older than he looked, possessing an appearance of youthfulness he and I had shared in common. I had often been mistaken for a younger child when I was a teenager, and it infuriated me. I didn't like being smaller than the other guys my age, and I cursed the gods who were responsible for it. I felt an immediate kinship with him because of this alone, I know.
At first I was especially protective of him, fearing he'd be harmed. But he was incredibly agile and fast, and I soon stopped worrying about his safety. His father gardened endlessly and was always outside to keep a watchful eye-that is, if he had cared to see. But in fact, I noticed that Nick's father never so much as turned an eye our way. Weary of life in general, perhaps, or at least from having raised at least three sons long before Nick arrived, he seemed disinterested in anything but his azaleas and rhododendron.
The next year, Nick played ice hockey, and the bruises and bumps he sported showed he was unafraid to mix it up with the other guys. He was a tough kid, the kind I wish I had been; the kind I hoped my son Brandon would grow up to be. He rough-housed with his friends and didn't mind getting his clothes rumpled and torn or his face dirty. When he wore short pants the purple and greenish-gray badges on his shins and knees showed that he could take a hit, and I imagined he never, ever cried. His hair looked as though he didn't own a comb, but his apple cheeks blushed easily when he was paid a compliment, eyes cast to sweep the ground and smiling like he didn't deserve to be praised.
When he was with his friends he was loud and brash. Laughing, cursing and spitting with the other lads, he was a rough boy who could both take it and dish it out.
But when those friends were gone and he was alone he'd appear out of nowhere and sit with me and talk. Displaying a completely different persona, when he was with me he was suddenly thoughtful and sensitive. He talked quietly and in a different tone, using rich words and complex sentences to describe how much he liked art and music. He wanted to paint his room and mused at length what shade would be best and why. He didn't seem to mind long periods passing by with nothing being said, me sitting on the lawn, him lying on his back on the grass, arm behind his head, one knee raised, staring at the sky with his eyes that matched its hue almost exactly. His voice was getting deeper and his shoulders broader. He was becoming a man but he still had the same boyish mischief in his blue eyes.
There was something happening here. Something between us; and we both knew it. I knew it because of the way I felt inside when he lay on the grass silently near me, the pangs I felt when I heard his father yelling at him for seemingly no reason, Oddly perhaps, I understood and fully accepted the way he completely ignored me when he passed with his pals; I didn't mind at all; without ever discussing why, we both completely understood respected the need for mutual anonymity when he was with his same-age friends.
But especially worrying to me was the feeling I had when I realized I didn't want my wife to know that he had grown to like me and that I was growing fond of him. Sometimes he brought his tape player so I could hear music he wanted to share. As we listened and talked quietly our hands would touch together, and my hand might rest briefly on his calf or on his foot, I could claim it was accidental but it wasn't.
One summer evening late at dinnertime I saw him sitting alone on his front steps, eyes cast at the ground. 'Nick?' I asked 'Did you have dinner yet?'
He shook his head 'no'. His parents had gone on a trip and he was home alone for three days. They had left him food and money for pizza, but he didn't feel like eating any of it. 'Come eat with us.' I offered. My wife had made pot roast, and Nick gladly joined us at our table that night. Brandon, now in kindergarten, was delighted to have Nick in our house. 'Sit next to me?' he chirped, face aglow.
Nick ate like he was a starved man. I was surprised at the amount he put away- and he drank at least three glasses of milk. 'This is so good' he told my wife. 'May I have a little more?' While I was glad to see him eat, my heart hurt for him because even though he had friends, I sensed a deep loneliness in him. He looked into my eyes and smiled. 'Thanks Brad' he said.
After Brandon had gone to bed and my wife did the dishes, Nick stayed for a while to watch TV. He sat near me on the sofa and his shoeless foot strayed to rest near my leg. I patted it, and he moved even closer to me. I reached out to hold his foot in my hand and he didn't move it away. I gently fondled his foot through his sock, outlining every toe and rubbing his sole. I caressed his instep and his ankle. I stroked his bare shin and noticed that though this was the first place a boy grows hair as he was becoming a man, that he still had very little there, just a few wisps.
Then I heard my wife approaching and quickly, instinctively, moved my hand away, but I needn't have worried. He moved his foot away just as quickly so that she wouldn't see. Like me, he too knew that she wouldn't understand and must not see, though we had never shared a word about it. My blood rose with the realization that he too felt something strange, that something less than innocent-feeling must be stirring inside him too.
My wife had long been nagging me to paint the cellar walls, a job I dodged every time she brought it up. The ceiling was low, and worst of all there was a narrow crawlspace that needed to be painted that I could barely fit into. Finally, she came up with a suggestion that made my heart leap at the thought. 'Why don't you pay Nick to do it?' she suggested. 'He's small and agile enough to fit in the tight spots and he'd probably like to earn some money.'
I couldn't wait to ask Nick to do the job. I went up to his house and knocked on the door, and it was answered by his dull father who invited me inside. I explained to him what I wanted, and without allowing me to even finish, he turned to bellow into the house for Nick to come downstairs. I had never been in his house before. I glanced around and saw photos of people I assumed were his older siblings on the walls and tables. A photo of a smiling Nick wearing his red First Holy Communion robe sat on the shelf, and I was astounded as I realized how much he had grown up in just a few years time since then.
Nick bounded down the steps and the glow on his face indicated he was delighted to see me. His dad turned and immediately exited the room, clearly disinterested in being involved in my proposal, leaving me alone with his son to discuss what I wanted done. Nick eagerly agreed and we set the date for that coming Saturday. He arrived right on time wearing torn jeans and a faded t-shirt, a crooked baseball cap on his head covering most of his curly hair. Together we went to the cellar to begin work.
I worked on painting the edges and kept the paint bucket full. Nick climbed into the crawl space and began to work there. We didn't talk much but being alone and so close with him made my mind fill with thoughts of things about him I wanted to know. We met periodically at the paint bucket to refill our pans. I asked him about hockey and school and he provided short answers to my questions. I asked him about his family, calling out that I noticed how his dad seemed not to care much for him, and he looked away and shrugged. It was clear he didn't want to talk about this. 'I dunno what's with him. He is always tired and he doesn't have much patience with me', Nick admitted. I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he shook his head 'no'. He returned to his work and I waited, took a deep breath and then I asked him what I really wanted to know.
'Do you like girls, Nick?'
Looking away from me stopped painting for a moment, his arm frozen in position. I could tell his mind was working and that the right answer wasn't coming easily to him. Then after a brief period of heavy silence he shook his head almost imperceptibly. As I had suspected, the answer was no.
I knew it would be. I sensed in him the same emptiness and pain that was there in me at his age, the pain I still felt presently in the rare occasions when I really was honest with myself. I could tell from so many clues he offered that another non-kindred spirit would have missed, ones his father surely never saw at all. It was the way he talked harsh and tough around his friends, using a surly tone and bad grammar, yet spoke in a completely different, quieter voice to me. The way he let me rub his arm or grip his hand sometimes just for a moment when we were near each other, small lingering glances into each others' eyes that lasted fractionally longer than 'normal' guys will do. But I especially remembered that time a few months before when we had wrestled for the football on the lawn, laughing, scrambling, me trapping him underneath with my size, then allowing him to get on top to wrestle some more, finally collapsing in laughter - then lying cheek to cheek, with him in my arms, our wrestling hold having turned into an embrace as we held each other close for just a few moments, a few moments longer than guys are supposed to, him trembling as I breathed in his beautiful smell, pressing my lips to his hair, his arm clasped around my back then burying his face in my neck and chest... just for a few moments.
There in the dark basement, paint splattered on our hands and cheeks, he had just let me in on his deepest secret, one I am positive he had never breathed to another soul. Staring at a spot ahead on the wall, his brush still motionless, I replied to him.
'I know. Me too.'
We resumed painting and finished the work, and my wife was pleased with the job. I took him to lunch at Taco Bell as a reward, and he ordered a family pack of six tacos and, chattering happily as he ate all of them, I watched and just glowed with warm happiness.
I had found someone else just like me.
******
I didn't ask him any more questions about it because I didn't need to; I already knew all I needed to know. He still acted exactly the same towards me as before, and I smiled inwardly as I more clearly observed his two faces-that tough one he showed his friends and the tender one he exposed to me. I imagined him as a younger version of me, and we both obviously knew the rules without speaking them aloud... keep your terrible secret safe and you can live a normal life. No one else had to know what we knew about each other, because Real Men didn't need to talk things out. After all, I was living proof, married and happy, wasn't I? That's the way things were supposed to work out. There was no need to ever be foolish, lisping, limp-wristed fairies, no reason to be open to anyone else about the bitter poison in your soul. And when the feelings of desire and lust rose to unbearable heat as they sometimes did, the fire could be quelled with pornography and masturbation or a quick liaison with another person you met. There was never any need to talk it out. I could help him learn that, I imagined; help him like no one else could.
Sitting one day on the lawn I asked him if he liked to read hot stories. 'What kinds?' he asked.
'You know, like in Penthouse, the Letters section,' I said.
He nodded. 'Yeah, I like that', he admitted with a shy smile.
I smiled too. I had been introduced to this when as a teenager. I had volunteered to work at the paper recycling trailer at the high school. Stacking the papers people left, I had come across a treasure trove of pornography, dozens of Penthouse magazines. While the pictures of the girls were mildly interesting to me, I found the Letters sections to be especially exciting, as there people often told stories that were twisted and kinky, sometimes with a same-sex theme. I brought home as many as I could safely carry without discovery, and through my later teens I read and reread my favorites again and again, experiencing the thrill in the realization that other people had kinky fantasies too, taking silent comfort that I was not alone in my depravity. As an adult, I again had amassed a small stash of books that contained these types of stories and I kept them carefully hidden, using them to masturbate with when I needed an urgent release.
