WARNING:

This story contains descriptions of sexual acts involving a man, a teenager and two MINOR boys. Such descriptions are an integral part of the story. While the story may appeal to prurient interests, it is intended to have serious literary value. As a friend once said: "Everyone has the right to fantasy. No one has the right to censor an imagination, or dreams."

With that in mind, know that this story is not true, although it is based on fact and some real events! Further, it is not intended to promote illegal acts against minors, but to demonstrate that men and boys can love each other despite the prevalent attitudes of western society. It is my goal to help readers appreciate that love. The sexual acts described in the story are the result of my imagination. I have not performed these acts, and I do not encourage others to perform them with minors. If the subject of man/boy love offends you, if this material is illegal in your place of residence, or if you are under the legal age for such material, do not read further!

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"... you implicitly declare and affirm under penalties of perjury that you are not a minor or in the company of a minor and are entitled to have access to material intended for mature, responsible members of society capable of making decisions about the content of documents they wish to read...."

The story is copyrighted under my pseudonym, Ganymede. A copy has been placed in the Nifty archives for your enjoyment. The story cannot be used to derive monetary gain. The story cannot be placed in archives that require payment for access, or printed and distributed in any form that requires payment either directly or indirectly.

Any similarity to individuals, living or dead, is entirely accidental. Reference is also made in context to movies, characters, and actors that have become part of modern western culture. No other implication about the true sexuality of the people mentioned or their private lives is intended.

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way.....

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True Blue by Ganymede

Chapter 2

Blaine’s house was two streets away from where I lived. It was further back from the water, but it was higher up the hill so it still commanded a wonderful view. By the time we arrived there it was late enough for dinner, not that I was hungry after eating birthday cake. Dr. and Mrs. McIntyre were also into the ‘let’s celebrate Allan’s birthday’ mode. We barbecued short-loin-lamb chops, which had to be one of my favourite foods even if I had grown up eating lamb every other day. At Brindajari, lamb was about all we ever ate. Some years, there were up to 20,000 sheep to choose from.

It was still light enough for us to play outside, and warm too, because even at nine o’clock, the temperature had only begun to drop from the afternoon high of 93 degrees. Blaine and I wanted to play cricket on the lawn, but Dr. McIntyre was adamant. We needed to be in bed, given the early start we were going to make the next morning. And so, the ‘under-twelve galahs’, as he referred to us, were sent off to bed. Blaine still had ten more days to go until he couldn’t be included. Me, I had another whole year.

Because he was the youngest in the family, Blaine’s bedroom was located above the garage. The view wasn’t very good. It was mostly of the street and driveway. Blaine’s bedroom was private, probably more private than an eleven-year-old boy needed. He almost never closed his door. That night, he did. I didn’t give it a second thought.

Like my bedroom, Blaine’s bedroom was a large room, but it was mostly given over to a Lionel train-set that had originally been his brother’s. The model railway was very detailed. It was based on the region around Loch Lomond. There were bridges over the shiny painted water and the train track even went through tunnels in mountains made of plaster and wire mesh. We played with the trains for a while, until it was impossible to put off going to bed any longer and not risk his father’s wrath.

“Blast! My bag’s still out in the car,” I grumbled.

Blaine turned around from the train-control set. One of the engines was backing down a siding, pushing half-dozen carriages.

“So?”

“My pyjamas are in my bag?”

“So sleep in your undies. I’m going to.”

Wearing underpants was as good a solution as any, considering that the last thing I wanted to do was to go out to Byron’s car and retrieve my duffle bag in the darkness. I glanced sideways at Blaine’s bed. It was a single bed, big enough for one boy, but it was a tight fit for two. We’d shared his bed, and mine too for that matter, any number of times. Not that we got much sleep when we slept in the same bed. Staying awake was part of the fun of spending the night at each other’s house.

“Or we could sleep in the nud, if you wanted to,” he added cagily.

That got my attention. Of course, it was why he closed his bedroom door. He smirked at me, his eyes meeting mine before he looked away again. The seed had been planted in my fertile mind. It would not be the first night that we’d been naked in the same bed, but until then it had never started out that way. Sometimes it took an hour of giggling, talking in whispers, and playing games before our pyjamas found their way to the bottom of the bed. My heart raced, but I wasn’t at all sure why. I wasn’t a prude, not after spending nearly half of my life on a sheep station. However, I wasn’t as uninhibited as Blaine. A boy didn’t grow up with two women telling him what to do constantly and not have a few inhibitions.

Blaine manipulated the control panel of the train-set, bringing another train out of the siding and onto the main line. I watched it travelling around the track, thinking hard. Blaine was having trouble not smiling. It took two to tango, and the ball was in my court. Our relationship was based on that. One of us suggested something and the other person had to agree. This time, it was more than just going to bed without clothes on. Both of us knew that if we were naked we wouldn’t fall asleep for a long while. We would end up playing with our penises for an hour or more. Agreeing to sleeping nude, also meant agreeing to doing that as well.

To be honest, the idea of being naked with Blaine always sent a shiver of excitement through me, just as the thought of where our hands would stray once we were lying in his bed. However, it was more than shiver. It was a thrill that made me tremble. It didn’t make a lot of sense. I had seen him naked lots of times. I knew his penis almost as well as I knew my own. I should have been used to it by then. Suddenly, my answer came. I didn’t want to sound too eager.

“In the buff?”

“Yeah…. If you want.”

It struck me then, that Blaine was also trying to sound as if he wasn’t interested, as if it was a last resort or a reasonable alternative to going outside and retrieving my things from his uncle’s car. The only problem with that was his voice seemed to quiver with excitement the same way that mine did.

“Um, I suppose I might,… if you do,” I said hesitantly.

Maybe, I sounded too reluctant. Blaine regarded me for a few seconds. It wasn’t enough. Without meaning to I had put the ball back in his court.

“It’s up to you. Unless you’re chicken,” he suggested slyly.

“I’m not chicken. I said I would if you did it too, didn’t I?” I replied awkwardly.

In a way, I was trying to make sure that Blaine was really serious about us going to sleep naked.

“Boys, it’s time to get ready for bed,” Dr. McIntyre shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

It was the excuse that we both needed, a momentary hiatus to what had become a confusing flood of thoughts and feelings. I was torn between doing something that I knew to be wrong, yet at the same time knowing full well how much I would enjoy doing it. If we did sleep naked, we would begin right away by playing our usual games. It was impossible not to be excited by the mere thought of doing that.

Blaine’s bathroom was just down the hall. We went in together, taking turns to use the toilet to urinate. Some perverse inhibition required that we didn’t look at each other, almost pretending that the other person wasn’t there.

“I knew I should have gone out for my bag. I don’t even have a toothbrush,” I said.

Silently, almost sulkily, Blaine found a new toothbrush in the cupboard over the basin. Having made the suggestion that we sleep naked, he suddenly seemed uncertain that he actually wanted to follow through. We brushed our teeth, still not looking at each other, not even in the mirror. The strange thing was that I wanted to see him naked almost more than I could stand. Again and again my eyes darted to the mirror only to look away again. Blaine was definitely a very good looking boy. There were freckles across the bridge of his nose like there were on mine, but mine were lighter. His eyes were intense, thoughtful, almost sombre if I didn’t know him better. He seemed to be worried about something.

Until that moment I hadn’t realised just how much I looked forward to the times when we were alone. We always took advantage of the opportunity to touch our penises. Doing it came naturally to both of us, although it usually was with some awkwardness at first. However, the awkward stage seldom lasted longer than a few minutes. Inhibition never lasted very long once we were in the mood. Then, we both appreciated that ‘wanking’ together was one of the reasons why a boy had a best friend in the first place. Sometimes we even joked about ‘rubbing each other’s dongs until they were sore’.

As I studied Blaine’s profile, I couldn’t help thinking of everything that had happened that day. In particular, I thought about how Bruce had looked at me in the car on the way home from school. As brothers they shared the same nose shape, the same strong jaw, the same unruly hair. It seemed as if both of them were my best friends even though I was nervous whenever I had to speak to Bruce.

