Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:14:35 +1200
From: casey_simons@hushmail.com
Subject: What Steve Learned -- 1

This is fiction, (c) 2013 Casey Simons.
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Remember the bad old days, back before you could get decent porn on
the internet?
I had just started college and moved out of home, and I ... um ...
just happened to find myself in an adult store, looking at porn. I
went into one of the coin-operated booths and started to watch.  Back
then, I just assumed I was straight; after all, I'd lost my virginity
with a girl just a few months before, and we both had a lot of fun. As
I clicked through the videos I paused on one of the gay channels more
out of curiosity than anything else, but when I saw the two hot
athletic guys enjoying a 69, my cock went as hard as an iron bar, my
breath caught, and I felt hot all over. Obviously, I kept watching.
The blond slid his fingers, and then his cock into his partner's
asshole, and I was amazed to see the immediate hunger and pleasure on
the redhead's face.  If I'd started stroking myself I probably would
have come in my pants, so I just stared, fixated. Then I heard a sound
beside me and noticed there was a hole into the next booth, and a guy
watching me. Even if he'd been as hot as the porn stars, the setting
was pretty gross, so I left straight away, slamming the booth door.
Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie and my reaction
to it. Being gay and an athlete isn't all that fun even now, and back
then it was worse. I was getting tired of the way the other jocks
talked about pretty much anyone different, but I wasn't going to
change society myself and I didn't want to become a target. There was
certainly no way I was going to let my roommate or anyone else suspect
anything, but I couldn't deny how the scene had made me feel.
The next time I went to the porn store I planned to buy a DVD that I
could play on my laptop computer (we did have laptops; it wasn't the
Stone Age). The gay section was behind another curtain, so there was a
bit of privacy, and I'd found a promising disc with a soccer-team
theme, with solo, couple, and locker-room orgy scenes. I was browsing
the rest of the collection when someone said
"Hi. You're in my bio class. Steve, right? I'm Jae".
I blushed bright red (ok, I blush easy. I'm also pale and freckled,
and my hair is blond when it's not green from pool chlorine).  There
was no way to hide, so I took a deep breath, turned to face him, and
tried to smile.
"Hi, Jae"
I knew Jae (or 'Jay', as I then thought of him) from lab, a friendly
but reserved guy who I'd worked with one week when our usual lab
partners were both sick. Like me, he did a lot of cycling, but unlike
me he didn't go in much for other sports. I also knew he got picked on
by some the jocks for being small, polite, and foreign-looking. I was
pretty sure their 'fag' tag for him wasn't based on any actual
information, but they seemed to have got it right by accident.
Jae said "When I saw you I panicked a bit and I was going to just
sneak out, but then I thought we might both want someone we could talk
to openly about this kind of thing". I mumbled something incoherent in
reply. "I'm going to buy this now and head across the road to the
diner to get some coffee.  If you want to talk, come over when you're
done, otherwise I'll just assume you want your privacy and pretend
this never happened."
He left, and I relaxed and tried to breathe deeply. I'd never heard
Jae passing on gossip that could hurt someone, and he seemed to be a
private kind of guy, so I could probably trust him not to say anything
-- especially as he couldn't say how he saw me without admitting he
was there too. So, I could trust him to keep quiet if I did nothing,
but did I want to take the risk of talking to him? And was that all he
wanted? I wasn't looking for a boyfriend, and Jae would't be the type
of guy I'd go for anyway.
In the end, I paid for the DVD and wheeled my bike over to the diner.
Carrying the saddlebag with the incriminating object safely stowed (no
way was I leaving it outside on my bike) I pushed open the door and
walked in, trying to look as if I had nothing much on my mind.  I saw
Jae sitting in a booth near the back, reading the paper, with a fancy
espresso coffee on the table, and went over. He looked up from the
sports news he was reading, with a welcoming grin.
"Hi, Steve", he said quietly, "I'm really glad you came over".
The waitress appeared and I ordered ordinary coffee and apple pie.
When she was safely gone he said "I should say to begin with that I'm
not looking for a boyfriend, and, to be honest, you're not really my
type anyway, I'm more interested in someone my own size".  I felt a
mixture of relief and offence, then realised I was being silly -- he
wasn't my type either, and I'd just paid good money for a movie of
guys that looked much more like me than like Jae.
"I'm looking for someone I can talk to that I can trust," he
continued. "I've seen you with the other jocks, and you don't go after
people for being different even when the rest of them do. I've never
seen you deliberately hurt someone, and I thought it was worth the
risk to try to get you as a friend."
 I realised that I wanted the same thing. There were friends I could
talk to about a lot of issues, but not about how I felt seeing two
guys fucking.
The waitress appeared with my order, and I took a gulp of coffee to
give myself more time to think.
"I'm flattered," I said. "I probably wouldn't have had the guts to do
it myself, but I'm glad you did ask me."
"Thanks," Jae said. "Today's been stressful enough already, so how
about we just ride back to campus together?"
We passed a garbage can on the street and Jae threw away the bag from
the store, with the DVD cover, keeping only the disk itself.  I hadn't
thought about the risk of it being found until then, so I did the same
with my purchase. We cycled back along the slower bike trail around
the lake, commenting occasionally on harmless topics.
That night my roommate was out with his girlfriend, so I played the
first three tracks on the disk before I went to bed.  My dream of
meeting the hot soccer hunks ended not with discovery by a relative or
schoolmate and a panicked awakening, but with dreaming of Jae spying
on us and stroking himself as we fucked.
Over the next few months Jae and I became firm friends.  We regularly
went on bike rides together -- over short distances I was much faster
than him, but he had great stamina and for rides of 15 miles or so he
could keep up with me.  As spring approached we spent more time
cycling together, and I don't think anyone suspected we might have
another motive. In fact, although it was the theoretical point of our
friendship, we hadn't actually talked about sex and being gay very
often or very deeply.
One day in late winter we rode out to the small woods at the state
park, and stopped for a break. I got up the courage to ask Jae what it
was really like with a guy. To my surprise he replied
"I haven't really gone all the way.  I had a few long make-out
sessions with a another boy at summer camp, but we ended up going for
a swim and jacking off in the lake.  I had a blow job once from a guy
at an adult cinema. That was amazing - I was hard as a rock and ready
to come right away, but he slowly licked and sucked me so I felt like
it took forever.  And there was one time at a party that I sucked a
guy off. That's all".
"I don't have much experience either," I replied. "I've never been
with a guy, and only a few times with a girl.  I went to my senior
prom with a close friend who wasn't a girlfriend, and we decided to
have sex that night, just to see what it was like.  It was really good
for me, and I think for her too. We did it a couple more times before
we both left town for college. Katie's got a boyfriend now, but I'm
glad we decided to experiment just as friends, with no romance
expected."
"That sounds like a really good idea," Jae replied.
"Yeah, it was her idea, but it worked out really well".
I realised where this might be leading, and blushed bright red. Jae
was looking down at his feet, not at me, and he also sounded unusually
nervous when he said "Would you maybe like to experiment just as
friends with a guy?". Immediately I answered "Hell yes!" Jae looked up
with a shy smile. The problem now was finding a time and place where
we could do it without risking being found out, though I would have
loved to get naked right there, and the bulge in Jae's shorts
suggested he felt the same way.