After we threw the ball around for a while, his mother called him for dinner. He turned to leave, but then turned back and said 'You said you had some books for me?' I was secretly pleased... he was obviously interested in sex and was unashamed that I knew. 'I'll get them, wait here'. I ran into the house and picked a few and hid them in a brown grocery bag for him to carry. I made sure that the one was in there that I liked the most, the one that detailed a story of twin teenaged brothers who became lovers, explaining their sexual contact in graphically explicit detail.
'Thanks!' he called as he sprinted away with his prize. I couldn't help but imagine him later that that night, surely locked in his room and masturbating furiously to the same stories that turned me on; perhaps climaxing to exactly the same parts I liked.
When I saw him a week or so later I asked him if he liked the books. 'Yah,' he smiled. I asked him if he liked the story about the brothers, and he blushed bright red and said, 'I especially liked that one.' I messed up his curly hair. 'You are a horny little dude', I said. He just smiled back at me and blushed some more.
All I wanted at his age was to be understood. Understood, and then accepted. But I knew how unlikely this was, because I knew well by then that my sexual urges were perverted and gross. That fact had been confirmed to me in Boy Scout camp when I was only 13, when I had been caught staring longingly at an older boy getting dressed. Apparently one of the boys had noticed me watching him dress the first night, and the next night they had planned a ruse. Everyone was told to watch me, and the handsome boy was instructed to begin to undress then to move just outside my line of vision. Stealthily, I thought, I climbed down from my bunk to get a better view, my gaze never once wavering from my idol. He was a tall, fair, finely muscled boy who to me was nearly a man. I had never seen muscles on another boy's chest and abdomen like his, and seeing him even briefly nude was a reward I craved more than anything else I could have imagined. I gasped a little as I saw his penis suddenly exposed, it was beautiful and long, bobbing slightly and so much more perfect than I dared imagine. I drank him in aggressively and with all my might since I knew in a few moments it would all be over. But still deep in concentration I was stunned to hear the room erupt around me in laughter and catcalls. Snapping rudely out of my self-inflicted trance, I realized with a knife of horror that they were laughing at me; a dozen sets of eyes trained on mine, tracing my gaze directly to the other boy's naked loins; a dozen boys who had at once all discovered my fatal defect. If I could have died and disappeared I would have, right there. I never went back to Scouts after that.
I never wanted that sort of humiliation to happen to Nick. I wanted him to know he was not alone in the world and that I understood him. I could teach him how to hide using all the tricks I had mastered. No one had to learn he was flawed, especially the terrible way I had been discovered. Since that awful day I had worked hard and learned to play it straight - and things had gone well for me. I could guide him on the same path.
One night when we were set to go out to dinner with another couple, the baby sitter called at the last minute to cancel. My wife was in a panic. 'Call Nick and see if he can come instead' she suggested, and I eagerly dialled the phone. Nick was indeed available, and he showed up at the door moments later. I let him in and sat with him by the TV while my wife dressed.
Completely alone, I knew I could get very close to him, something we clearly avoided when anyone else was present. He sat on the edge of the sofa and I sat on the edge of the chair next to him, our knees touching 'Cool!' he said, spying a new car magazine on the coffee table and he picked it up and started thumbing through it on his lap.
'Let me show you something in there', I offered, sliding nearer to him and turning the book on his lap diagonally so we could both see it. Reaching over, I turned the pages looking for an article I wanted him to see, but I froze the minute I brushed against his trousers. At once, I felt it there, stiff and erect, probing straight up. My breath caught suddenly in my throat and I stopped talking midsentence, my words and thoughts wiped cleanly away.
He left the open book over his lap, and both of us swallowing hard, I began to tenderly feel him there, my hand unable to pull away. He flipped pages of the magazine, pretending to look at the pictures but I am sure that he saw nothing, as his eyes had lost their focus just as mine had. He was wearing Levis 501s over boxers I soon found out, because when I slipped my hidden finger between two buttons of his fly, it was right there, nakedly exposed, poking warmly up out through his boxers' fly. We both drew breath simultaneously at the contact, and feeling around my finger felt the velvet circumcised head, his long straight shaft and the fuzzy patch of silk at its base. He shifted his weight a little, and reaching deeper my fingers found his soft balls, nestled just below. My heart hammered, and as he flipped through the pages I caressed and fondled his penis, feeling every inch while trying to imagine how it looked and how it would feel on my face. I watched as he reached the end of the magazine, and immediately I was intoxicated to see that he flipped back again to the beginning, starting over and giving me more time-and more importantly the tacit permission to explore him further.
'Nick, is this OK?' I whispered with my voice quivering more than I wanted it to.
'Yah, it's OK', He answered quietly.
I wanted to unbutton him, just one button, allowing him to poke free and so I might see the prize exposed, if only for a moment, after all this situation would likely never be repeated: and I'd never again have the chance but I didn't dare, and it was a good thing I didn't since my wife appeared at the doorway a moment later, fastening her earrings and telling me that we would be late if we didn't leave now.
'Nick, there's soda in the refrigerator and the number of where we will be is next to the phone if you need us', she said as she walked back towards the front door. I stood up, patting Nick on the shoulder as I left. 'You are cool' I said to him so only he could hear.
'You too' he said to me.
I don't remember what we did the rest of that night, not where we ate, who we were with, what we did after, what was said. I could only think of him. My thoughts spun inside my head making me disoriented, dizzy and even feeling drunk, I imagined how our relationship might grow, Nick and me, and how lucky I was to have him and him to have me. Without even discussing it he clearly knew that we'd have to keep this a secret and I knew he could. I knew I could keep it together too. After all, look how far I had come. I thought of other jobs at the house he could help me with, legitimate reasons we could be together that wouldn't arouse suspicion.
When we returned home I paid him and walked him home, mostly because I wanted one final word with him alone. 'Are you OK, Nick?' I asked
He seemed nonplussed. 'Sure I'm OK', he replied 'We're good.'
Will you come back again? I asked
Of course he would, he answered. Then he was gone inside his door.
***********************
One unusually warm day that winter, while walking the dog, I saw him in his driveway washing his father's car and I stopped to talk. Slyly I told him that my wife would be out for the afternoon, and I casually suggested that he come by. At first he didn't reply, and in my insecurity I wondered if he was having second thoughts about being friends with me. Then he said he needed to take a shower first. Not wanting him to delay his visit I told him that this wasn't necessary, but he replied that it was very important to him. 'I like to feel clean', he said. I was slightly aroused as I wondered to myself why this was; what he thought would happen that he needed to be clean for, I mused that he wanted to look and smell his best for me, but also considered that he was using this as an excuse to delay his visit or not come at all.
But when her car pulled out of the drive, not ten minutes later he was at my door, fresh from the bath. 'I have a tape of a new song I want you to hear' he said. We put the music on the stereo and sat on the sofa to listen.
I don't remember the exact moves that followed, One minute we were sitting on the sofa, then suddenly reaching out to him we were holding each other tightly, my fingers in his damp hair, his face buried in my chest. I wanted to, but I didn't dare kiss him on his mouth- I was terrified of how he might react. I recalled vividly my own feeling of the taboo, knowing well that I hadn't kissed another guy till I was 19, and before that how horrified I had been at that age by the thought of crossing the line showing mushy affection I perceived as weak and feminine.
But I wanted to see his cock, and I needed to see it right away. Wasting no time I hooked my fingers in the stetchy waistband of his silky sweatpants and pulled. Without hesitation, he lifted his butt up to assist my conquest, his pants coming sliding down to show that he was wearing navy blue gym shorts underneath, and to let me see and feel his long lean and smooth legs.
I felt between his legs and with no surprise I found that he was already aroused and quite erect. Reaching for his waistband of his shorts he met me halfway, pushing his cotton shorts and the boxers beneath them down to his thighs, and I saw it for the first time.
His body was absolutely beautiful. The fair skin of his torso looked like it was hewn of marble, smooth unblemished and with his abdominal muscles defined and rippling underneath. His navel was shallow, symmetrical and perfect. His thighs were slim yet powerful, and at the locus where these elements all joined together was the most beautiful and perfectly proportioned erect penis I imagined I had ever seen, carved from ivory, white as alabaster, adorned with a small tightly woven patch of brown silk at its base, and graced beneath by a set of beautiful round balls that nestled beside each other in their soft sack. I never dreamed that this opportunity would present itself, but here it was. He leaned back, and I positioned myself in front of the sofa kneeling facing him, my chest between his knees. My face inches from his nakedness, I was so close and I felt every inch of what I had only dreamed of ever seeing or touching in the flesh. He felt like velvet, there and all over, his skin was supple and hadn't acquired the leathered toughness that accompanied later manhood. Looking up I saw his flushed cheeks, and reaching up to feel them I was greeted by their downy softness. Looking back at his cock I could watch it and see his heartbeat inside, as it twitched almost imperceptibly with each pulse. I caressed his cock and he twisted under my hand, encouraging me to rub him with friction that he craved. My face so close, I could smell his musky heat from between his legs and feel his breath coming, I could even hear the sound of my palm wrapped around his shaft, rubbing his smoothness close enough that I could have tasted it if I wanted to.
But in just a few moments, certainly less than even a minute, suddenly and unexpectedly he was cumming, squirting his thick white liquid all over my hands and his belly. 'ooooohhhh- ' he moaned, and I was amazed but disappointed that he had climaxed so fast; I hardly had any time to enjoy drinking him in as I masturbated him. 'Ohhh jeez!' he said, and I doubted he had expected to cum this fast. I was secretly thrilled and suddenly highly aroused that my touch had caused him to lose control so quickly. 'Sorry!' he said.