That night, we brushed long enough to make a dentist delirious, both ignoring each other. I dare say that we were both very excited by the prospect of spending so much time together, but it came at a price. I kept thinking that it was too good to be true. I expect that there was some sort of reluctance we both felt, not only because I was intruding into Blaine’s life further than ever before, but from a guilty compunction, if you will, of what that prospect offered. It was unsettling, knowing how close we already were. Beginning that very night, if we got into bed without pyjamas, we would become even closer.

I finally caved and grinned at him. Blaine nodded, and raised his eyebrows to pretend he was surprised that I would do want to do such a thing, as if sleeping nude was my idea all along. Then, he grinned back at me. Playfully, he tugged at my new board-shorts, implying that he would take them off me whether I wanted him to or not. I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. There was nothing to be ashamed of, not when Blaine was my best friend. We were mates again. We rinsed our mouths, gargling loudly and for as long as we could, finally breaking into spluttering giggles when the competition was close to coming to an end. Spit and bubbles covered most of the basin and the tiles behind.

“Last one back to my room’s a rotten egg.”

We bolted from the bathroom, running at full speed and pushing and shoving for any possible advantage until we were back inside Blaine’s bedroom, the door closed behind us. Alone, together, giggling, watching, waiting for the right moment. To make the situation even more momentous, I had never gotten into bed totally naked. It was a big step for me.

Suddenly, we both grinned. We mouthed the numbers, ‘3’, ‘2’, ‘1’, and then our shorts and shirts were on the floor and we stood facing each other, both knowing that what we were about do when we got into bed would be far more than we had ever done before. There was a bulge in Blaine’s underpants. They were plain white cotton with a blue ‘Bonds’ waistband like mine, the universal Australian underwear for boys.

“Well?” He smirked, not really looking at me. Casually, he licked his lips.

“Yeah.” I nodded, very eager now. My heart was beating hard and fast, but it wasn’t from running from the bathroom.

“We both take our undies off at the same time, right?”

I nodded. Our eyes met. There was no need to count to three. I watched him breath, the rise and fall of his bare lean chest. Blaine didn’t tan as easily as I did, yet he was already brown from spending weekends at the beach. His eyes sparkled, as animated as I had ever seen him. The sadness I’d seen earlier had vanished. My hands moved slowly, so did his, delaying that final moment of exposing ourselves, although our underpants barely concealed what was underneath. Observing the bulge in Blaine’s underpants, like the bulge in my underpants only served to heighten my excitement even further. Then, both of us looking intently, we took hold of our underpants and ever so slowly pulled them down. Not with hesitation because we were so used to undressing in front of each other, but because this was a premeditated display and it was supposed to be savoured. It was a private strip-show, both of us moving at the same speed, lifting out the waistband an inch or two, then descending gradually until our penises came into view. We were both erect, but that was nothing new.

With out underpants about mid thigh, we stopped and stared, taking in each other’s genitals. We’d measured them before, often enough to know that Blaine’s penis was getting close to four inches, 3 7/8” to be exact, while my penis was all of 3 ½ inches. That three-eighths of an inch wasn’t very much, but it wasn’t worth disputing whose was bigger. It was obvious that Blaine’s penis was bigger. While they were nearly the same length, his penis was quite a bit thicker than mine. However, he seldom voiced the obvious difference because we were best friends.

“You got a stiffie, Allie.”

“Uh huh. I do, but from the looks of it, so do you,” I rebuked.

Now grinning, he pushed his white ‘Bonds for Boys’ underpants down to his knees, then all the way to his feet. I did the same a second or two later. We stepped out of them, leaving them where they lay. We were both naked, sexually aroused and shamelessly exposed to another boy. At that age there really wasn’t anything to be ashamed about, but there was even less because we were best friends. Our bodies were firm and lean because we surfed every weekend and we both played on Edgecliff’s Rugby league team during the winter. I was a wing, while Blaine was the lock. Both of us hated cricket.

Before that night we always saw each others’ bodies in an innocent way, sometimes with a silent appraisal of a summer’s tan, or of a developing muscularity, but it was without showing more than a passing interest. Mostly we made a game out of being naked, sometimes by wrestling and pretending we were unnamed super heroes from our favourite comic books, or showing off by posing in Mr. Universe competitions. That night, being naked together for the first time in more than two weeks, we stared at each other with very different feelings. That night it was sexual from the outset, plain and simple. It was if we had finally grown up and lost interest in pretending. My penis twitched instinctively whenever I gazed at Blaine’s bare brown body.

“I think your little friend down there is ready to play,” Blaine observed. “He’s doing jumping jacks.”

“Yours is too.”

By then my heart was doing jumping jacks inside my chest. Somewhere along the way Blaine had taken to referring to our penises as ‘little friends’ because we played with them so much.

Blaine nodded in response. His eyes hadn’t left my crotch in nearly a minute. It was like we were seeing each other for the first time. His hand closed around his erection and he levered it down.

“Hey, guess what Allie-cat? I’m starting to get hairs. See,” he pointed down proudly.

“Well they’re pretty small if you are, Blainey.”

I looked, of course. What boy wouldn’t look when his best friend claimed to be getting hair around his penis? It was true. They were tiny, but they were unmistakably there. There were half-a-dozen faint brown hairs, straight like little eyelashes, scattered among the downy colourless fuzz that was concentrated at the base of his penis. Yet, as obvious as they were, even more noticeable to me was the size of his testicles. They had always been bigger than mine, but now they were even bigger. They were even bigger than the last time I had seen them, and that was only two weeks earlier.

“Yeah, maybe,…” He grinned, taking his time to find the right insult. “So they’re tiny, but you’re still as bald as a bandicoot.”

It wasn’t an understatement, although bandicoots really weren’t as bald as the colloquialism suggested. My legs were very smooth compared to most boys. There was a faint scattering of silvery down below my knees to prove I was a mammal, but that was about it. Certainly there was nothing noticeable around the base of my penis, nothing like the little hairs like Blaine had. I couldn’t take my eyes away from my best friend’s groin. His penis stuck straight out perpendicular to his body. The head of his penis was swollen and bulging. When it was like that it always looked a lot bigger than mine. No question about it, it was definitely a lot larger.

“What are you perving at?” Blaine asked. His voice sounded strange, challenging yet inviting me to keep looking.

“Nothing. I think your nuts look bigger, that’s all,” I said with another uncertain glance.

Blaine looked down, moving his hand from his stiff penis to cup beneath his scrotum. He examined himself, seemingly oblivious to what he was doing as he fondled each egg-shaped organ through the skin. Like that, cupped between his fingers, they didn’t seem nearly as large.

“Yeah?” He glanced up at me, smiling slightly. “You’re right-on. My balls are bigger. You know something? They’re supposed to get bigger when you start making spunk,” he said imperiously.

He hadn’t told me that before, or if he had, I forgot.

“Bull dust!” I countered.

“Nope, not this time Allie. Remember that class my dad took me to? That’s what they said. It’s one of those things that’s supposed to happen when you start puberty. Your balls get to be like twice the size or something like that.”

“Dead cert?”

“Yep. Everything gets bigger down there. You ought to see Bruce.”

“Huh, what about Bruce?” I ascertained cautiously.

“Man oh man, Allie, you wouldn’t believe it. His nuts are huge,” Blaine smirked. “And his donger? Geez. I reckon you’d cark if he whacked you with it.”

We both giggled. Suddenly, I wanted to know more, a lot more. Mostly, I wanted to know more about Bruce. Whenever he wore shorts, the bulge underneath was unsettlingly large. Behind his back, Blaine and I called that part of him ‘Jumbo’, and usually appended ‘dick’ to the end of it.

Although I tried to pretend otherwise to Blaine, there was always a strange thrill I got from looking at the one place on his body where I wasn’t supposed to look at. For as far back as I could remember, it seemed that when we compared penises we were close to being the same size in length, if not the same thickness. And then for no reason at all, Blaine’s penis started to grow. Visual inspection was supplanted by a school ruler and size suddenly became important. For the past few months or more, I accepted that his penis was bigger because he was nearly a year older, but I never understood why it grew faster than mine. Of course, it had something to do with him growing up, but beyond that, I was clueless. I would have given almost anything to know then what I know now.

That night, there was something else that I wanted to know about. I had to find out whether Blaine could do the one thing that made a man different to a boy. I shouldn’t have been so nervous because we often talked about it, but the very possibility was disconcerting.

