Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 09:10:12 +0100
From: ben erikson <benhere23@hotmail.com>
Subject: Growing Up in England: My Summer with Carl. Episode 1: A Refuge.
    June-August 1976

June 17th 2001
ben erikson: benhere23@hotmail.com


Growing Up in England: My Summer with Carl

A story by Ben Erikson

Episode 1: A Refuge. June-August 1976

It had become one of my favourite places ever. In three months - one of my
favourite ever. A refuge, a place of adventure, a second home almost. Which
was convenient since my first home was right next door where I lived a
normal boring life with my parents, though my Dad was rarely there. Why a
refuge? What was I hiding from? My parents loved me. I knew that. They
looked after me well and didn't mistreat me. They were solicitous of my
emotional needs, made sure I got regular sleep and didn't overdose on Mars
bars, took me to the zoo and, occasionally, the cinema and the very
occasional spankings I'd endured had been so lovingly administered that
they left me more giggly than contrite. I probably deserved them too. God's
truth, I was about the most well-adjusted boy in my class at school. I was
really happy sometimes. Sometimes sad and angry and bad. Mostly just
getting on with it. Normal. Boring. Then I met Carl.

He had moved in next door in June and seemed to spend his days making
exquisite furniture in the basement, sensitive abstract paintings in the
otherwise empty garage and playing the piano. He was almost 18 and thinking
what to do now he had finished school. His parents had set him up in the
ramshackle property that bordered ours and which had been empty for nearly
two years and sat back hoping against hope that they were doing the right
thing. Carl was one of those lavishly gifted youths who actually chose to
let his talents flourish only in private. He had zero ambition. He was
happy as could be.

Ours was a swift courtship and, on my part at least, a most active
one. Soon I had Carl teaching me the strategies involved in chess and
backgammon, how to hold a brush and to play a boogie-woogie bass-line. I
was spending most of my holiday sitting on the floor of his bedroom trying
to handle his guitar and posing self-consciously for him to sketch my
profile. We painted a bathroom together, drinking glass after glass of
Cherry Cola in the hot afternoon and putting brushes down only to pee, me
first with a modest tinkly trickle then Carl with massive splashy
abandon. I began staying over at night, sleeping in Carl's enormous bed
when I got tired, with only enough energy to kick off my shoes and sling my
short trousers into a corner and lie there in my T-shirt, socks and
underpants between the single sheet and one thin blanket. Carl painted his
pictures all night in the garage, climbing dog-tired into his bed at 4.00,
5.00 or 6.00 o'clock, checking on me, that I was well asleep and covered up
and easing his naked frame next to me and falling asleep in seconds. Often
I'd wake first and lie there, still as I could be, watching Carl and
calling him awake by sheer willpower, the rousing music of my loving
gaze. The first few times, he'd see my face intent on his and stutter his
eyes half-open, roll onto his back and sigh his lovely, deep and,
apparantly, meaningful sigh and check his watch. It didn't seem to matter
what time it was, gone 8.00 or 10.00, (one day he kicked me out at
half-past six - I had to wake my Mum to let me in to my own house!), he'd
sigh again and say:

"Time you were off, little boy" or something like that and pull me up,
gather my discarded socks and trousers for me, dump them on the bed and
head downstairs to find his door-key. He was totally unselfconscious about
his nakedness in front of me and I'd watch him bend to collect my shoes,
his strong, thin body, tight, hard buttocks, the dark passage briefly here
exposed, his wild and shocking mass of pubic hair, his thick and bulging
penis, which swayed heavily with a seeming life of it's own and drew my
eyes, my mind. One time he woke to find me cuddling his back, still dozing
greedily. He shrugged me off, groaned once and turned his body round to me
and with his long, strong hands grasped my buttocks and pulled me close to
him. His hardened cock nestled and grunged against my Y-fronts, lifting up
my T-shirt. Gratefully, I pressed him back with mine as best I could,
although an erection was beyond me. I'd wanted this since - well, probably
since I saw him first and now my mind circled somewhere up above the bed,
eyeing through the blanket this extraordinary act. Before Carl, I'd never
seen a grown man's penis, not up close and least of all, erect. Nor realised
the sweet power of it's sticky grasp of life.

Already, it had become one of my favourite places ever, a refuge, a place
of adventure, a second home almost. My Mum loved him. She thought he'd
erected a camp bed for me in his downstairs living-room, a glass of milk
set on the floor.

One night in mid-August I sat up for hours watching him add small detail to
a silvery lunar landscape that covered most of one wall. Sustained only by
Cherry Cola and the comfort of being such an accepted, silent presence, it
was not until nearly 2.00 in the morning that I collapsed into Carl's
bed. He was still working in the garage, wouldn't return to the house until
about 7.00 o'clock, just a few minutes after I woke up as it turned out.