I surveyed the damage. He had made three good squirts, two of them on his tummy one across my fingers that drizzled into his fuzzy patch. Without a second's hesitation I reached out my tongue to taste him, and didn't stop till he was completely clean.
It is in this moment between two guys, especially in a situation like this that the mood is the most fragile, that good feelings can turn suddenly bad. Guys don't mean to be that way, but after cumming something in one's mood changes, and feelings of shame and guilt, even anger can intrude without warning. But Nick just opened one eye and smiled at me, then closed it again. He made no move to cover up, no move to want to get away. 'Sorry dude.' He repeated. 'I can go again, don't worry'.
Turned on beyond belief at what I had just witnessed, I fumbled with my belt, and unzipping I roughly unsheathed my own cock and kneeling an inch from his boyhood, still tasting him on my lips I began to rub myself, grabbing a handful of tissues just in time from the table before I exploded all over myself.
There was a football game on the TV and we pretended to watch, leaning against each other, still half undressed, my hands on his naked cock. Suddenly snapping alert, I recalled that my son was napping, my wife might come home unexpectedly, and what we were doing was in full view of the windows, open to the back yard. I turned to Nick and urged him to pull his pants back up, and he did, though he left them loosely untied, and now and again I would reach inside to feel his penis, mostly just to watch myself do it and prove to myself that he really would let me have him if I wanted, that this hadn't just been a dream.
We sat close together for a few minutes, synchronizing our breathing, bodies close and touching, just feeling each other's warmth. I was in a place higher than heaven. Nick was mine, and everything was alright with the world. As we sat I asked him personal questions that now seemed perfectly appropriate and normal-how often he masturbated, if he had ever been caught and how he had learned. He answered me without shame, asking me a few questions of his own in return.
Reaching down between his legs, I found him hard again (or maybe still hard from the first time?) inside his shorts, and just a few moments later, again with his willing help, I had turned him to face me and stripped his pants down again, this time below his knees. Laying him back on the couch I kidded him 'Think you can hold out longer this time?' He laughed. I loved him.
He let me have my way with him, he tasted of sex and clean soap and water, and as much as I'd like to but can't vividly describe within the rules of this site, I caressed him in the most sensual ways, not only using my hands, moistly, hot and wetly for almost ten minutes, backing off and easing up every time he seemed to be getting close, till I finally pushed him over the edge and, with fingers in my hair he at last exploded with a groan. I knew what I was doing, and I knew that I had pleased him. Again, he lay shamelessly naked for me to survey, and I admit that I did, watching his cock sleepily deflate, finally sated, only temporarily drained of its energy. I smiled knowing that we'd only need an hour before we'd both be ready again, but I knew that I was already pressing my luck.
'Cummon tiger' I urged with a gentle nudge in his ribs. 'Zip up. Someone might be looking for you.' And truly just a few minutes after Nick left, little Brandon awoke from his nap and soon thereafter my wife pulled into the drive.
Sex with my wife was never better than after I had been with Nick. My batteries were recharged, my pilot was brightly lit and the furnace was stoked white hot. I tried not to think about the fact that my sexual urges were fired by him, instead I congratulated myself on being a better husband in bed as a result. I felt no guilt at all being with him either. Why, other men cheated on their wives with whores and with dangerous romantic liaisons. I simply had a young jack off buddy who satisfied my needs. I assumed it satisfied his too, though I never really asked him how he felt; I just assumed as long as he was still speaking to me that we must be cool.
Our meetings weren't frequent, and I congratulated myself on this too. See, I reasoned, I could control myself very well! I didn't 'need' him every day or even every week. But when I did need him I imagine felt like a heroin addict going through cold turkey. I couldn't think of anything else but him; my temper grew short and my attention was consumed with schemes of how to get together with him without arousing my wife's suspicions. By now she had noticed something odd in the way we acted towards each other, I think. She was a sharp observer and a quick judge, and whatever it had been; her attitude towards him had changed. 'I don't think you should be with him. He should be around boys his own age, she had said. My blood pressure rose quickly with indignant anger, and I almost said what I really felt, that I was indeed nearly a boy his own age, at least almost. But I knew better and stopped myself short. True, while nearly ten years separated us on the calendar; they were important years. In that period I was married with a family, while he had yet to go out on his own. So I said nothing; certainly not promising to heed her warning, only resolving to myself only to be more careful in the future so she wouldn't see him with me.
One Sunday afternoon I heard a knock on the door, and it was him, standing and smiling. I was so glad to see him my heart leapt for joy. I had been in the garage washing my car, and as I answered the door and he came in to tell me his father wanted to borrow a tool I had, a device that could pinpoint the location of wall studs through the plaster.
'Sure,' I said, 'come in and I'll find it.
He followed me down the cellar stairs, and stood behind me as I rooted through one drawer after another looking for the tool he needed. I found it and turned to him with it held in hand, and was surprised at how close he was standing to me. I reached the tool towards him, but I embraced him instead of handing it over. I hugged him close, hard, desperately, and he lowered his head to burrow it into my shirt. 'Oh my God, Nick.' I whispered. 'How I've missed you.'
He didn't say a word as I turned him to lean against the table saw's workbench. Resting back on his elbows in a pile of sawdust he spread his feet slightly, and pushing up his hooded sweatshirt and kissing down his chest I finished by kneeling in front of his waist. I pulled at his sweatpants and he didn't resist at all, allowing first them, then his boxers to be roughly pulled down, exposing his beautiful cock which hardened quickly in front of my eyes. No words were spoken as I rubbed his throbbing cock, exposing and pulling mine at the same time. His eyes were shut, his teeth gritted, and I knew he was trying to hold back his orgasm, but I wanted none of that. Fondling him roughly, jerking him rhythmically, staring at his cock intently, I wanted to see his climax. I didn't have long to wait, as he, leaned his head back, shifted his feet almost losing his balance and let out a gasp of breath and a grunt as several thick ribbons of sperm gushed out across my hands and wrist and onto the floor. I groaned myself with guttural lust as I felt my own climax coming. I kept my eyes fixed on his wet and dripping cock as I jerked harder and harder till I felt my own explosion ignite and detonate below.
He looked like an angel to me, disheveled in his untucked flannel shirt, pants around his knees, sawdust in his curly hair. Still leaned precariously backwards, I helped him with his balance, stood him up and helped him pull up his pants and I held him in my arms. 'Nick I missed you so much' I said. He held me in return, and I kissed the top of his head.
I guided him back up the stairs, making sure he had the tool he had come for, and I asked him to stay for a while. 'I can only stay a minute' he said. 'My dad is waiting for me.' I knew he needed to go, but I didn't want him to. Sitting on our usual spots on the sofa in the family room I explored underneath his shirt with both hands, feeling his velvet chest, small taut nipples, rippled abs and playfully pulling at the small damp tufts of hair that grew under his arms.
'I should go,' he said just a few minutes later, and I agreed, walking with him through the garage out to the driveway.
'Bye Nick,' I said softly. 'Come back again, OK?'
******************************
If you've been reading for the thrill and excitement of it, I'll advise you to stop right now, and not read even one paragraph further. For it is here and now that the consequences of my actions caught up with me. My life has never been the same since.
***********************
Just as he turned to go, at that moment my wife's car pulled into the driveway. I busied myself polishing a bumper, but I could feel her gaze on the back of my neck. Calling me aside from the door inside just a few minutes later, she demanded to know why he had been there. I told her that he had simply stopped to say hello and to borrow a tool and hadn't even been there a minute. She disappeared again, but after he had left and I went back in the house, like Colombo at his best she confronted my explanation with one damning question after another.
'Was he in the house with you?' she demanded to know.
'No', I lied.
'Oh, Is that so?' She accused. 'I noticed a lot of sawdust on the sofa cushions, the same as was all over the back of his sweatshirt', she said. I was speechless... I had been caught in a bald-faced lie and I knew it.
'So he was here on the sofa, but first you were in the basement together with him, right?' She correctly concluded. I stammered like a mute idiot, blood draining to my feet, unable to contrive a lie that would pass my lips.
'And I suppose you have no clue about that stuff splattered all over the floor by the workbench? She hissed, eyes narrowed, teeth unfurled, the word 'STUFF' spit from her mouth like a lethal dose of venomous, bitter poison.
'Huh?' I said weekly, slumping like a coward where I stood.
Her eyes flashed with fire.
'I know exactly what you did, you pervert. She screamed. He's only a boy!'
'No, he's eighteen' I said feebly, as I practically admitted right there and right out loud that what she had guessed was completely true, feeling like I would throw up, my heart thumping like a hammer so hard I feared it would leap through my shirt and once dismembered from my body stop dead. I felt the overpowering urge to pee like a coward would. I had never ever contemplated this might be my end.
*******
Allow me a short epilogue.
I have read comments submitted by readers that applaud the erotic nature of the daring, dangerous and unwise things done by contributors to this site. A VERY few letters have thanked the writers who pointed out what really can happen when their 'solo' passion becomes an open, shared risky activity.
I had earlier said I'd never share this story, and in fact it took me three years of trying to actually put it down in writing. I'd start then stop, then read what I had written and destroy it in disgust for how I sounded, in some cases pathetic, in other versions arrogant and defiant, yet with me always coming across somehow like a victim, when in fact I had caused my own defeat. Like a blind dog who shits where he eats, I was suddenly overcome by loathing and disgust in the discovery of my own filth, because I had truly never seen it before that moment.