“Okay, so if your balls are so big why can’t you spunk?” I blurted out.

He grinned. “Okay, so I can’t, at least not yet I can’t, but I bet it won’t be long before I can. I reckon I’ll be making spunk by the buckets pretty soon.”

Looking at Blaine’s testicles and realising that he would soon be able to do something that I could not do was both unsettling and thrilling at the same time, but I was also so envious I could barely stand to think about it. Comparing his balls and mine was like comparing peanuts, with and without their shells; single ones, not doubles. My testicles were tiny little things that clung to either side of my penis in a way that caused the bottom of my scrotum to hang in an ostensibly empty fold. By contrast, Bruce’s testicles hung lower, suspended in an hourglass-shaped pouch that reminded me so much of Menzies, the cattle dog at Brindajari. The image was so ridiculous that I nearly laughed. Menzies’ balls were so low that they could bounce back and forth between his legs. Any lower and they would have dragged on the ground, which was the basis for a lot of jokes by the shearers when they came to work.

Without saying a word, Blaine pulled back the bedspread and rearranged the two pillows so there would be one for each of us. I went over to the door and turned off the light when he was done, then hurried back to get into bed. All of a sudden, I wanted to feel Blaine’s body against mine. He pulled the sheet over us, then lay on his back, gazing up at the faint shadows that danced on the ceiling. His parents, uncle and older brother were still sitting outside, at the table by the side of the swimming pool. They were still talking loud enough that we could hear their muffled voices through the open window. I lay beside him, thinking wonderful thoughts about my surfboard and about spending three weeks surfing. Without warning, I started thinking about Blaine being naked beside me. Both of us were waiting for the right moment, hopeful that it would occur before we fell asleep. We didn’t have to wait very long before his parents and uncle came inside the house and silence returned.

It was then that Blaine’s hand lightly brushed my side. I felt his fingertips walking down, touching the ridge of my hip, then rubbing gently, getting closer and closer to my belly. I responded to the invitation, just as I was supposed to. I caressed his bare flat belly. It was like touching satin. He was so warm and sleek that I would have wanted to keep touching him even if he told me to stop. His skin was soft, like mine. I felt the gentle rise and fall of his ribs when he breathed, the muscles tightening in his belly, becoming firm and then relaxing. There was the irrepressible movement of life just beneath his skin. My fingers grazed the depression of his navel, paused momentarily while I reflected on that difference between us. One innie, one outtie. Then, I continued down. We were both headed in the same direction, just taking our time getting to the final destination.

Blaine’s fingers stroked cautiously along my thigh, inching around to reach towards my groin. My upper leg moved back, leaving that part of me exposed, wanting, needing him to touch me there. It was the one place where he wasn’t supposed to touch me. Of course, after a year of nearly constant sex play, we were a long way past the guilt stage and well into the ‘never tell’ stage. His fingers touched the side of my scrotum where the skin was so soft it had almost no feeling. He wriggled closer, turning onto his side to face me. Both hands grasped at the same time. I felt the familiar surge of excitement. I should have been used to it by then, but I wasn’t. My heart jumped as Blaine’s stiff penis filled my fist, as my penis was grasped and squeezed in return. His penis was hot and hard, and throbbing. It was alive with the energy of boyhood, demanding to be held, caressed, stroked. It was a purely instinctive pleasure that boys could only give to their best friends.

Our movements reciprocated expertly. We were always very gentle at first, taking time to savour the initial sensitivity. His breath was tantalisingly warm on my cheek. His hand closed tighter, squeezing. I pushed gently against his hand, and in return I squeezed the hard hot penis I held. He backed away, then pushed forward as well, pushing his penis through my clenched hand. I did the same, only not moving nearly as far. It wasn’t because my penis was shorter. I wasn’t that keen on having it rubbed, especially when it was tightly held. Blaine compensated for what I missed in friction by squeezing it tighter, especially on the end. That was what I liked the most. No movement, just pressure. Then, we did it again, not smoothly but with the agitated jerk of young bodies that were simply too responsive to stimulation. We quivered, breathing suddenly, wanting more. Then, both together, instinctively moving with cautious thrusts. The bed squeaked in protest. We stopped, both of us being very close to being breathless in less than half a minute.

“You do me for a while, Allie. Then I’ll do you, okay,” Blaine instructed boldly. His voice rasped, trembling with emotion.

Our usual practice was to take turns for a while. For one thing, it made it last longer and it certainly aided concentration, but it was also more fun that way. The unspoken rule was that he always went first, but it was couched as an offer. He released his grip on my penis, rolling onto his back again. His arms supported his head, stretching out his chest and belly until the skin was as tight as a drum. I sat up, leaning over him. I could barely make out his penis in the dark, but there was a roadmap imprinted in my mind. I caressed the squat hard penis that was offered to me. The thick, unyielding stiffness was soft and hard at the same time. It flexed and pulsed beneath my fingers, sending shivers of excitement through me. My fingers glided slowly up and down, moving along the swollen organ the way that Blaine liked most of all. My fingers fluttered, teasing. He sighed after only a few seconds. It was quickly followed by a gasp. His body tensed, immediately straining up to meet my hand. It was pleasure in itself, watching Blaine’s joy begin to build. I rubbed my forefinger back and forth over the plump swollen head and delighted in making him squirm around. I did it until he groaned. By then he was barely able to keep from pushing my hand away.

“I need a rest…. Now I’ll do you,” Blaine croaked.

I lay back down. He sat up, cross-legged, concentrating. He took my penis in one hand, tickling with his fingers. The other hand came from underneath, cupping my testicles. His right hand began to move in the way I loved. Two fingers braced against a thumb. Short strokes just beneath the head, mostly pinching, barely rubbing. The skin was too tight to do much else with it. There seemed to be a lot more skin on his penis to play with. Neither of us knew why it was that way. It was simply another difference between us. His other fingers fondled my testicles, prodding and rubbing until I brought my knees together. I wasn’t ready for it to end. His hands moved away. He grinned gleefully, enough that I saw the white of his teeth. He was a boy bent on enjoying life to the fullest. It was one of the things I adored about him.

“You want to do something really terrific?” he whispered.

“What?”

“Something,… It feels so much better than wanking that you won’t believe it.”

“What?”

“You have to say you’ll do it to me too, and promise never to tell,… and then I’ll show you.”

He was nervous and excited, and it was infectious. He grinned again, relishing his position of control. He was always the teacher when it came to sex. He knew me well enough to know what I would say. His eyes shone in the darkness, his pupils black and fully dilated. There was nothing that I would not do for him. He didn’t need me to promise. Whatever he asked, I would always willingly do.

I thought for only a few seconds. I nodded.

“Say it,” Blaine hissed.

“Okay. Yes, I’ll do it to you,… and I promise I’ll never tell,” I finished in a rush.

“Okay,… All you have to do is lie still and close your eyes.” He giggled softly. “And,…”

“What Tugga?”

My special name for Blaine always got a smile. We grinned at each other because some things were special. If it was not for him I would not have had a best friend.

“Don’t make a sound, okay, no matter what I do.”

I nodded. It was so dark that closing my eyes was unnecessary, but I closed them anyway. He leaned over me, taking my quivering little erection back in hand. For a moment I felt his breath on my belly, then,… It felt exactly like he was kissing my belly.

I barely heard his muted whisper. “I can’t believe how smooth you are, Allie. Your skin feels just like a baby’s.”

He always said something like that whenever we were alone and our clothes were off, yet this time what I heard was something else. There was a different tone to his voice, an envious tone. The way he said it that made me think what a strange thing it was for him to comment on. Usually, he talked about how tight the skin was on my erection, but not this time. He sounded envious. Compared to me, Blaine was positively furry, although it was more like fuzz on a peach. I couldn’t help being the way I was and neither could he.

And then, the unbelievable happened. I really didn’t expect him to put my penis in his mouth. Indeed, I would have been content just to lie there and let him stroke my lower belly. There were no preliminaries, no exploratory licks or kisses in the immediate area, nothing to give the game away, or to give me a chance for second thoughts. Certainly, there was no hesitation on his part, although doubtless there would have been on mine if he had come right out and told me what he was going to do. Most boys are the same way when the subject of cock-sucking first comes up.