In any case, I woke up with a start. I knew straight away where I was but
didn't know quite what had woken me. Only that something had. I felt good
enough, tired, but not sick or anything and I didn't want to pee. The
sudden warm sensation already cooling onto my thighs alerted me at once and
the enormity of the situation hit me. I pulled up the blanket and felt the
sheets and mattress beneath my legs. I knew straight away why I didn't want
to pee - it was way too late for that. I felt under me in large panicky
swipes with my hand and immediately wanted to cry. Just to sit there, lie
there in my pooling shame and cry. I had pissed what appeared to be the
entire contents of a litre bottle of Cherry Cola onto Carl's bed. Not even
just onto it. Into it. Into it's very fabric, it's structure. The timber
frame was probably already beginning to rot, the metal screws eaten away by
my all-devouring torrent of pee-pee. My underpants were a write-off.

I leapt up already breathing hard and considering my options. I could sneak
out somehow and avoid Carl for the next, say, 10 years. Maybe go
abroad. Stowaway on a ferry, get to France or Spain and ...

The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs jolted me back to a weird sort
of clarity and I immediately improvised a rumpled no-stains-showing
arrangement with the blanket and stood waiting nonchalantly for Carl to
arrive. He came through the bedroom door and looked at me as if he'd never
seen me before. I was breathing hard and barely holding down the hysteria
but, I think, pretty cool under the cicumstances and with a 50/50 chance of
getting away with it.

"Have you peed your pants?" he said, perceptively, looking right at the
yellow stain which covered my sagging Y-fronts.

Such sudden discovery caused a complete moral collapse in my heart and I
ran for the door, not able to look him in the face. Only three people in
the whole world knew I wet my bed on occasion. Me, my Mum and Wasim, a
younger little boy from my school whom I had somehow been singled out to
look after. He's stayed the night once. We'd put a spare bed up right next
to mine (a glass of milk set on the floor)and life was sweet except it was
that night I was wet for the first time in weeks. But I knew that he would
never tell anyone. Listen, I just knew, OK?

Carl came down a couple of minutes later with sheet and blanket bundled
up. He carried them straight past me to the kitchen where he stuffed them
into the washing machine and left them there. By now I'd got over the
crying - I'd sobbed noiselessly but very wetly and with lots of runny snot
- for about 30 seconds and then got a grip of sorts. I wasn't completely
over it. I wasn't exactly clear-headed. I wasn't yet responsible for my
actions. I was 10 years old for God's sake. I wasn't legally responsible
for anything. Yet there was no getting away from the one action I clearly
had sole responsibility for - the depositing in Carl's bed of copious
amounts of my very own pale, yellow-staining, no doubt
slightly-cherry-flavoured piddle.

"Blow!" he said. He was holding out a large white handkerchief. I took it
and cleaned up my snotty face. He watched me intently for what felt like a
long time even though I'd finished blowing and wiping and had handed the
stained rag back again. He looked drained and unable or unwilling to
move. Eventually, he folded it into the pocket of his jeans.

"Come on, then" he said, wearily. "Let's get you cleaned up properly"

He pulled me by the arm and guided me from behind with a firm hand on each
of my shoulders. As we approached the hall he gave my bottom a light tap.

"You know where to go. I'll get some towels"

I made my way to the shower room and sat on the stool in the far corner
whilst Carl busied about in the linen closet.

"Things off" he called from behind the door but appeared with the towels
before I'd had time to do much more than get my socks off.

"Come on Benj. Get a move on." I was used to his jokey scoldings and the
twinkle in his eye that usually accompanied them but this time he seemed
genuinely annoyed at me or just plain weary of my presence. You can't blame
him. I stripped off, draping my rather smelly underpants over the radiator
while he got the water going and tested the temperature. He might scold me
but he'd never scald me. I stepped into the shower area. It was a walk-in
arrangement like a public swimming pool with room for two or three at least
but only the one shower head.

"Alright?" he asked. Still sounding a bit pissed off at me. I just nodded
and concentrated on watching the water cascade down my chest, reach my
shrunken willie and splash out round my feet. I kept my hands at my sides
and my head down.

"Over here." Again, a brisk command rather than the usual gentle coaxings I
loved so much to hear from Carl and which I would do anything to earn. I
had gone into myself a little and evidently hadn't moved fast enough for
him, for he grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the other side of the
shower area away from the water.

"Hands out" he said.

I looked at him blankly and for a moment I had the idea that he was going
to smack me over the hands.

"Benjamin. Hands out!" I did as I was told and he poured the shampoo
carefully into my cupped fingers.