The end of this story marked my turning point. It took some years, but I eventually learned that I needed to accept my sexual orientation for what it was (see 'Accepting Myself Was Not Easy', link above) because I was not straight and never had been. I pinpointed that moment in time on my sixteenth birthday where I convinced myself I needed to turn straight to survive ('Falling Hard for My Straight Friend Ryan'), and the place where my practice of living a double life first began just before my 19th birthday. ('Teddy, Tad and Me'). Going all the way back to the start I now know I was only five or so I was when I realized I was not like other boys and that my perverse sexual desires needed to be hidden if I was to get along in life (My Earliest Recollections).
After my wife discovered my infidelity (and that's what it was, without question) things changed for me in nearly every aspect of my life. It would have been one thing to find her husband involved in a romantic relationship with another woman, an attractive co-worker perhaps. But to find him in a tryst with another male- a neighborhood boy barely entering adulthood-that would be hard for any woman to absorb. Another woman she might comprehend. But a guy? The incomprehensible scope of her dismay and distrust of me based on this outrageous discovery had shaken her to the core. I lost any status and standing as a partner and equal I had with her.
Once unmasked, my daily life at home became a living hell. I was not trusted to be alone, even to take care of my son, and I thrust myself into therapy mostly out of confusion and fear of losing everything I thought was important to me.
You might shrug and say 'So what-so now that he finally realized he was gay so he should just leave her and start over.' But as odd as it sounds, that wasn't what I wanted. As crazy as it might seem - at that turning point I was STILL unwilling to accept my sexual orientation; I looked at this as yet just another hurdle to overcome. I still wanted to be straight and 'normal', still believed this was possible. But most of all I wanted to be a father to my sons every day of their lives growing up, not an absentee parent who saw them a few hours on weekends. And as strange and unbelievable as it sounds, I really did (and still do) love my wife.
You may be wondering what happened to Nick- and I can honestly say I do not know, and this is one of my greatest regrets. With the perspective of hindsight, I want to make some observations on him, and on my relationship with him, mostly filled with sadness.
Nick was very probably gay. I don't know for sure, but as blind as my sense of moral direction had been for much of my life, my sixth sense about others' sexual orientation was rarely, if ever, wrong. I felt familiar recurring electricity when he was near, a feeling of deep connection, of kindred affection, a deep but unspoken understanding of his feelings and thoughts that I still, today, I could try but not properly put into words for you. Sure, I was sexually attracted to him. Who wouldn't be? He was cute and adorable, athletic and hot and quite willing. But more than anything I regret that instead of being able to talk with him about his feelings and his probable sexual confusion, I very likely compounded it immeasurably by making him my lover. In my brain-addled state in those years, I truly can say I didn't know any better, but looking back now I can only imagine what the experience and its aftermath was like for him. I wish I could apologize to him.
Though in years we were not so far apart, ten years is quite a gap at that stage of life. Yet emotionally we were probably exactly the same age; I had never allowed myself to grow and mature regarding my sexuality. I was stuck; fixed close to age 15 in my mind. I connected with him so easily because we shared the same teenage-rooted values and ideals. I might have been a decade older but I was certainly no wiser than he was about life.
All Nick likely knew for sure is that he simply never saw me again. I became a recluse, no longer playing ball, not washing the car or walking in the neighborhood with my children (we had two sons now). Nick must have noticed my sudden disappearance from the face of the earth immediately following our last encounter, and I am sure he concluded that something bad had happened directly because of it, and if I can wonder further, he was probably full of fear as a result: afraid of being exposed to the world as a depraved homosexual himself and accused of something evil. I seriously doubt he told on me to anyone, not because he wanted to protect me but if only because he would never have wanted anyone to know that he was visiting me for sex, and our once-fun secret doubtlessly had become a dark worrisome, heavy and nagging burden to him; that whatever happened somehow he was at fault, that my sudden lack of contact spelled rejection that meant I didn't like him any more, that I must totally hate him to so suddenly avoid him.
Gay teenagers have enough doubt and shame of their own inside that they don't need the assistance of an irresponsible adult like me to pile more shit like this on top of it.
In these past fifteen years since this story took place I have learned that my twisted ideas and dangerous acting out was based in my inability to accept and love myself as I was (as I still am) and that my lack of honesty with myself had compromised almost every aspect of my self.
Once I accepted myself, I was eventually able to surrender to my demons and finally start to live an honest life. There are certainly those of you who have read much of what I have contributed here over the years and would scoff at my claim of honesty; that while admitting I am gay yet I remain married to my wife; the mother of my children. I could not hope to explain that circumstance without another page or three or four, and few would want to read it here if I took the time. Let me just say that I have learned that there is much more to life than just sex, and that I love her dearly in so many ways I cannot imagine my life without her companionship. I am lucky that she sees our circumstances the same way and has given our relationship another (albeit unlikely) chance to succeed and grow. It wouldn't work for most people, perhaps, but it works for us.
There's a final twist almost incredible twist to this all that I want to share with you before I close. Brandon, grown into a strapping, handsome and totally masculine boy told his mother and me six weeks before his eighteenth birthday that he too, prefers boys and not girls. After his mother got up off the floor and ranted privately to me for two hours about 'my defective goddamn genes' and other such stuff, she has come around quite well. As for me, I've mentioned my sixth sense for these things several times, and I'll admit that Brandon's revelation didn't surprise me at all. Starting around the age of him being five or so, I had always strongly suspected. I can even go so far to say I already knew, though I had no proof till now. I am hopeful (but also fairly confident) that his life from his late teens forward will not mirror mine in any way.
Life is a journey, and it is what you make of it. My journey, at least today, is on the right road.
I'll skip the introductions. Those of you who have been readers here for a while will recognize my name and you know my history. Allow me to start at the top of this one.
I was in my mid/late twenties and had already been married a few years. Though my teenage life had been filled with a near free-for-all of sexual encounters with other boys, I had deftly managed to keep that part of my personality hidden from the public side of my world. To all who knew me by the light of day, my co-workers, friends and wife, I appeared as normal as could be and certainly straight as an arrow. I concluded I had managed to submerge my defective sexual urges the same way a bully would drown an invalid in a tub, pushing down on his shoulders with all his might, wild thrashing below the surface of the water but the victim not coming up for air, struggling evermore weakly till, the bully victorious, the cripple unhanded and presumed drowned for good.
Married to the prettiest girl, engaged in a climbing career, I was known as a young pillar of the community where I lived. I had surely beaten my curse at last. We were blessed with a handsome young son and had another on the way. So what if I occasionally visited the adult book shop at lunch while at work in the city, straying immediately into the section reserved for guys who liked guys, surveying the racks of cellophane-sealed magazines with lurid titles and even more graphic photographs on their covers? They excited me, I supposed in the same way that some guys were thrilled by the thought of going bear hunting or by the prospects of a night of binge drinking and chasing pussy. I knew some guys who picked up hookers, and I didn't do that! I knew for certain my twist was harmless and I was certain that every man had his own dark secrets just like I had mine.
After all, once I had even gone to talk to a therapist, concerned that my lust for seeing males undressed and aroused was a fatal flaw. Then, badly shaken, I had betrayed myself by making a pass at a younger fellow I barely knew and had been angrily rebuffed. He had called me a faggot and pushed my hand away. A week later when I saw him again I apologized, and he told me to forget about it. But for a long time after, still I couldn't sleep with worry. I had never been caught like that, never called out as a pervert before. This therapist listened to me rant for an hour spilling my anguish, he blinking at me owl-like through thick glasses while sitting nearly motionless, notebook in hand but pages left clean. Three sessions later he delivered his prognosis: 'boys will be boys' he concluded; I should not worry, he had said. Everything was alright for me, and I must realize that many people had something twisted that turned them on. I shouldn't expect to be perfect. He advised me to simply make sure that whenever I had an orgasm I was always thinking about women, and eventually a cure to my depravity would take hold.
So, it was just as I already knew it. I only had to work yet a little harder and I could be fixed. It was all within my power, and even if I couldn't really fix it, no one else ever had to know. I had kept this secret for twenty years so far and surmised I had only sixty years or so left to live, and that I could finish the marathon and die without anyone important to me ever discovering my weakness. No one would ever need to know.
I was in great shape and I felt no different inside from the way I had felt at 18. I could still run as fast, jump as high as any teenager and I felt disgusted and annoyed with my same-age peers who were slowing down, getting fat and who had seemed to have turned some unmarked corner towards middle age. When the high school boys on my street had a game of street hockey, I was out there. When the contest was who could throw the football the farthest, I needed to compete and reveled when I won. Some of the guys would challenge me to race, and I could beat nearly all of them every time. I loved my life; I was grown man but as happy as a boy, living in a neighborhood full of new vibrant friends. Everyone liked me, all the parents trusted me. I'd carry my small three year old son Brandon around on my shoulders on warm afternoons and we would talk and walk, stopping to meet children, pet neighborhood dogs and talk with moms and dads. I could get along with them all, though truthfully I felt more at ease and in tune with the teenaged guys than I did with their parents who were all older than me.
When we had first married and moved in to the neighborhood, Nick's family lived just a few doors away. Nick was just a kid then, and he went to Catholic school evidenced by the uniform he wore when he walked by early each morning, slacks and a red sweater-vest in winter, shorts and a white polo in the spring. His folks were older, nearly as old as my own parents I had guessed. Nick was the last in line, an afterthought for sure, his older siblings all long grown and gone. Nick's dad yelled a lot: at the dog, at his wife, but mostly it seemed he yelled at Nick. Sure, Nick was mischievous, but he wasn't bad at all. Dishwater blond hair curly, tangled and matted, chipped front tooth, dirt and grass stains on the knees of his school uniform, shoes untied he'd come running home from school with book bag flying behind him, shouting and yelping with the other boys, oblivious to anyone else around. He'd reappear somewhat later, having changed into play clothes, still running and shouting with the other guys his age. 'Nick' was a perfect name for him; a word in synonym used to describe a small gash in a tabletop or other damage that left a formerly perfect article less than pristine, but one that gave it recognizable character. Nick exuded character.