It happened suddenly. It was the most incredible sensation that I had ever felt. It was hot and wet, soft and firm, all at the same time, an incredible thrill of being enclosed in something alive. After a momentary panic when I realised what he was doing, I was overcome by a feeling of utter contentment. I was also stunned into inaction. I didn’t do anything except suck in air. His lips slid slowly down the shaft of my penis, while his tongue followed close behind, swirling around and spreading saliva. His chin bumped against my testicles, pressing them down and out of the way. He didn’t stop until his lips were at the base of my penis and it was entirely contained in his mouth. It was all the way inside his mouth, and it felt hot and slippery, and I wanted it never to end. It was the first time for me, but not for Blaine as I came to realise later. He knew exactly what he was doing. He sucked gently but firmly, drawing the energy out of me as I lay there in a daze of disbelief.

His fingers felt along the root of my penis and settled over my testicles, squeezing them gently while his head began to nod up and down. All of my thoughts were concentrated on a single thing. ‘Blaine is sucking my cock’. ‘He’s actually sucking it’. Up and down. He bobbed his head, never very fast, always a gentle rhythmic motion as if understanding just how much stimulation I could take before I lost my mind or passed out. He used his lips, his cheeks, his tongue, his entire mouth to give me the most incredible feeling that a boy could ever have. He suctioned my penis, sucking his cheeks in, using his teeth carefully to scrape ever so lightly at the junction of my glans and shaft. He spent long wonderful minutes nibbling on the most sensitive part of my body. His tongue poked at a slit that was far too tiny to admit anything within. His silky long hair brushed by my lower belly again and again, tickling, but not at all unpleasant. He turned this and that, always keeping part of my penis between his lips. His nose kept poking like his fingers into my testicles, nuzzling the moist loose skin. Then, he stopped.

“Shush. You drongo! You want my old man to come in?”

I gulped. Had I been making noise? I took a deep breath, not believing what I had been feeling. For the last few seconds my penis had felt like it about to explode.

“You like that, don’t you?” he whispered. “Feels pretty darn good, huh?”

I nodded, realising that it was everything that Blaine had said, and more. I wanted his mouth back, his tongue swirling around my rock-hard throbbing penis.

“If you want me to do it some more you’ll have to stop groaning!” Blaine grinned again.

“Me?”

“You were making enough noise to wake the dead.”

I nodded, hoping that he would go back to finish what he had started.

In the darkness, I could barely see his face. However, I could tell by the shape of his cheeks that he was smiling.

“What’s so funny, Tugga?”

“Nothing.” He turned towards me. “Promise you won’t tell?”

“Promise.”

“I know how to make it feel even better.”

“Huh?” Make what better? Surely, he couldn’t be talking about what he’d been doing? There was no way on earth that anything could feel better than that.

“It’s kind of dirty,” Blaine said enigmatically. “You might not want me doing it.”

“Doing what?” My voice crackled.

For a moment, he hesitated. We stared at each other in the darkness. It only added to my anticipation of what he would do if I agreed. Then, without warning, he changed his mind.

“Maybe later on. You do mine for a while, Allie,” he demanded.

“You want me to put it in my mouth?”

“If you want to.” He meant ‘yes’, of course, because that was what I had promised to do.

Until then, putting Blaine’s penis in my mouth was the last thing that I could imagine doing despite agreeing to the contrary. Yet, in that moment of truth, I realised that was exactly what I wanted to do. It didn’t seem dirty or wrong. It was simply something that I needed to do. I tried to reason that he was my best friend, and after what he had just done to me, there was no reason why sucking his penis should be any different to,… well his finger. Or my finger. I swallowed, trying to decide what it would taste like, hesitating because I didn’t want to appear too eager.

“Well?” He sounded a bit impatient, but after what I had just experienced that was only to be expected. I would have been impatient too.

“Okay. Okay, don’t shit a brick, Tugga. I’ll do it.”

Blaine grinned gleefully and repositioned himself on his back, knees drawn up on the bed so his thighs were wide apart. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the classic ‘how to get your cock sucked by your best friend’ position. I licked my lips, thinking ‘how am I supposed to do it?’ I could just make out the shape of Blaine’s penis. It hovered above his belly, as stiff and straight as a finger, not much longer, only thicker. Much thicker.

“Just do what I did to you, Allie. But watch your teeth.”

I nodded awkwardly, coming to a sitting position that would allow me to lean over him.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked impatiently.

“Nothing.”

His penis jumped. His scrotum was pulled up tightly underneath. I had to do something. Anything! I licked my lips and came forward slowly, watching the thing I was supposed to put inside my mouth. He did it to mine. How bad could it be? It would probably taste like pee, whatever that tasted like. There was only one way to find out. With that thought uppermost, I came closer and closer until I couldn’t see it. I closed my eyes, opened my mouth wide to make sure I wasn’t going to touch it with my teeth. I wasn’t prepared when it bounced up and brushed against my upper lip. I jerked my head away before I realised that the sensation was anything but unpleasant. It was soft and warm, tantalisingly so. I glanced back along Blaine’s belly. He nodded agitatedly, encouragingly.

“You promised, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He was still impatient, but he was so good a friend that he was giving me a way out if I chose to take it.

My heart was pounding. I was released from my promise. Instead, of pulling back I shook my head. Slowly, I came closer again. This time, instead of opening my mouth, I kept it closed. I touched my lips to it, feeling the silky heat of his penis for several seconds before I dared to move. Cautiously, I inched towards the head. There, on the very tip it seemed to become even hotter. My lips traced the contour. There was no smell beyond something that was entirely nice. I extended my tongue so it barely protruded beyond my lips. There was a slight taste when my tongue made contact, but it was not at all what I expected. Nothing bad. It was sweet, not sugary sweet, but,… I couldn’t decide.

“It tastes funny, Blaine.”

“Strewth! Of course it tastes funny. It’s a dong, you dummy, he whispered back”

I giggled. It wasn’t bad. It was strange. Sweet, yes, that was it. Sweet, like a taste that was supposed to be in your mouth.

“Shush!”

“Sorry…. What do I do now?” The taste lingered in my mouth. There was no getting past the fact that I liked the taste. At that instant, I was hooked for life on the taste of a young boy’s dick.

“Geez! You moron. You put it in your moosh and suck it.”

I giggled. Instead of putting it inside my mouth, I did the next best thing. I licked the side. The taste was immediately stronger, overpowering any reserve that remained. I kept licking all the way up until I reached the bulbous little head. I licked that too, but instead of returning down the short hard shaft, I opened my lips and let it push inside. It went only as far as the head, because my lips pulled in behind the flared rim. Intuition took over. My cheeks pulled in and I sucked on that tender morsel of Australian boyhood. It was good, oh so good. It was deeply, intensely satisfying in a way that I had never dreamed possible. Mind-boggling. I pushed my tongue onto it carefully, moved it around, nibbled with my lips, felt it growing even harder.

Blaine twitched. “Watch the teeth.”

Had I bitten him? I opened my mouth even wider, vaguely thinking of my dentist saying ‘open wide’. I sucked. I licked. I totally forgot to bob my head. I concentrated on that little ball of swollen flesh. Finally, Blaine’s silence got to me.

“Am I doing it right?” I asked anxiously.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t stop!” Blaine hissed back.

“I’m trying to be careful.”

“You’re doing great. Do all of it, Allie.”

It was all the encouragement that I needed. I brought my head down again, licking my lips, opening wide. Like Blaine had done to me just minutes earlier, I took his penis more than halfway into my mouth. There, I stopped, holding it between my cheek and jaw. Instinct took over. His penis slid past my teeth as I pushed down. I kept my lips wrapped tightly around the pulsing shaft. Then, further. Further and further down his penis until it was pushing hard against the inside of my cheek and my nose was burrowed into his scrotum. His hands rested on my head, holding me there. I felt him trembling underneath me. Gently, he guided my head to lift away. He stopped when my lips reached the groove that separated the head of his penis from the shaft. Neither of us moved. My heart was pounding. All I could think of was that I was sucking Blaine’s cock. It was as much as I could manage at the time. Finally, I managed to breath through my nose. After a few seconds we stopped trembling.

“Oh yeah. Do it like that!” Blaine whispered.

