Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 01:16:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dolphin Dan
Subject: why they call me the dolphin

*** WARNING ***

This story contains descriptions of consensual sexual acts between members
of the same gender.  If it is illegal or morally objectionable for you to
view this material, please do not continue.

***  ***  ***

There are really two reasons why I got the nickname "Dolphin."  One is
completely innocuous, and that's the one I tell most people.  The other is
sexual, and that's the one you're going to learn about here, though I
suppose even the first reason has a sexual subtext to it.

It was in the summer of 1988, when I was 16.  My parents had moved away
from our home city in the Midwest--we now lived on the east coast--but
during the summer vacations I would live with my sister, five years older
than me, who had remained largely because of her boyfriend.  She, her
boyfriend and his two or three other roommates (all of them guys) had a
little house in the Benson neighborhood, and I was relegated to the extra
bedroom in the basement, which was fine by me.  I was glad just to be free
of school and my parents for three months.  Modest though it was, it was a
pretty cool existence.  We had epic parties and even at 16 I had a pretty
regular supply of beer, booze and weed with which to pass the sultry summer
nights.  Eighty-eight was an especially hot one; there was a terrible
drought in the Midwest that summer, and if you browse a lot of the all-time
weather records for high temperatures, lack of rainfall, etc., you may
notice a lot of them were made in 1988.  Late June was already blazingly
hot, and as the 4th of July holiday came closer my sister and her boyfriend
decided to accept an invitation they'd received from some friends of
theirs--Rick and his new wife, Lydia--to spend the weekend at Lake Guisowa,
about an hour from the city.  Rick's parents had a house on the lake, and
boats, and there would be the standard diversions--barbecue, fireworks and
all the beer we could drink.  It sounded like a good deal, and after two
and a half weeks of shimmering concrete and 100+ temperatures, I was
certainly up for a lakeside jaunt in cooler climes.

I had been masturbating since the age of 12, and my bifurcated sexuality
asserted itself pretty much immediately, before I even knew what to make of
it.  I thought about fucking guys as often, if not more often, than I
thought about being with girls, though I knew I liked both.  I wasn't a
very popular kid in high school.  I didn't play sports and was thought of
as a wimp.  Being seen reading Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" in 8th grade study hall didn't do much for my social standing as
you might imagine, and, like most geeks I was pretty dense about it.  When
I was about 15, though, I started to get a clue.  I realized I wasn't
popular because I was skinny, I was interested in non-standard
(i.e. "weird") things, and wasn't that socially adept.  I was also
terrified that somehow, despite the fact that I had never mentioned my
sexual interest in boys to anyone, much less acted on it, my peers could
see through me and knew that I was a "fag," and so I decided to take what
steps I could to throw them off the trail.  Thus, at the end of my
sophomore year of high school, I suddenly decided I should pretend to
become interested in sports.  I couldn't play any sports of course, but
feigning an interest in watching or following sports seemed to be a good
way to pretend to be "normal."  I chose one sport, and one team, largely at
random to become a die-hard fan of.  My home city had no major league teams
at all, and, being a nonconformist at heart I decided that following the
"local" (i.e., Midwest) teams--the K.C. Chiefs or Royals, the Chicago Cubs,
White Sox or Bears--wouldn't do.  I went into a sports clothing store at
the mall one day and picked out a T-shirt solely on the basis of whether or
not I liked the logo of the team represented.  Largely by chance the shirt
I picked had a Miami Dolphins emblem on it.  Therefore, even though I had
very little genuine interest in football, the Dolphins became "my" team.

I was, at that time, looking to remake my image anyway, so I went pretty
heavily overboard on the Dolphins kick.  By the end of the school year I
owned a closet full of Dolphins T-shirts, track shorts, and even a mock
football jersey with Dan Marino's number--13--on it.  I had a Dolphins
sticker on my locker, another on my Trapper Keeper notebook.  It was
convenient I picked that team because I had grandparents who lived in South
Florida, and right before my birthday they visited the official Dolphins
merchandise store and sent me a shitload of stuff.  My dad in particular
was happy that I was putting down the Roman Empire books and becoming
interested in something a little more fitting for a 16-year-old boy.  The
school year ended right as I was entering the fever pitch of my Dolphins
mania, and by the time school started again in September my conversion to
Miami Dolphins fanboy was both complete and accepted, and there was not a
single day during my entire junior year of high school that I didn't come
to class wearing some item of Dolphins gear; I even went to my junior prom
with a Miami Dolphins tie.  Because my name is Daniel the alliteration of
"Dolphin Dan" was irresistible to my friends, and the moniker stuck.