He was too small to play football with the older boys and me. Sometimes he'd watch for a while but he was likely too shy to try to join in, and it was just as well. Elbows flying and sneakers scrambling and slapping on the hard asphalt, cries of 'go long' before two or three thundering, stampeding boys jumped at once, coming down in a heap of tangled arms and legs on a lawn or sometimes even in the street. Rarely did a game end without some blood being drawn, an ankle twisted or a shirt torn. I loved every minute of it, even looking forward to the after dinner games played in the fall dusk. Hearing their fists bang on my door in the middle of dinner was like a symphony to me, an aphrodisiac to know I was wanted and accepted by them as one of the team.
My wife would hold the baby sometimes and watch us for just a little while, but would leave shaking her head. 'You're going to get hurt' she warned. But I was too happy to listen. 'You're too old to be playing out there', she would say other times, but I knew better. I never felt more alive than when I was running my fastest, tracking a thrown ball that sailed through the air in my direction, knowing I could time it just right get there to catch it before it landed, outrunning boys eight or ten years my junior, knowing that I even had even more speed in reserve if I really had needed it.
Only seldom did I feel out of place, and those were the times I inadvertently hurt someone with a poked eye or a misplaced elbow of my own. The game would stop and suddenly I'd feel sad and sorry that I had hurt one of these boys unintentionally, for a fleeting moment I was a parent who had hurt someone else's son, anxious as to what I could say, lending him my handkerchief to quell his bloody nose, then leading him home to personally apologize to his mother, fearful that the mother would say to me the same thing as my wife had said... 'You're too old to be playing out there.' But no one ever got banged up badly enough for repercussions to have happened.
Sometimes when our games ended, Nick and his friends would take over the street, playing a junior varsity version of our sport, their high voices calling out the same plays we used. 'Go long!' Nick would holler in his church choir soprano, and a herd of smaller sneaker-feet would thunder down the street in chase, as he hurled the ball half as far as I could.
I imagined I was so happy. In equal parts I loved the sport, the companionship and the smells and sounds of adolescence that surrounded and immersed me. Shirtless and musky, hot and wet; sweaty and salty, giving and getting pats on the butt, playful cuffs on the head, bear hugs after big plays, wrestling on the lawn when we were through. Tasting their heat, soaking up their energy, absorbing their sexual power so that the nights with my wife were even more vital and powerful... vivid images of the touch of feel of their skin and the smell of their sweat filled my brain so fully, as soon as I closed my eyes it was as if they were there in bed with us, urging my passion, fueling my lust.
It was springtime the next year when Nick first spoke to me, one afternoon while I was washing my car. 'Hi' he said meekly. 'Hey little dude' I greeted him, and I was amused that he sat on the grass to watch. 'Grab a sponge and help,' I offered, and he did. He was cute as a button, sort of small for his age, but 100% male. Scraped knees and elbows, his tangled curls fell over one blue eye. He had a small scar on the underside of his chin, I noticed, a proud battle scar of boyhood it was, and I wondered what circumstances it was earned under. I easily imagined he did it roughly playing somewhere he wasn't supposed to have been, and that when he was brought to the emergency to have it stitched up he was brave and didn't cry even a single tear.
You got tall! I said to him, and he smiled revealing that chipped white front tooth. 'Thanks' he said. 'I know I did.' We engaged in small talk, about school and sports and stuff, till I heard his dad call him for dinner.
'See you later Brad!' He said dropping his sponge and running off on his strong but slender legs in the direction of the call. I was amused; I didn't even realize he knew my name.
That Fall the street football games resumed, and I was surprised when this year Nick joined right in. I knew now that he was quite older than he looked, possessing an appearance of youthfulness he and I had shared in common. I had often been mistaken for a younger child when I was a teenager, and it infuriated me. I didn't like being smaller than the other guys my age, and I cursed the gods who were responsible for it. I felt an immediate kinship with him because of this alone, I know.
At first I was especially protective of him, fearing he'd be harmed. But he was incredibly agile and fast, and I soon stopped worrying about his safety. His father gardened endlessly and was always outside to keep a watchful eye-that is, if he had cared to see. But in fact, I noticed that Nick's father never so much as turned an eye our way. Weary of life in general, perhaps, or at least from having raised at least three sons long before Nick arrived, he seemed disinterested in anything but his azaleas and rhododendron.
The next year, Nick played ice hockey, and the bruises and bumps he sported showed he was unafraid to mix it up with the other guys. He was a tough kid, the kind I wish I had been; the kind I hoped my son Brandon would grow up to be. He rough-housed with his friends and didn't mind getting his clothes rumpled and torn or his face dirty. When he wore short pants the purple and greenish-gray badges on his shins and knees showed that he could take a hit, and I imagined he never, ever cried. His hair looked as though he didn't own a comb, but his apple cheeks blushed easily when he was paid a compliment, eyes cast to sweep the ground and smiling like he didn't deserve to be praised.
When he was with his friends he was loud and brash. Laughing, cursing and spitting with the other lads, he was a rough boy who could both take it and dish it out.
But when those friends were gone and he was alone he'd appear out of nowhere and sit with me and talk. Displaying a completely different persona, when he was with me he was suddenly thoughtful and sensitive. He talked quietly and in a different tone, using rich words and complex sentences to describe how much he liked art and music. He wanted to paint his room and mused at length what shade would be best and why. He didn't seem to mind long periods passing by with nothing being said, me sitting on the lawn, him lying on his back on the grass, arm behind his head, one knee raised, staring at the sky with his eyes that matched its hue almost exactly. His voice was getting deeper and his shoulders broader. He was becoming a man but he still had the same boyish mischief in his blue eyes.
There was something happening here. Something between us; and we both knew it. I knew it because of the way I felt inside when he lay on the grass silently near me, the pangs I felt when I heard his father yelling at him for seemingly no reason, Oddly perhaps, I understood and fully accepted the way he completely ignored me when he passed with his pals; I didn't mind at all; without ever discussing why, we both completely understood respected the need for mutual anonymity when he was with his same-age friends.
But especially worrying to me was the feeling I had when I realized I didn't want my wife to know that he had grown to like me and that I was growing fond of him. Sometimes he brought his tape player so I could hear music he wanted to share. As we listened and talked quietly our hands would touch together, and my hand might rest briefly on his calf or on his foot, I could claim it was accidental but it wasn't.
One summer evening late at dinnertime I saw him sitting alone on his front steps, eyes cast at the ground. 'Nick?' I asked 'Did you have dinner yet?'
He shook his head 'no'. His parents had gone on a trip and he was home alone for three days. They had left him food and money for pizza, but he didn't feel like eating any of it. 'Come eat with us.' I offered. My wife had made pot roast, and Nick gladly joined us at our table that night. Brandon, now in kindergarten, was delighted to have Nick in our house. 'Sit next to me?' he chirped, face aglow.
Nick ate like he was a starved man. I was surprised at the amount he put away- and he drank at least three glasses of milk. 'This is so good' he told my wife. 'May I have a little more?' While I was glad to see him eat, my heart hurt for him because even though he had friends, I sensed a deep loneliness in him. He looked into my eyes and smiled. 'Thanks Brad' he said.
After Brandon had gone to bed and my wife did the dishes, Nick stayed for a while to watch TV. He sat near me on the sofa and his shoeless foot strayed to rest near my leg. I patted it, and he moved even closer to me. I reached out to hold his foot in my hand and he didn't move it away. I gently fondled his foot through his sock, outlining every toe and rubbing his sole. I caressed his instep and his ankle. I stroked his bare shin and noticed that though this was the first place a boy grows hair as he was becoming a man, that he still had very little there, just a few wisps.
Then I heard my wife approaching and quickly, instinctively, moved my hand away, but I needn't have worried. He moved his foot away just as quickly so that she wouldn't see. Like me, he too knew that she wouldn't understand and must not see, though we had never shared a word about it. My blood rose with the realization that he too felt something strange, that something less than innocent-feeling must be stirring inside him too.
My wife had long been nagging me to paint the cellar walls, a job I dodged every time she brought it up. The ceiling was low, and worst of all there was a narrow crawlspace that needed to be painted that I could barely fit into. Finally, she came up with a suggestion that made my heart leap at the thought. 'Why don't you pay Nick to do it?' she suggested. 'He's small and agile enough to fit in the tight spots and he'd probably like to earn some money.'
I couldn't wait to ask Nick to do the job. I went up to his house and knocked on the door, and it was answered by his dull father who invited me inside. I explained to him what I wanted, and without allowing me to even finish, he turned to bellow into the house for Nick to come downstairs. I had never been in his house before. I glanced around and saw photos of people I assumed were his older siblings on the walls and tables. A photo of a smiling Nick wearing his red First Holy Communion robe sat on the shelf, and I was astounded as I realized how much he had grown up in just a few years time since then.
Nick bounded down the steps and the glow on his face indicated he was delighted to see me. His dad turned and immediately exited the room, clearly disinterested in being involved in my proposal, leaving me alone with his son to discuss what I wanted done. Nick eagerly agreed and we set the date for that coming Saturday. He arrived right on time wearing torn jeans and a faded t-shirt, a crooked baseball cap on his head covering most of his curly hair. Together we went to the cellar to begin work.