Down again, this time by myself. It was reassuringly easy the second time, easy except for the thoughts that filled my head. It may have been my best friend’s penis inside my mouth, but I’d heard enough playground jokes to know what I was doing. I was doing something wrong. I was doing what poofters did, even if I wasn’t at all sure why it was all that wrong, not when it felt as nice as it did.

The problem that all boys face when they first take another boy’s penis into their mouths quickly became very evident. I couldn’t stop. It felt so good. Blaine’s penis had become slippery and it glided back and forth every time my head bobbed up and down. After half-a-dozen times of going down as far as I could, it became a competition of sorts, trying to see how much of his penis I could get inside my mouth. It didn’t take long after that to realise that if I wanted to get all of it in, it had to go between my teeth and not against my cheek.

The next time I lifted up, I tilted my head slightly and opened wide again. I lowered my head very slowly. It felt strange because all I could feel was his slimy penis sliding between my lips. Then, it bumped against the roof of my mouth and my lips were pressing into his newly appeared pubic hairs, and I knew I had all of it inside me, all precious three-and-seven-eighths of an inch of it.

“Use your tongue too.”

The next time I lifted off, I licked back and forth over the bloated head of Blaine’s now throbbing penis. I sucked hard on the head, all but chewing on it, swirling my head around and around over it. I had a vague image of myself doing it. It was just like sucking a piece of hard candy on a stick. Finally, he gasped. I pushed down, swirling my tongue over his penis again and again. Almost immediately, he groaned. His muscles tensed, straining to hold something back the same way that I had done. His body suddenly lifted up a few inches, slamming his erection back into my mouth. It pushed my tongue out of the way. I kept sucking, trying to grip the base of his slippery organ with my equally slippery lips. Then, I realised what he wanted was for me to move my head. Up and down, paying special homage to that part of his body that had become essential to my life. I trembled as I crouched over Blaine, aware that his hands were clutching my head, that his body was jerking up and down, that his lean thigh muscles were standing out. I barely heard the muted whisper.

“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

The last thing I was going to do was stop. From personal experience, I knew it was better than wanking, infinitely better. Nothing could compare. Nothing! Up and down, trying to maintain a semblance of rhythm despite Blaine’s increasingly frantic lunges that jabbed his penis deeply into my mouth. By that point, I didn’t need further instructions. I kneaded his testicles relentlessly, just as he had done to mine. He twitched and writhed, groaning so loud that he finally put his hand over his mouth. He was close, oh so close, to getting the feeling that all boys strive for once they know that it exists. I could feel it building inside him. It was making his body jerk erratically and become tense. His penis grew even harder, impossibly so, harder than when we masturbated each other. Without warning, his body arched up, lifting my head with it, pulling it down forcefully with his hands, ramming his penis into me. Between my lips I could feel it pulsing, jerking, as Blaine strained up against me.

Then, just as suddenly, he flopped back onto the bed, shaking with the last of it, those final orgasmic shudders that drained a boy’s strength, if temporarily. Blaine pushed my head away, yet his hand stayed on it, keeping me beside him with his fingers tangled in my hair. Only then, did I notice the strange taste, just slightly tangy, a little bit like soap. It was no more than a single droplet, perhaps not even that, yet what I tasted was overpowering in a way that a person can only understand if they’ve had the same experience. The taste of a boy’s first ejaculation is utterly unique. And in a second or two, the taste was gone, and with it, the perplexing realisation that something very special had occurred, but I didn’t know what it was.

Neither of us spoke. Slowly, our breathing began to return to normal. Our pounding hearts eased. The trembles disappeared. I was left with a single nagging thought. My best friend’s penis had been inside my mouth. That was all I could think of, although it wasn’t in those terms, rather, ‘I sucked his dick’. Blaine silently stroked my hair, panting as the excitement slowly faded.

“Oh man!” he wheezed. “Allie, that was the best ever.”

His hand moved to my shoulder, pulling me to lie down beside him. His arm wrapped around me, drawing us closer, until my crotch was pressed into his bony hip. We lay still, each thinking about what we’d done.

“Does it bug you, what we did?” Blaine whispered.

“Uh,…” I gave up trying to think it through. The ramifications were simply too foreign. “No,” I said simply.

“You don’t think it’s weird? I mean think about it, Allie. We’re in the buff and lying in bed together, and we just,… you know?”

I shrugged, not at all sure of what to say, even less sure of what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t about to suggest that perhaps we were ‘poofters’, but that was what Blaine seemed to want me to say.

“Not really. We’re best friends and all.”

“What about?.... You know,” he asked. He sounded timid, not at all like the daredevil boy who I had grown up.

I licked my lips, licked where his penis had been. It seemed that I could still taste his penis, that warm sweet boy-taste that I’d suddenly come to like.

“It doesn’t mean we’re poofters or anything like that,” Blaine said awkwardly.

He had said what I was thinking. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure of anything. “It doesn’t, right Blaine?”

Bruce gave a slight shrug. “Search me.” He smiled. “Hey, you want a hear a joke Byron told me earlier?”

“Uh huh.”

“What do you call a cross between a poof and a dinosaur?”

“Don't know,” I said uncomfortably.

He grinned. “A mega-saur-arse. Sore arse? Get it?”

I smiled weakly, not quite getting it, but not willing to admit it. Then, suddenly, the light went on and I tensed, because like any boy who'd just completed a year in the company of sixth grade boys, I knew what poofters did to each other.

“Then what does it mean?” I asked awkwardly. “What we do,...”

“Nothing, Allie. All we ever do is have fun.”

“What about?....” I licked my lips. I couldn't say it.

“It's no different. It’s just like if we wanked each other, except we used our mouths. So what if we sucked each other’s cocks. It was fun wasn't it?”

“I guess.”

“The only thing different is you can’t tell anyone,” he said carefully.

“Who would I tell?”

“I don’t know. Your mum, maybe.”

“Get off the dunny, you boofhead.”

Blaine giggled. His hand moved between us, gripped my penis again, squeezed it with his fingers, but not as tightly as before. It was soft and floppy, but it still felt good to be held like that.

“Your mum’s not going to know you when we get back.”

“Huh?”

“After hanging around Bruce and me you’ll be speaking ocker like some westie.”

“True blue mate,” I answered with a fair imitation of a Parramatta accent.

We both giggled. The western suburbs of Sydney were a different world to the one in which we’d grown up in.

“Hey, man, you want to know a secret? It sort of concerns you,” Blaine added guardedly

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Don’t tell Bruce I told you, okay?”

I nodded. My mind went over all the possible things that could involve Bruce. I couldn't think of anything that involved a secret.

“My brother thinks you’re really spunky,” Blaine said boldly. He smirked and gave my penis a firmer squeeze. “I bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

“Huh?”

“He thinks you’re really, really spunky,” Blaine said teasingly.

“I h-heard you.”

“It's true.”

“Whose on the dunny now?” I said dryly. “You're full of crap.”

I stared at the ceiling for a while. The shadows were gone. The nervousness was back. I glanced back at Blaine. There was just enough light entering from outside the room to see his face. It didn’t make any sense at all for Bruce to say I was sexy, because that was what spunky meant.

“It is true, you know,” he said quietly. I could tell that Blaine wasn’t joking. “My mum says you’re a cutie-pie all the time. And my dad, he thinks you’re Beaver Cleaver with blond hair.”

“Bugger off!” I said with as much irritation as I could manage.

Blaine giggled. “You’re sounding more like me every day.”

“Go bite your bum.”

We both had trouble suppressing our laughter at that one.

“Shush,” Blaine finally managed to get out. “I’m not joking you know, Allie. He really does think you’re spunky.”

“Yeah, a dork, more like. You’re full of it, McIntyre.”

“You want to know something else? He’s happy as Larry you’re coming with us. It was a bit iffy there for a while, ‘cause your mum wanted you up at Brindajari for Christmas and Uncle Byron could only go while the factory’s closed down for the holidays. It took forever for my oldies to convince your mum to let you go with us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cripes! Mum told me she’d knacker me if I let it get out.” Blaine grinned and pushed his pillow back under his head ready to go to sleep. “Listen, I promised Bruce I wouldn’t tell you, so don’t you tell him.”