That's the "official" version.  I say that even the "clean" version has a
sexual subtext to it, because without the motivating factor of trying to
disguise whatever unconscious gay or bisexual vibes I gave off unknowingly,
I would never have tried to hide them behind the logo of the dolphin to
begin with.  But few people know that.  Even Adam, the boy who was most
responsible for giving me my nickname, never really understood that.

So, Fourth of July weekend, 1988.  My sister, her boyfriend and I got to
Lake Guisowa at about three in the afternoon of July third, which that year
fell on a Sunday.  Rick, one of my sister's boyfriend's good friends, had
been married in May and had just come back from his honeymoon.  His
parents, who owned the house where we were staying, had given Rick and
Lydia a speedboat as a wedding present (there was some money in this
family, as you can tell).  The house was actually fairly small and modest,
but it had a dock that jutted out into the lake, which was a shimmering
ring of cool water surrounding a scrubby island thick with trees.  Lake
Guisowa was one of those gated communities and everybody had a dock, a boat
and epic beer parties on the island (called Witch Island for some reason)
on the summer holidays.  Rick's parents' house featured a staggeringly
large cast of characters that weekend, and the chests full of beer cans and
ice cubes never seemed to run dry.  The barbecue was going when we got
there and continued all day and well into the night.  After my third beer
and my seventh or eighth chicken leg basted in lime-chile barbecue sauce, I
thought things couldn't get much better.  That was, until Adam appeared.

I first saw him as I was sitting down at the picnic table with another
helping of chicken.  The sliding glass door leading from the house to the
patio came open, and a perfectly stunning specimen of male teenagehood
emerged, with a younger sister (about 10) and a father (Rick's brother) in
tow.  The boy was about 14, I estimated.  He was about my height, and had
what I guess you'd call a swimmer's build, though of course at that age he
wasn't especially muscular.  He had short brown hair, blue eyes and a very
bright and infectious smile.  When I first saw him he was wearing sandals,
blue and white knee-length nylon shorts that I suspected (correctly)
doubled as swimming trunks, and a button-up short-sleeved shirt, mostly
maroon, with a little gold grid pattern.  He also had something on a
glistening silver chain around his neck, something I couldn't see at first.
It was a very hot day, 97 degrees, and his shirt was unbuttoned to the
third button.  That was what drew my eye at first.  I could see the cool
creamy skin of the top of his chest, and wished that his shirt was
unbuttoned a little farther down--maybe even all the way--so I could see
more of his lovely physique.  There was a curious kind of chemistry that
sparked in me when I saw him.  With a start I realized my penis was
rock-hard.  Luckily I was sitting at a picnic table in the shade and no one
was paying much attention; I continued to gnaw the chicken as my eyes
followed the boy.  He said hi to Rick and some other relatives, and then
quickly dove into the ice chest for a can of Coke and headed for the grill
for something to eat.

I dared to hope he might come say hi to me, because there weren't any other
kids at the barbecue even near our age, but he totally ignored me and I was
too shy to go up to him.  My eyes followed him as he ate barbecue, drank
Cokes and scolded his younger sister.  Luckily he was sitting not far from
me, and in full sunlight, so I could get a good look at him.  He was
wearing sandals and I could see his toes, which were beautiful, and his
ankles; at that age I really had a thing for feet, whether guys' or girls.'
He also had the perfect dusting of silky, downy hair on his legs.  When I
was in the process of puberty, originally I'd thought that a guy who began
to show body hair was a complete turn-off, but now exactly the opposite was
true, and a guy wasn't really a "man"--and thus capable of being
objectified sexually--unless he had hair.  The way the boy licked barbecue
sauce off his fingers almost made me toss a load into my crisp new Miami
Dolphins swim trunks.  What can I say, he was hot, and his hotness was
striking me more forcefully than I'd been assaulted in quite a while.