I worked on painting the edges and kept the paint bucket full. Nick climbed into the crawl space and began to work there. We didn't talk much but being alone and so close with him made my mind fill with thoughts of things about him I wanted to know. We met periodically at the paint bucket to refill our pans. I asked him about hockey and school and he provided short answers to my questions. I asked him about his family, calling out that I noticed how his dad seemed not to care much for him, and he looked away and shrugged. It was clear he didn't want to talk about this. 'I dunno what's with him. He is always tired and he doesn't have much patience with me', Nick admitted. I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he shook his head 'no'. He returned to his work and I waited, took a deep breath and then I asked him what I really wanted to know.
'Do you like girls, Nick?'
Looking away from me stopped painting for a moment, his arm frozen in position. I could tell his mind was working and that the right answer wasn't coming easily to him. Then after a brief period of heavy silence he shook his head almost imperceptibly. As I had suspected, the answer was no.
I knew it would be. I sensed in him the same emptiness and pain that was there in me at his age, the pain I still felt presently in the rare occasions when I really was honest with myself. I could tell from so many clues he offered that another non-kindred spirit would have missed, ones his father surely never saw at all. It was the way he talked harsh and tough around his friends, using a surly tone and bad grammar, yet spoke in a completely different, quieter voice to me. The way he let me rub his arm or grip his hand sometimes just for a moment when we were near each other, small lingering glances into each others' eyes that lasted fractionally longer than 'normal' guys will do. But I especially remembered that time a few months before when we had wrestled for the football on the lawn, laughing, scrambling, me trapping him underneath with my size, then allowing him to get on top to wrestle some more, finally collapsing in laughter - then lying cheek to cheek, with him in my arms, our wrestling hold having turned into an embrace as we held each other close for just a few moments, a few moments longer than guys are supposed to, him trembling as I breathed in his beautiful smell, pressing my lips to his hair, his arm clasped around my back then burying his face in my neck and chest... just for a few moments.
There in the dark basement, paint splattered on our hands and cheeks, he had just let me in on his deepest secret, one I am positive he had never breathed to another soul. Staring at a spot ahead on the wall, his brush still motionless, I replied to him.
'I know. Me too.'
We resumed painting and finished the work, and my wife was pleased with the job. I took him to lunch at Taco Bell as a reward, and he ordered a family pack of six tacos and, chattering happily as he ate all of them, I watched and just glowed with warm happiness.
I had found someone else just like me.
******
I didn't ask him any more questions about it because I didn't need to; I already knew all I needed to know. He still acted exactly the same towards me as before, and I smiled inwardly as I more clearly observed his two faces-that tough one he showed his friends and the tender one he exposed to me. I imagined him as a younger version of me, and we both obviously knew the rules without speaking them aloud... keep your terrible secret safe and you can live a normal life. No one else had to know what we knew about each other, because Real Men didn't need to talk things out. After all, I was living proof, married and happy, wasn't I? That's the way things were supposed to work out. There was no need to ever be foolish, lisping, limp-wristed fairies, no reason to be open to anyone else about the bitter poison in your soul. And when the feelings of desire and lust rose to unbearable heat as they sometimes did, the fire could be quelled with pornography and masturbation or a quick liaison with another person you met. There was never any need to talk it out. I could help him learn that, I imagined; help him like no one else could.
Sitting one day on the lawn I asked him if he liked to read hot stories. 'What kinds?' he asked.
'You know, like in Penthouse, the Letters section,' I said.
He nodded. 'Yeah, I like that', he admitted with a shy smile.
I smiled too. I had been introduced to this when as a teenager. I had volunteered to work at the paper recycling trailer at the high school. Stacking the papers people left, I had come across a treasure trove of pornography, dozens of Penthouse magazines. While the pictures of the girls were mildly interesting to me, I found the Letters sections to be especially exciting, as there people often told stories that were twisted and kinky, sometimes with a same-sex theme. I brought home as many as I could safely carry without discovery, and through my later teens I read and reread my favorites again and again, experiencing the thrill in the realization that other people had kinky fantasies too, taking silent comfort that I was not alone in my depravity. As an adult, I again had amassed a small stash of books that contained these types of stories and I kept them carefully hidden, using them to masturbate with when I needed an urgent release.
After we threw the ball around for a while, his mother called him for dinner. He turned to leave, but then turned back and said 'You said you had some books for me?' I was secretly pleased... he was obviously interested in sex and was unashamed that I knew. 'I'll get them, wait here'. I ran into the house and picked a few and hid them in a brown grocery bag for him to carry. I made sure that the one was in there that I liked the most, the one that detailed a story of twin teenaged brothers who became lovers, explaining their sexual contact in graphically explicit detail.
'Thanks!' he called as he sprinted away with his prize. I couldn't help but imagine him later that that night, surely locked in his room and masturbating furiously to the same stories that turned me on; perhaps climaxing to exactly the same parts I liked.
When I saw him a week or so later I asked him if he liked the books. 'Yah,' he smiled. I asked him if he liked the story about the brothers, and he blushed bright red and said, 'I especially liked that one.' I messed up his curly hair. 'You are a horny little dude', I said. He just smiled back at me and blushed some more.
All I wanted at his age was to be understood. Understood, and then accepted. But I knew how unlikely this was, because I knew well by then that my sexual urges were perverted and gross. That fact had been confirmed to me in Boy Scout camp when I was only 13, when I had been caught staring longingly at an older boy getting dressed. Apparently one of the boys had noticed me watching him dress the first night, and the next night they had planned a ruse. Everyone was told to watch me, and the handsome boy was instructed to begin to undress then to move just outside my line of vision. Stealthily, I thought, I climbed down from my bunk to get a better view, my gaze never once wavering from my idol. He was a tall, fair, finely muscled boy who to me was nearly a man. I had never seen muscles on another boy's chest and abdomen like his, and seeing him even briefly nude was a reward I craved more than anything else I could have imagined. I gasped a little as I saw his penis suddenly exposed, it was beautiful and long, bobbing slightly and so much more perfect than I dared imagine. I drank him in aggressively and with all my might since I knew in a few moments it would all be over. But still deep in concentration I was stunned to hear the room erupt around me in laughter and catcalls. Snapping rudely out of my self-inflicted trance, I realized with a knife of horror that they were laughing at me; a dozen sets of eyes trained on mine, tracing my gaze directly to the other boy's naked loins; a dozen boys who had at once all discovered my fatal defect. If I could have died and disappeared I would have, right there. I never went back to Scouts after that.
I never wanted that sort of humiliation to happen to Nick. I wanted him to know he was not alone in the world and that I understood him. I could teach him how to hide using all the tricks I had mastered. No one had to learn he was flawed, especially the terrible way I had been discovered. Since that awful day I had worked hard and learned to play it straight - and things had gone well for me. I could guide him on the same path.
One night when we were set to go out to dinner with another couple, the baby sitter called at the last minute to cancel. My wife was in a panic. 'Call Nick and see if he can come instead' she suggested, and I eagerly dialled the phone. Nick was indeed available, and he showed up at the door moments later. I let him in and sat with him by the TV while my wife dressed.
Completely alone, I knew I could get very close to him, something we clearly avoided when anyone else was present. He sat on the edge of the sofa and I sat on the edge of the chair next to him, our knees touching 'Cool!' he said, spying a new car magazine on the coffee table and he picked it up and started thumbing through it on his lap.
'Let me show you something in there', I offered, sliding nearer to him and turning the book on his lap diagonally so we could both see it. Reaching over, I turned the pages looking for an article I wanted him to see, but I froze the minute I brushed against his trousers. At once, I felt it there, stiff and erect, probing straight up. My breath caught suddenly in my throat and I stopped talking midsentence, my words and thoughts wiped cleanly away.
He left the open book over his lap, and both of us swallowing hard, I began to tenderly feel him there, my hand unable to pull away. He flipped pages of the magazine, pretending to look at the pictures but I am sure that he saw nothing, as his eyes had lost their focus just as mine had. He was wearing Levis 501s over boxers I soon found out, because when I slipped my hidden finger between two buttons of his fly, it was right there, nakedly exposed, poking warmly up out through his boxers' fly. We both drew breath simultaneously at the contact, and feeling around my finger felt the velvet circumcised head, his long straight shaft and the fuzzy patch of silk at its base. He shifted his weight a little, and reaching deeper my fingers found his soft balls, nestled just below. My heart hammered, and as he flipped through the pages I caressed and fondled his penis, feeling every inch while trying to imagine how it looked and how it would feel on my face. I watched as he reached the end of the magazine, and immediately I was intoxicated to see that he flipped back again to the beginning, starting over and giving me more time-and more importantly the tacit permission to explore him further.
'Nick, is this OK?' I whispered with my voice quivering more than I wanted it to.
'Yah, it's OK', He answered quietly.
I wanted to unbutton him, just one button, allowing him to poke free and so I might see the prize exposed, if only for a moment, after all this situation would likely never be repeated: and I'd never again have the chance but I didn't dare, and it was a good thing I didn't since my wife appeared at the doorway a moment later, fastening her earrings and telling me that we would be late if we didn't leave now.
'Nick, there's soda in the refrigerator and the number of where we will be is next to the phone if you need us', she said as she walked back towards the front door. I stood up, patting Nick on the shoulder as I left. 'You are cool' I said to him so only he could hear.
'You too' he said to me.
I don't remember what we did the rest of that night, not where we ate, who we were with, what we did after, what was said. I could only think of him. My thoughts spun inside my head making me disoriented, dizzy and even feeling drunk, I imagined how our relationship might grow, Nick and me, and how lucky I was to have him and him to have me. Without even discussing it he clearly knew that we'd have to keep this a secret and I knew he could. I knew I could keep it together too. After all, look how far I had come. I thought of other jobs at the house he could help me with, legitimate reasons we could be together that wouldn't arouse suspicion.