“You’re making it up.”

It didn’t make any sense at all, yet, deep down inside me I wanted it to be true. I wanted Bruce to like me. I wanted Bruce to like me as much as I liked him, from a distance. Up close, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. Then, he always made me nervous. He was a way of making me feel insecure. However, saying that I was ‘spunky’ made no sense at all.

“Am I?” he sounded exasperated.” It’s fair dinkum, Allie.”

“How do you know?”

“Promise you won’t tell him I told you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Scout’s honour?” Blaine teased.

It was a joke because neither of us was a scout. When all of our friends were cub scouts, it was something of a point of pride between us not to be. Yet, I would have joined immediately if Blaine wanted to.

I grinned. “Yeah, scout’s dishonour.”

“You mean it right?”

“Whatever you say, Akela.”

Blaine smirked. “Okay. Here’s how I know. See, I walked in on him while he was wanking.”

“No way.” Bruce was seventeen. “Seventeen-year-olds don’t do that!”

“Uh huh. He was in the bathroom, Allie.”

“Bruce was really doing that?”

“Sure. He does it just like how we do it, except he shoots it out everywhere when he’s done,” Blaine said gleefully. He pulled on my penis, stretching it out so that it was twice as long and half as thick. It looked like a worm after rain.

“So he w-wanks. So w-what?” I stammered.

“Guess what he was looking at while he was doing it?”

“Dunno. So tell me.”

“He had that photo of you when your cossie nearly came down. Remember? The one my dad took of you in the pool a couple of weeks back?”

“S-s-so?”

My face felt hot. I was blushing. My Speedo hadn’t come down far enough for anyone to see anything that should have been covered. It wasn’t embarrassing in the slightest, yet the idea of Bruce looking at it while he masturbated disturbed me. Bruce had looked at a photograph me while he did that? It made no sense that Blaine would make it up. My penis started to become hard again. Nervously, I pushed Blaine’s hand away.

Blaine nudged my shoulder in the dark. “What are you being so snarky about then?” he asked abruptly. “You afraid Bruce’s trying to crack onto you or something?”

“I’m n-not,” I said, equally abruptly. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. There was no sense to any of it. Moreover, I didn’t understand why Blaine would say something like that. “I’m tired and we have to get up early.”

Chapter 3

The next morning came too quickly. It was still pitch dark in the room when I started to wake up. Gradually, I became conscious of someone sitting on the bed. I was lying beside Blaine, I could feel the heat of his body. Then, a voice talking very softly, shaking Blaine. After a while, he whispered something back. Then, silence. Once again, the bed moved next to me. I closed my eyes and slid back into sleep.

Those last few minutes of sleep were disturbed, fitful, interrupted by movement in the bed. I was barely aware of Blaine wriggling about, his efforts to avoid laughing out aloud from being tickled. At least, that was what I thought was happening. It didn’t make much sense. I turned over. A minute later, I stirred again. Beside me, Blaine suddenly groaned and trembled, and I felt the shift of weight beside me when he arched his back. He was right on the edge of orgasm, straining to achieve the second ejaculation of his life, but I didn’t realise that at the time. I wanted to be left alone, even though the bed rocked and Blaine’s bare leg was burning hot against mine.

I grumbled something, incoherent words from a slumbering boy who didn’t enjoy being woken up in the middle of the night. I was nearly obvious to Blaine’s erratic jerking, but not so much that I wondered why he was so hot under the sheet. It seemed like he was squeaking too, but it only lasted for a moment, then endearing words in a silky murmur, finally becoming quiet again. In seconds, I went back to sleep, forgetting everything, barely hearing the excited murmur of their voices at something unexpected.

“Allie, wake up mate. Allie! Come on, wake up! Get up time! Rise and shine.”

I realised someone was pushing gently yet persistently on my shoulder. Blaine’s father? It sounded like him. I yawned, rolled over. The sheet was down at my knees. There was light coming through the open door, enough to see that I was naked, that it wasn’t Dr. McIntyre, but Byron who was smiling down at me.

“Good morning, birthday boy. Time to get up and get on the road,” he announced cheerfully, too cheerfully for that time in the morning. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen enough boys in their birthday suits to last a lifetime, haven’t I Blaine?”

It took several seconds for his words to sink in. I was born at 1.00 p.m. so I really wasn’t eleven, not for another nine hours or so. Only after that, did I realise that he was looking down, straight to where I was bare, to where my penis was hard and pointing to my navel.

Blaine giggled distantly. “I guess.”

“Don’t worry about that either, Allan,” Byron laughed suddenly.

“Huh?”

“As I see it, mate, if a boy’s dong isn’t doing push-ups when he wakes up there’s probably something wrong with him. I’m surprised Blaine still doesn’t have his as well, but I reckon a perpetual stiffie is a thing of the past for him now.” Then, he smirked.

All of a sudden I became aware that Blaine was no longer lying in the bed next to me. Vaguely, I wondered how long Byron had been sitting beside me. Long enough for Blaine to get out of bed and start getting dressed. He had his shorts on and he was working on a tee-shirt. And then there was the bigger question. It was hardly momentous by any stretch of the imagination, but most certainly it was embarrassing to me. How long had my penis been standing up? It was so hard that it throbbed. It was never like that unless I played with it for a while.

“What time is it?” I murmured awkwardly.

I tried to push the sheet higher with my foot, but it was too far down the bed. There was nothing I could do to hide that gauche, all-too-obvious part of my body short of sitting up and pulling the sheet up or putting my hands over it. Luckily, Byron looked away.

“Nearly four am. I think the best thing would be for you two boys to get in the car and go back to sleep for a few hours. We’ll stop for breakky around eight or so, I think.”

Blaire nodded in agreement, yawning sleepily.

“I’ll put on some clothes,” I mumbled. It was very dark outside the window.

“Probably a good idea. If you go out like that we’ll have the neighbours complaining about nudie boys at the McIntyre house. Byron winked at me and got to his feet abruptly. “And no messing around like last night, guys. It’s okay by me if the two of you have some fun together, but we don’t have the time this morning. I want to get on the road before the traffic picks up. We have a long drive ahead of us. If you guys want to mess around together you can do it once you’re in the car,” he chided. “And no dilly-dallying. Get downstairs and we’ll be off like a bucket of prawns.” A few seconds later, he was gone.

“He knows!” I blurted out.

“Of course he knows, you ninny. It’s no big deal. I told him we messed around for a while before we went to sleep.”

“You told him that?” I sat up, stretching back. My penis was aching to be touched, by me, or Blaine, or anyone. It was red and swollen on the end. Even the shaft was reddened and shiny. It looked like it had been rubbed too much. It looked angry, just as I was angry.

“Yep.”

“Why would you go and do a dumb thing like that?” I demanded. My heart was pounding like a drum and I was barely awake.

“Why not? I didn’t tell him the important stuff, just that we messed around for a while. It’s nothing, okay.”

“Bonzer!” I said in my most contemptuous voice. “You really screwed it up, you nong.”

Blaine smirked. “Don’t get your knackers in a knot, Allie. Trust me, okay. Byron’s bang-on.”

“Belt-up!” My face was red. I didn’t know what to think.

“Sheez! Don’t get all berko. I told him we wanked for a while, that’s all. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal?” I was too shocked to say more.

Blaine grinned. “You don’t know my uncle yet, but when you do, you’ll understand. He’s okay. It’s fun having him around. For sure he’s not some wowser like your gran. Hell, he probably won’t even mention it again, unless we do.”

I gave up arguing. Blaine wasn’t going to agree, and maybe he was right anyway given now Byron had said it. He wasn’t angry or upset. Actually, he’d smiled when he said it. I looked around for my clothes. I found my shirt and my shorts.

“Where are my undies?”

Blaine shrugged nonchalantly. “Wherever you left them. I couldn’t find mine either. Maybe they’re under the bed or something.” He smirked. “Maybe my mum took them to wash because they stank so bad.”

“Get lost.”

“Anyways, I don’t know what you need them for. It’s more fun going bare-bum.”

“Huh?”

He pulled his shorts down a few inches. I saw the pale skin of his groin and just the hint of something else. It was the start of his penis.

“What kind of no-hoper wears undies under board shorts anyway?”