"Go on, love. Give your hair a good wash." I think the "love" was to make
up for calling me Benjamin rather than Ben, Benj or Benji. There was
clearly hope of a peace treaty here. But it was early days and I calculated
my best course of action was to do as I was told and keep quiet. The
numbing effect of the hot water had worn off and my brain had started
working again.

Whilst I rubbed shampoo into my hair, Carl took a large dollop of shower
gel in his long powerful hands and without a word began soaping me,
starting on my right leg around the knee and downwards, very thorough, very
methodical. Then up again, cupping both hands round my thighs and rubbing
vigorously up and down, each stroke bringing his hands nearer to the
underside of my barely emerged scrotum. He then repeated the operation on
my left leg. His clothes, already smeared and flecked with different
paints, were now spattered with water and soap suds.

"How're we doing?" he asked, softening his voice for the first time. I
still thought it prudent to keep quiet and didn't want to talk much anyway
so I just caried on massaging my scalp. I was getting a fine old mop of
white soapy suds. Carl bent down and very tenderly edged some soap away
from my eyes. The delicacy of his fingers always amazed me, knowing as I
did just how strong his hand could be. Carefully and very lovingly he
massaged round the most sensitive parts of my face, pausing only to play
the extreme tips of his fingers over my Summer freckles. His face was very
close to mine and there was something truly adult about his breath, his
grace, his tired gaze. For one second, half a second, he kissed the end of
my nose, something he knew I liked and I relaxed again.

"OK" he said, straightening up. "No more messing about. Lets get this boy
clean!"

The tone was brisk and business-like again but lit up from within with a
barely concealed smile. Very much his usual voice, in fact. His usual voice
with me anyway.

He began again with some gel on my chest and arms. I put my arms up and let
him soap me all along and under. Then he rotated me sideways and began
massaging my lower back with his left hand and my stomach with his right. I
had still a bit of puppy fat in those days and he patted me gently to see
it wobble. Then it was straight down to my bottom and penis which he rubbed
with tremendous vigour up and down and around. I felt a ghostly spasm of
hot joy as his fingers work around what he called my "little acorn", and
with the pressure of his hands on front and back of me I began bulging
straight away, although my penis was still very small and
little-boyish. Carl grabbed it and gave it quite a squeeze which shocked me
a little. He then pulled me back into the shower to rinse off.

"Right. Bend over" he said. I looked up at him a long second, trying to
calculate how hard a smack, how many, my wetting his bed would deserve. But
he had that lovely, light-filled grin on his face and I knew right away
that I had nothing to worry about.

"Just this once", he said, "I'm sending you home to your Mum a good deal
cleaner than when you arrived."

He bent me over gently and with his long index finger traced the path of my
crack from my lower back to right under my sac, making sure it was well
cleaned out. He kept this up a bit, getting more forceful each time until
the tip of his finger penetrated my rectum on it's final approach, just
long enough to make me shudder with pleasure. Then it was water off and a
thorough towelling down. I ended up sitting on his knee wrapped in his
giant-sized bath robe, my penis now as fully erect as I could remember and
not bad, I thought, for a ten-year-old. Again he gave me a fond little kiss
on my nose and again on my cheeks. He murmered quietly now.

"I'll give your Mum a note about your underpants so she'll know they need
an extra good wash."

I looked at him appalled with a tight knot already forming in my stomach.

"Carlie..."

The "Carlie" I reserved for special pleadings only.

Carl burst out laughing.

"Of course I won't, you sausage. Leave them here. I'll wash them and you
can pick them up tomorrow. We can't have your Mum thinking I'm kidnapping
her baby and performing unspeakable things with him can we? Even if it is
true."

We both laughed. This was a fantasy we had built up one bored afternoon.

"Seriously though, Benj. I don't know how long you've been wearing those
pants but you probably needed clean ones yesterday at least. Doesn't Mummy
do laundry anymore?"

I aimed my second-hardest punch at his arm. Apart from his widening grin,
it appeared to have zero effect although maybe, in a way, it did. All the
energy seemed to go from him at once.

"Go on. Get dressed. I've already had enough of you for one day".

He set me on the floor and paused long enough to see me sweep open the robe
and reveal my erection just as it began to wilt slightly.

"And you can cover that up for a start" he laughed as he turned and left me
to get dressed.

"And no playing with yourself!" he called up. "I'll talk with you
downstairs."

As it turned out, Carl was too tired to give me whatever "talk" he'd been
planning for me. He simply held me before I left and kissed my nose one
last time.

"I really don't care, you know." He whispered. "Really. And I won't tell."

He hadn't needed to say that last bit. I knew he wouldn't. Listen, I just
knew, OK?

By the time I had slipped away from his front door, I'd worked out a
plan. I'd go back home, get my Mum to make me breakfast, feign illness and
spend all day in my own bed. Playing with myself as much as I liked.