When we returned home I paid him and walked him home, mostly because I wanted one final word with him alone. 'Are you OK, Nick?' I asked
He seemed nonplussed. 'Sure I'm OK', he replied 'We're good.'
Will you come back again? I asked
Of course he would, he answered. Then he was gone inside his door.
***********************
One unusually warm day that winter, while walking the dog, I saw him in his driveway washing his father's car and I stopped to talk. Slyly I told him that my wife would be out for the afternoon, and I casually suggested that he come by. At first he didn't reply, and in my insecurity I wondered if he was having second thoughts about being friends with me. Then he said he needed to take a shower first. Not wanting him to delay his visit I told him that this wasn't necessary, but he replied that it was very important to him. 'I like to feel clean', he said. I was slightly aroused as I wondered to myself why this was; what he thought would happen that he needed to be clean for, I mused that he wanted to look and smell his best for me, but also considered that he was using this as an excuse to delay his visit or not come at all.
But when her car pulled out of the drive, not ten minutes later he was at my door, fresh from the bath. 'I have a tape of a new song I want you to hear' he said. We put the music on the stereo and sat on the sofa to listen.
I don't remember the exact moves that followed, One minute we were sitting on the sofa, then suddenly reaching out to him we were holding each other tightly, my fingers in his damp hair, his face buried in my chest. I wanted to, but I didn't dare kiss him on his mouth- I was terrified of how he might react. I recalled vividly my own feeling of the taboo, knowing well that I hadn't kissed another guy till I was 19, and before that how horrified I had been at that age by the thought of crossing the line showing mushy affection I perceived as weak and feminine.
But I wanted to see his cock, and I needed to see it right away. Wasting no time I hooked my fingers in the stetchy waistband of his silky sweatpants and pulled. Without hesitation, he lifted his butt up to assist my conquest, his pants coming sliding down to show that he was wearing navy blue gym shorts underneath, and to let me see and feel his long lean and smooth legs.
I felt between his legs and with no surprise I found that he was already aroused and quite erect. Reaching for his waistband of his shorts he met me halfway, pushing his cotton shorts and the boxers beneath them down to his thighs, and I saw it for the first time.
His body was absolutely beautiful. The fair skin of his torso looked like it was hewn of marble, smooth unblemished and with his abdominal muscles defined and rippling underneath. His navel was shallow, symmetrical and perfect. His thighs were slim yet powerful, and at the locus where these elements all joined together was the most beautiful and perfectly proportioned erect penis I imagined I had ever seen, carved from ivory, white as alabaster, adorned with a small tightly woven patch of brown silk at its base, and graced beneath by a set of beautiful round balls that nestled beside each other in their soft sack. I never dreamed that this opportunity would present itself, but here it was. He leaned back, and I positioned myself in front of the sofa kneeling facing him, my chest between his knees. My face inches from his nakedness, I was so close and I felt every inch of what I had only dreamed of ever seeing or touching in the flesh. He felt like velvet, there and all over, his skin was supple and hadn't acquired the leathered toughness that accompanied later manhood. Looking up I saw his flushed cheeks, and reaching up to feel them I was greeted by their downy softness. Looking back at his cock I could watch it and see his heartbeat inside, as it twitched almost imperceptibly with each pulse. I caressed his cock and he twisted under my hand, encouraging me to rub him with friction that he craved. My face so close, I could smell his musky heat from between his legs and feel his breath coming, I could even hear the sound of my palm wrapped around his shaft, rubbing his smoothness close enough that I could have tasted it if I wanted to.
But in just a few moments, certainly less than even a minute, suddenly and unexpectedly he was cumming, squirting his thick white liquid all over my hands and his belly. 'ooooohhhh- ' he moaned, and I was amazed but disappointed that he had climaxed so fast; I hardly had any time to enjoy drinking him in as I masturbated him. 'Ohhh jeez!' he said, and I doubted he had expected to cum this fast. I was secretly thrilled and suddenly highly aroused that my touch had caused him to lose control so quickly. 'Sorry!' he said.
I surveyed the damage. He had made three good squirts, two of them on his tummy one across my fingers that drizzled into his fuzzy patch. Without a second's hesitation I reached out my tongue to taste him, and didn't stop till he was completely clean.
It is in this moment between two guys, especially in a situation like this that the mood is the most fragile, that good feelings can turn suddenly bad. Guys don't mean to be that way, but after cumming something in one's mood changes, and feelings of shame and guilt, even anger can intrude without warning. But Nick just opened one eye and smiled at me, then closed it again. He made no move to cover up, no move to want to get away. 'Sorry dude.' He repeated. 'I can go again, don't worry'.
Turned on beyond belief at what I had just witnessed, I fumbled with my belt, and unzipping I roughly unsheathed my own cock and kneeling an inch from his boyhood, still tasting him on my lips I began to rub myself, grabbing a handful of tissues just in time from the table before I exploded all over myself.
There was a football game on the TV and we pretended to watch, leaning against each other, still half undressed, my hands on his naked cock. Suddenly snapping alert, I recalled that my son was napping, my wife might come home unexpectedly, and what we were doing was in full view of the windows, open to the back yard. I turned to Nick and urged him to pull his pants back up, and he did, though he left them loosely untied, and now and again I would reach inside to feel his penis, mostly just to watch myself do it and prove to myself that he really would let me have him if I wanted, that this hadn't just been a dream.
We sat close together for a few minutes, synchronizing our breathing, bodies close and touching, just feeling each other's warmth. I was in a place higher than heaven. Nick was mine, and everything was alright with the world. As we sat I asked him personal questions that now seemed perfectly appropriate and normal-how often he masturbated, if he had ever been caught and how he had learned. He answered me without shame, asking me a few questions of his own in return.
Reaching down between his legs, I found him hard again (or maybe still hard from the first time?) inside his shorts, and just a few moments later, again with his willing help, I had turned him to face me and stripped his pants down again, this time below his knees. Laying him back on the couch I kidded him 'Think you can hold out longer this time?' He laughed. I loved him.
He let me have my way with him, he tasted of sex and clean soap and water, and as much as I'd like to but can't vividly describe within the rules of this site, I caressed him in the most sensual ways, not only using my hands, moistly, hot and wetly for almost ten minutes, backing off and easing up every time he seemed to be getting close, till I finally pushed him over the edge and, with fingers in my hair he at last exploded with a groan. I knew what I was doing, and I knew that I had pleased him. Again, he lay shamelessly naked for me to survey, and I admit that I did, watching his cock sleepily deflate, finally sated, only temporarily drained of its energy. I smiled knowing that we'd only need an hour before we'd both be ready again, but I knew that I was already pressing my luck.
'Cummon tiger' I urged with a gentle nudge in his ribs. 'Zip up. Someone might be looking for you.' And truly just a few minutes after Nick left, little Brandon awoke from his nap and soon thereafter my wife pulled into the drive.
Sex with my wife was never better than after I had been with Nick. My batteries were recharged, my pilot was brightly lit and the furnace was stoked white hot. I tried not to think about the fact that my sexual urges were fired by him, instead I congratulated myself on being a better husband in bed as a result. I felt no guilt at all being with him either. Why, other men cheated on their wives with whores and with dangerous romantic liaisons. I simply had a young jack off buddy who satisfied my needs. I assumed it satisfied his too, though I never really asked him how he felt; I just assumed as long as he was still speaking to me that we must be cool.
Our meetings weren't frequent, and I congratulated myself on this too. See, I reasoned, I could control myself very well! I didn't 'need' him every day or even every week. But when I did need him I imagine felt like a heroin addict going through cold turkey. I couldn't think of anything else but him; my temper grew short and my attention was consumed with schemes of how to get together with him without arousing my wife's suspicions. By now she had noticed something odd in the way we acted towards each other, I think. She was a sharp observer and a quick judge, and whatever it had been; her attitude towards him had changed. 'I don't think you should be with him. He should be around boys his own age, she had said. My blood pressure rose quickly with indignant anger, and I almost said what I really felt, that I was indeed nearly a boy his own age, at least almost. But I knew better and stopped myself short. True, while nearly ten years separated us on the calendar; they were important years. In that period I was married with a family, while he had yet to go out on his own. So I said nothing; certainly not promising to heed her warning, only resolving to myself only to be more careful in the future so she wouldn't see him with me.
One Sunday afternoon I heard a knock on the door, and it was him, standing and smiling. I was so glad to see him my heart leapt for joy. I had been in the garage washing my car, and as I answered the door and he came in to tell me his father wanted to borrow a tool I had, a device that could pinpoint the location of wall studs through the plaster.
'Sure,' I said, 'come in and I'll find it.
He followed me down the cellar stairs, and stood behind me as I rooted through one drawer after another looking for the tool he needed. I found it and turned to him with it held in hand, and was surprised at how close he was standing to me. I reached the tool towards him, but I embraced him instead of handing it over. I hugged him close, hard, desperately, and he lowered his head to burrow it into my shirt. 'Oh my God, Nick.' I whispered. 'How I've missed you.'