“I guess,” I admitted as the idea took hold. Usually I wore a Speedo under my board shorts, but everyone knew that real surfers wore nothing beneath.

We hurried downstairs, pausing only long enough to say good-bye to Dr. and Mrs. McIntyre. A couple of minutes later we were sitting in Byron’s station wagon with a blanket over us, trying to get into a comfortable position so we could go back to sleep. I yawned at Bruce when he got into the front seat. He grinned back and told me to work some more on my ‘beauty rest’. I went back to sleep well before we crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and started the long trip through the northern suburbs.

When I woke up again the sun was shining on the side of my head. The radio was playing some Rolling Stones song that I didn’t much care for. I think I inherited my distaste for noise from my grandmother. I blinked and closed my eyes again. Blaine’s foot was nearly in my face. I pushed it away and tried to go back to sleep. There was as much chance of that happening as pigs flying. I yawned and sat up.

“Hey, looks who’s finally woken up,” Bruce said gleefully. “It’s the cockie kid.”

I gave him a sour look and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I held my tongue for once. If I let him know that I didn’t like being called a cockie, he would persist in doing it. Maybe I was a cockie, but at least my family didn’t come from squatters. Besides, Brindajari was one of the biggest (and richest) stations in that part of New South Wales. In fact, my grandmother was negotiating to buy the Tattersall’s place, which would just about double the size of Brindajari. Already, the property was larger than some small countries in Europe. However, there was no point in saying that. It would only make the situation worse.

“God, it’s the birthday boy himself. Now he’s all of eleven years old, he’s probably as randy as can be. I remember I was at that age,” Byron laughed. “How-zit goin’ back there, mate?”

“Okay,” I mumbled. Blaine was still asleep next to me. I yawned and glanced out the window. “Where are we?” It felt like my tongue was covered in rabbit fur.

“We just passed the black stump,” Bruce answered. “Next stop is Brindajari, mate. You must be feeling right at home.”

“Ha! Very funny,” I grouched.

“He’s mean as dingo in the morning, isn’t he?” Byron joked to Bruce.

“Nah. He probably just wants to take a leak.”

They laughed.

“You need to go, kiddo?”

“Nope.”

Actually, I did ‘need to go’. I needed ‘to go’ badly. My bladder was close to bursting, but there was no way I was going to say ‘yes’. I wasn’t sure I liked being called ‘kiddo’, not when I was only a few hours away from being eleven years old, if precision was an issue. Surely that deserved some respect.

“You’ll be holding on to it for a while, okay? You might have to wait to the other side of Newcastle.”

“No prob! He’s always holding onto it,” Bruce jeered. “Aren’t you, Bunny? Either his or Blainey’s.”

“Nothing wrong with a couple of boys wanking each other off, is there Allan?” Byron asked with a faint snigger.

I blushed and turned away to stare out the window at the passing parade of gum trees. So much for Blaine’s claim that Byron would not mention it again, not unless we brought the subject up first.

“As far as I’m concerned, dongs are there for a guy to have fun with,” Byron continued. “They’re good for wanking and taking a leak, right Bruce?”

“Yep. And if there’s muff around…” Bruce laughed,

“You root it,” they chorused together.

“Geez. Gross me out!” I said in good humour.

Byron slowed the car down and pulled onto the gravel at the side of the road. “Pee-time. Everybody get your dongs out! Wake up Sleeping Beauty will you, Allan?”

I pulled the blanket away and shook Blaine’s foot until he stirred. Shortly, he opened his sleepy eyes.

“Hi,…Allie,” he smiled.

“Pee stop,” I informed him without returning a smile. I wasn’t in a good mood, at least as far as Blaine was concerned. Secrets between best friends were supposed to remain secrets.

I opened the car door and jumped out. Blaine followed me across the seat. We walked a few paces from the car, levering down the front of our board-shorts.

“I got a stiff down here you won’t believe, man. Watch me blast those bull ants to pee-heaven,” Blaine joked.

I glanced to the side, sneaking a glimpse of nearly four inches of hard Australian boyhood. Several seconds passed before his yellow stream splattered into the dust next to mine. We crossed the flows, then aimed them at the same place, where the most ants were congregated. Ants went scrambling for safety.

“Boy, I needed that,” I sighed with relief. I glanced over my shoulder to where Bruce and Byron were standing. “You said he wasn’t going to mention it, but he did,” I complained quietly.

“What?... Oh that! Shit! What we did last night is nothing. Don’t worry about it, Allie. We’re kids so we can get away with murder. Anyway, it’s not like I told him you sucked my dong.” Blaine grinned mischievously. He darted away then, sending the last of his urine very close to my bare leg. “Hey, By! Guess who sucked my dong last night?” he shouted out. It was loud enough for anyone within a hundred yards to hear.

“Bloody hell!” I said angrily. I wanted to hit him, punch him right between the eyes, even if he was my best friend.

“Yeah, he did that too huh? Way to go, Allan,” Byron called out. “I hope he didn’t give you a mouthful.”

“Lucky Blaine,” Bruce added. He looked right at me, smirking.

“Crap!” I growled. “Why did you have to go and do that for, arsehole?”

“I told you there’s nothing to get uppity about. It’s okay! Trust me. It’s no bid deal,” Blaine smirked knowingly. I could see him thinking and I knew what was coming before the words left his mouth.

“Guess what else happened last night? Whose dong do you think I sucked?” he shouted again, shaking the last few droplets off his still half-erect penis.

“Not mine, that’s for sure,” Bruce shot back.

“Good for you, Allan,” Byron chuckled. “I like a boy who’s not afraid to have some fun with his friends.”

I glowered at Blaine, and delayed moving from where I was until he was gone. I waited until everyone was back in the station wagon before I climbed in. Blaine grinned and shrugged and acted like there was nothing wrong. So did Byron and Bruce. Bruce put a cassette in and turned the volume up.

“Beach Boys, yeah!” Blaine shouted out as the familiar tune of “Surfin’ USA’ began.

I was moody for a long while. I sat and sulked and stared out the window at the endless barbed wire fence. It was like driving out to Dubbo except the gum trees were ever so much taller. White and gaunt, with long strips of thin bark hanging from the branches. The grass was greener, there were a lot more hills, and there were many, much smaller properties. Most of the farms were tiny compared to Brindajari, with only a few anywhere near a thousand acres.

“Where are we?” I asked after a while.

“About fifty miles north of Newcastle,” Byron answered. He was watching me in the rear vision mirror. “Hey, Cuddlepie?”

I scowled. Cuddlepie and Snugglepot were gum-nut babies in a classic Australian fantasy story. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be called Cuddlepie.

“Yeah?” I grumped.

“Don’t fret it, kiddo. Guys do stuff with their friends, okay. It’s no big deal as far as I’m concerned.”

I shrugged, not prepared to discuss it further. Byron smiled at me in the mirror. I quickly looked away. I knew what he was thinking. My nephew’s best friend is a ‘poofter’.

“Hey, guys. Listen up. It’s time we talked about the rules for the trip.” He paused until he had my attention. “The first rule is,… “

“No one tells!” Blaine interjected.

“Right on. Sometimes guys do stuff when they’re together, but whatever happens, no one tells. Everyone okay with that?” Byron smiled into the mirror.

He had eyes like Bruce and Blaine. Big and brown and friendly. Any boy would trust him. I nodded slightly to show my agreement with rule one. It didn’t matter what ‘stuff’ was, although for some reason I assumed that it wasn’t the same ‘stuff’ that Blaine and I did together. More likely it involved cigarettes and beer, yet I wondered if it also applied to us. Blaine had no problem sharing some of our secrets.

“Whatever happens from now on, it stays between us. Just the four of us and no one else. No matter what you see or hear, … or do, or anything for that matter,… No one tells…. Not outside the four of us anyway.”

I nodded again. It didn’t seem necessary to say ‘yes’, because no one else did. Blaine merely smiled, catching Byron’s eyes in the mirror.

“Okay. The second part is I teach you guys how to surf like Midge, but only if you obey the first part. You get lessons from me only if no one tells anyone anything, especially when it comes to the really important stuff. That’s the deal, okay?”

“Deal,” Bruce said immediately. “Especially when it comes to shagging,” he joked.

“Deal,” Blaine said with a strange squeak in his voice.

They waited for me to say something. “Deal,” I said awkwardly.

I had no idea what they were talking about. Shagging was sex, but I couldn’t understand what sex had to do with it. Not really. All I wanted was for Byron to teach me how to surf. He was one of the best surfers on the East Coast, all the way from Wollongong to Coolangatta. He taught Bruce how to surf and Bruce was an up and coming champion. He came third in the 1967 New South Wales Junior Surfing Championships. I wanted to be like Bruce. If I needed greater motivation, he was also teaching Blaine how to surf, and Blaine was already very good at it compared to me.

“Whoa! Not so fast, Cuddlepie!” Byron interjected. “You need to join the club first.”

“What club?”

“Hm,…. Interesting question. How best to put it? He grinned at me from the mirror. “Um-ah. Well, we could call it the Blue Nuts Club, couldn’t we guys?” Bruce snickered.

“Why?” I asked innocently. At the time I really thought it had something to do with blue-gums and their nuts. I even wondered whether that was why he was calling me Cuddlepie.

“Well, one reason is because that’s what happens when you spend most of the day sitting on a surf board. Your little nuts will turn blue and shrivel up.”

“Yeah?” Boy, was I naïve!

“But mostly, we call it the True-Blue club, because you have to be a true-blue friend to join. You want to tell him about the club, Bruce?”

“He’s not old enough to join.”

“How old do I have to be?” I demanded irritably.

“Eleven,” Byron answered. “You can’t join unless you’re eleven!”

“I am eleven!” I said in exasperation. They were playing games with me. “Today, okay?” I shouted loudly. I could not see the point in bringing up the small matter of a few hours. Birthdays were birth days, so hours and minutes were not important unless you wanted them to be.

“So he is,” Byron laughed. “Don’t tease the birthday boy, Bruce. Okay, I’ll tell you about the club, boy-o. But remember the deal. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Hm,…” Byron rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Do you reckon we can trust him, guys? He’s not a McIntyre, y’know?”

“Make him promise on O’Leary’s grave,” Blaine suggested teasingly.

“How about scout’s honour,” Bruce suggested with a laugh.

I glared at him. “Sheez. I promise, okay. O’Leary’s grave, scout’s honour, whatever works.”

Byron laughed. “As if scouts had honour. They’re all too busy looking for used frenchies. Okay, Allan. Here’s the thing. In order for you to join the True Blue club, and for me to teach you how to surf, we’re going to have to do something to your knackers.”

I gulped. Knackers were balls, nuts, testicles. “Like what?”

“We paint ‘em blue. Only it’s a dye so it won’t wash off. Least ways, not for a few weeks. It ought to be pretty much worn off by the time you go home.”

“Huh?”

“It’s kind of a tradition, see Allan. I did it to Bruce, the first time he came with me. Didn’t I, Bruce?”

“Yep,” Bruce answered quickly.

The eyes in the rear vision mirror told me Byron was telling the truth, but his expression was curious. It made me nervous, as I was somehow being tested. I breathed out, not fully understanding what they were talking about, but understanding enough that I realised what was at stake. If I wanted Byron to teach me how to surf, I had to agree to whatever it was that he wanted to do to me.

“What about Blaine?” I asked nervously.

“Him too. Snugglepot’s still learning how to surf,” Byron said. “Fair’s fair. It’s not his first time at McIntyre Beach, but that’s the deal. If you’re in training you have blue nuts. Well, are you game, kiddo?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess. What are you going to do,… exactly?”

Byron chuckled at my exaggeration. “Like I said, I’m going to paint your nuts blue, Allan. That’s it, mate. Nothing on your dong so you can still take a leak in public. So if you’re careful no one will know you’re a member of the True Blue club. I’ll use the same colour dye I used on your surfboard. That’s part of the tradition.”

”Yeah?” I said, thinking of my surfboard sitting on the roof racks above my head.

“It won’t hurt a bit, I promise. I get it on my skin all the time. Your knackers will be fine afterwards as well, except they’ll be blue for a while,” Byron said slowly like he was talking to a child who didn’t understand. “No one else is going to know about it. Just the four of us.”

“That’s all?” I asked awkwardly. I couldn’t understand the point of putting dye on my balls.

“Yep, that’s it, Allan old sport. Once your balls are blue I’ll teach you how to ride a surfboard so good your oldies won’t believe you’re their kid.”

I nodded slowly. “When?” I asked nervously.

There was something about Byron that made me trust him. Besides, how bad could it be if it was going to happen to Blaine as well?

“Hm,… nothing like getting it over with right away, is there? It’ll be sort of a special birthday present for you,” Byron joked. “How about we do it when we stop for breakky? Bulahdelah’s just a few miles away. There’s a nice cake shop that ought to be open by now. We can get some lamingtons or whatever you guys like to eat and go down to the river. It ought to be nice and quiet this early in the day.”

He winked in the mirror. It was exciting in a way, although the idea also made me feel strange, especially when I thought about how it would be done. It wasn’t as if Byron hadn’t seen my penis. The only person I was worried about was Bruce. Blaine grinned at me. He nodded with a reassurance that I didn’t need. I wasn’t a little kid any more. I was eleven years old. He changed the subject.

“So Allan, Blainey tells me you’re something a car fan?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I ventured.

“You like Fords?”

“Yeah. This one is really cool.”

“It’s got the 302,” Byron explained.

“I figured if did because of the V8 badge.”

“There’s a company that did some work on the motor for me and put on the same brakes as the Falcon GT,” he boasted like a teenager.

“Yeah, I sort of figured the donk’s been worked over a bit from the sound. I’m pretty sure I read about the company doing it in. It was in Motor Week a couple of months ago.”

“It was. Okay, answer me this, Cuddlepie, and if you’re right it’ll get you a free breakfast,” Byron said, smiling at me in the rear vision mirror. “What’ll it do flat chat?” he asked.

“Flat chat?” I queried. “Hm,… the Falcon’s supposed to do 128.”

“128 down a hill,” Bruce cut in. “Or if it’s Moffat’s car, maybe it’ll go that fast.”

I shook my head, but there was no point in arguing with him. I addressed my response to Byron so I wouldn’t be as nervous. “But this is a station wagon so it’ll be a bit slower,… I reckon about 125,” I answered.

“Why?” Byron asked. He was interested. I must have been close to the car’s top speed.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you had some work done on the cams, because it idles rough. That company I read about was also putting on the same heads and valves as the GT. And it’s got extractors. It doesn’t sound like a straight-through exhaust, but there’s something going on with the mufflers. Yeah, about 125 is right.”

“How about Castlereagh?”

“You’ve had it at Castlereagh?” I asked excitedly.

“You tell him, Blainey.”

Blainey nodded. Unlike me, he thought cars were boring.

“It was only the once. I just wanted to see what it’d do.”

I didn’t know anyone who had taken their car down Castlereagh Drag Strip. In my mind it was only one step below racing a car at Bathurst. Byron was quickly becoming my hero. I was impressed. I tried to remember how long it took the test car I had read about to do the standing quarter mile. It was sixteen-seconds-and-something. I was certain of it.

“Hm,… Does it have the GT diff as well?” I asked, stalling, knowing the answer before I asked. If there was one thing I knew about, it was cars.

“Too right!”

“Hm,…” I pretended to think about. “Low sixteens,” I answered shyly, because there was always a chance I was wrong. “At a guess,… I’d say 16.2?”

“I’m impressed.” Byron sounded impressed. “Don’t tell the coppers but I had it up to 124 the last time I went to Coff’s. I checked it on the mileposts. And my time was 16.7, by the way.”

“Oh?”

Byron laughed. So did Bruce. I was certain that he was laughing because I was wrong.

“But it was only because I fucked up the start. If I’d gotten good traction it’d be 16.2 for sure. Now bad for a shaggin’ wagon, huh?”

“Not bad,” I quipped.

I took a deep breath. Dare I say what I was thinking?

“Except you need girls for shagging, and all you’ve got are guys in here,” I giggled.

Again, Bruce laughed. “I think someone’s coming out of his shell. At least he isn’t crabby any more.”

I wanted to tell him to shut up, but an eleven-year-old boy doesn’t tell a seventeen-year-old surfing champion to shut up.