He didn't say a word as I turned him to lean against the table saw's workbench. Resting back on his elbows in a pile of sawdust he spread his feet slightly, and pushing up his hooded sweatshirt and kissing down his chest I finished by kneeling in front of his waist. I pulled at his sweatpants and he didn't resist at all, allowing first them, then his boxers to be roughly pulled down, exposing his beautiful cock which hardened quickly in front of my eyes. No words were spoken as I rubbed his throbbing cock, exposing and pulling mine at the same time. His eyes were shut, his teeth gritted, and I knew he was trying to hold back his orgasm, but I wanted none of that. Fondling him roughly, jerking him rhythmically, staring at his cock intently, I wanted to see his climax. I didn't have long to wait, as he, leaned his head back, shifted his feet almost losing his balance and let out a gasp of breath and a grunt as several thick ribbons of sperm gushed out across my hands and wrist and onto the floor. I groaned myself with guttural lust as I felt my own climax coming. I kept my eyes fixed on his wet and dripping cock as I jerked harder and harder till I felt my own explosion ignite and detonate below.
He looked like an angel to me, disheveled in his untucked flannel shirt, pants around his knees, sawdust in his curly hair. Still leaned precariously backwards, I helped him with his balance, stood him up and helped him pull up his pants and I held him in my arms. 'Nick I missed you so much' I said. He held me in return, and I kissed the top of his head.
I guided him back up the stairs, making sure he had the tool he had come for, and I asked him to stay for a while. 'I can only stay a minute' he said. 'My dad is waiting for me.' I knew he needed to go, but I didn't want him to. Sitting on our usual spots on the sofa in the family room I explored underneath his shirt with both hands, feeling his velvet chest, small taut nipples, rippled abs and playfully pulling at the small damp tufts of hair that grew under his arms.
'I should go,' he said just a few minutes later, and I agreed, walking with him through the garage out to the driveway.
'Bye Nick,' I said softly. 'Come back again, OK?'
******************************
If you've been reading for the thrill and excitement of it, I'll advise you to stop right now, and not read even one paragraph further. For it is here and now that the consequences of my actions caught up with me. My life has never been the same since.
***********************
Just as he turned to go, at that moment my wife's car pulled into the driveway. I busied myself polishing a bumper, but I could feel her gaze on the back of my neck. Calling me aside from the door inside just a few minutes later, she demanded to know why he had been there. I told her that he had simply stopped to say hello and to borrow a tool and hadn't even been there a minute. She disappeared again, but after he had left and I went back in the house, like Colombo at his best she confronted my explanation with one damning question after another.
'Was he in the house with you?' she demanded to know.
'No', I lied.
'Oh, Is that so?' She accused. 'I noticed a lot of sawdust on the sofa cushions, the same as was all over the back of his sweatshirt', she said. I was speechless... I had been caught in a bald-faced lie and I knew it.
'So he was here on the sofa, but first you were in the basement together with him, right?' She correctly concluded. I stammered like a mute idiot, blood draining to my feet, unable to contrive a lie that would pass my lips.
'And I suppose you have no clue about that stuff splattered all over the floor by the workbench? She hissed, eyes narrowed, teeth unfurled, the word 'STUFF' spit from her mouth like a lethal dose of venomous, bitter poison.
'Huh?' I said weekly, slumping like a coward where I stood.
Her eyes flashed with fire.
'I know exactly what you did, you pervert. She screamed. He's only a boy!'
'No, he's eighteen' I said feebly, as I practically admitted right there and right out loud that what she had guessed was completely true, feeling like I would throw up, my heart thumping like a hammer so hard I feared it would leap through my shirt and once dismembered from my body stop dead. I felt the overpowering urge to pee like a coward would. I had never ever contemplated this might be my end.
*******
Allow me a short epilogue.
I have read comments submitted by readers that applaud the erotic nature of the daring, dangerous and unwise things done by contributors to this site. A VERY few letters have thanked the writers who pointed out what really can happen when their 'solo' passion becomes an open, shared risky activity.
I had earlier said I'd never share this story, and in fact it took me three years of trying to actually put it down in writing. I'd start then stop, then read what I had written and destroy it in disgust for how I sounded, in some cases pathetic, in other versions arrogant and defiant, yet with me always coming across somehow like a victim, when in fact I had caused my own defeat. Like a blind dog who shits where he eats, I was suddenly overcome by loathing and disgust in the discovery of my own filth, because I had truly never seen it before that moment.
The end of this story marked my turning point. It took some years, but I eventually learned that I needed to accept my sexual orientation for what it was (see 'Accepting Myself Was Not Easy', link above) because I was not straight and never had been. I pinpointed that moment in time on my sixteenth birthday where I convinced myself I needed to turn straight to survive ('Falling Hard for My Straight Friend Ryan'), and the place where my practice of living a double life first began just before my 19th birthday. ('Teddy, Tad and Me'). Going all the way back to the start I now know I was only five or so I was when I realized I was not like other boys and that my perverse sexual desires needed to be hidden if I was to get along in life (My Earliest Recollections).
After my wife discovered my infidelity (and that's what it was, without question) things changed for me in nearly every aspect of my life. It would have been one thing to find her husband involved in a romantic relationship with another woman, an attractive co-worker perhaps. But to find him in a tryst with another male- a neighborhood boy barely entering adulthood-that would be hard for any woman to absorb. Another woman she might comprehend. But a guy? The incomprehensible scope of her dismay and distrust of me based on this outrageous discovery had shaken her to the core. I lost any status and standing as a partner and equal I had with her.
Once unmasked, my daily life at home became a living hell. I was not trusted to be alone, even to take care of my son, and I thrust myself into therapy mostly out of confusion and fear of losing everything I thought was important to me.
You might shrug and say 'So what-so now that he finally realized he was gay so he should just leave her and start over.' But as odd as it sounds, that wasn't what I wanted. As crazy as it might seem - at that turning point I was STILL unwilling to accept my sexual orientation; I looked at this as yet just another hurdle to overcome. I still wanted to be straight and 'normal', still believed this was possible. But most of all I wanted to be a father to my sons every day of their lives growing up, not an absentee parent who saw them a few hours on weekends. And as strange and unbelievable as it sounds, I really did (and still do) love my wife.
You may be wondering what happened to Nick- and I can honestly say I do not know, and this is one of my greatest regrets. With the perspective of hindsight, I want to make some observations on him, and on my relationship with him, mostly filled with sadness.
Nick was very probably gay. I don't know for sure, but as blind as my sense of moral direction had been for much of my life, my sixth sense about others' sexual orientation was rarely, if ever, wrong. I felt familiar recurring electricity when he was near, a feeling of deep connection, of kindred affection, a deep but unspoken understanding of his feelings and thoughts that I still, today, I could try but not properly put into words for you. Sure, I was sexually attracted to him. Who wouldn't be? He was cute and adorable, athletic and hot and quite willing. But more than anything I regret that instead of being able to talk with him about his feelings and his probable sexual confusion, I very likely compounded it immeasurably by making him my lover. In my brain-addled state in those years, I truly can say I didn't know any better, but looking back now I can only imagine what the experience and its aftermath was like for him. I wish I could apologize to him.
Though in years we were not so far apart, ten years is quite a gap at that stage of life. Yet emotionally we were probably exactly the same age; I had never allowed myself to grow and mature regarding my sexuality. I was stuck; fixed close to age 15 in my mind. I connected with him so easily because we shared the same teenage-rooted values and ideals. I might have been a decade older but I was certainly no wiser than he was about life.
All Nick likely knew for sure is that he simply never saw me again. I became a recluse, no longer playing ball, not washing the car or walking in the neighborhood with my children (we had two sons now). Nick must have noticed my sudden disappearance from the face of the earth immediately following our last encounter, and I am sure he concluded that something bad had happened directly because of it, and if I can wonder further, he was probably full of fear as a result: afraid of being exposed to the world as a depraved homosexual himself and accused of something evil. I seriously doubt he told on me to anyone, not because he wanted to protect me but if only because he would never have wanted anyone to know that he was visiting me for sex, and our once-fun secret doubtlessly had become a dark worrisome, heavy and nagging burden to him; that whatever happened somehow he was at fault, that my sudden lack of contact spelled rejection that meant I didn't like him any more, that I must totally hate him to so suddenly avoid him.
Gay teenagers have enough doubt and shame of their own inside that they don't need the assistance of an irresponsible adult like me to pile more shit like this on top of it.
In these past fifteen years since this story took place I have learned that my twisted ideas and dangerous acting out was based in my inability to accept and love myself as I was (as I still am) and that my lack of honesty with myself had compromised almost every aspect of my self.
Once I accepted myself, I was eventually able to surrender to my demons and finally start to live an honest life. There are certainly those of you who have read much of what I have contributed here over the years and would scoff at my claim of honesty; that while admitting I am gay yet I remain married to my wife; the mother of my children. I could not hope to explain that circumstance without another page or three or four, and few would want to read it here if I took the time. Let me just say that I have learned that there is much more to life than just sex, and that I love her dearly in so many ways I cannot imagine my life without her companionship. I am lucky that she sees our circumstances the same way and has given our relationship another (albeit unlikely) chance to succeed and grow. It wouldn't work for most people, perhaps, but it works for us.
There's a final twist almost incredible twist to this all that I want to share with you before I close. Brandon, grown into a strapping, handsome and totally masculine boy told his mother and me six weeks before his eighteenth birthday that he too, prefers boys and not girls. After his mother got up off the floor and ranted privately to me for two hours about 'my defective goddamn genes' and other such stuff, she has come around quite well. As for me, I've mentioned my sixth sense for these things several times, and I'll admit that Brandon's revelation didn't surprise me at all. Starting around the age of him being five or so, I had always strongly suspected. I can even go so far to say I already knew, though I had no proof till now. I am hopeful (but also fairly confident) that his life from his late teens forward will not mirror mine in any way.
Life is a journey, and it is what you make of it. My journey, at least today, is on the right road.
Posted on: 2018-02-07 16:00:01 |
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