As soon as he'd wolfed down some chicken and about four Cokes, the boy,
obviously eager to get away from his sister, dumped his paper plate in the
trash, ran to the edge of the dock, and stripped off his shirt all in one
fluid motion.  He didn't unbutton the shirt, he just pulled it over his
head like a T-shirt, and it dropped on the dock about a second and a half
before the boy's body hit the water of Lake Guisowa, his bloodthirsty war
cry still hanging in the hot summer air.  His dad, who was sitting with
Rick and Lydia, looked over his sunglasses and shouted, "Adam!  You've got
to wait to swim after you eat!  You'll get..."  I knew that "cramps" was
the next word, but he didn't say it; his voice trailed off as he realized
the uselessness of this admonition, and from behind his sunglasses I saw
him roll his eyes at Rick.  Adam, who was obviously a champion swimmer in
training, was already making a backstroke beeline for Witch Island.
"That's your nephew," said Adam's father to Rick.  "Jumping in where angels
fear to tread."

His sudden dive into the lake had definitely gotten my hormones going, but
it had happened so fast that I didn't get to see much.  In the one or two
seconds between the time his shirt hit the dock and the moment he launched
into the water I saw only a creamy blur of smooth skin.  Now he was
swimming, and the waters of the lake were dark and murky; I felt robbed of
the chance to see Adam with his shirt off.  However, I knew exactly what to
do.  I wiped barbecue sauce off my fingers, stood up from the picnic table
where I was sitting and announced to no one in particular, "I think I'll go
swimming too."

I've never been much for diving, thus I climbed down from the dock and
waded into the water after leaving my T-shirt and my towel on the edge of
the dock.  The bottom of the lake was soft and mushy, and I could feel some
kind of indeterminate goo oozing between my toes as I stepped out further.
Adam was swimming some distance away, still headed for Witch Island,
shifting effortlessly between breaststroke and backstroke.  When I felt the
bottom of the lake slope away from me I pushed off into a dog paddle and
then a normal breaststroke, heading roughly in Adam's direction, away from
the dock, but not looking like I was actually trying to catch up with him.
There was much activity on the lake.  Boats roared past, their
beer-guzzling occupants waving and shouting to the folks on Rick's parents'
dock.  Adam paused a couple of times, went underwater, and bobbed up again
to let boats pass before picking up again.  Soon it became obvious he was
headed for the island and had no interest in staying near the dock.  I
wasn't such a good swimmer and had no idea how deep the lake was, so I
wasn't really that keen on swimming all the way out there.

I really had no specific intentions in following him, other than getting a
good look at him.  It wasn't like I was going to proposition him or
something; I lacked even the tiniest measure of courage I'd have needed to
do that.  It was mostly an instinctive response--the boy was cute and I
wanted to follow him.  My erection had returned and subsided several times
by now but luckily I was in the water and far enough away from anyone else
that no one would notice.

Adam made it to the island.  In the distance I saw him haul himself out of
the water on the shore, and he waved across the lake--which wasn't very
big--to the people on the dock.  The full July sunlight glowed against his
creamy white body and the blue and white of his swim shorts.  I was hanging
back in the shadow of the dock--I sunburn easily--and though Adam was still
too far away to really see, in my imagination I magnified the view.  I
thought even from this distance I could see his nipples, the straightness
of his belly, the pleasing curves of his upper arms.  I was half
treading-water and half standing on the bottom of the lake, which, if I
stood on my toe, was deep enough to bring the water to chest-level.  I
couldn't resist.  With my right hand I reached down and loosened the tie of
my swim shorts.  I reached inside and gripped my hard penis firmly.  The
water was dark enough that no one could really see what was going on even
if any attention was focused on me, which it wasn't.  I knew it was
dangerous but I didn't have a choice.  This kid got me so hot that I had to
get some relief from the hormones.

I was still masturbating under the water--roughly trying to tread water
with my other arm--when Adam jumped back into the lake and began the return
voyage back toward the dock.  The feelings of pleasure were slowly building
inside my groin.  The coolness of the lake water felt good against the heat
of my shaft, and there was a bare hint of a current that caressed my balls
pleasantly.  When I was 12 I masturbated for the first time in the bath,
and thus even four years later I strongly associated being underwater with
sexual feelings.  One of my all-time favorite fantasies was having sex with
Amy, a girl in my eighth grade class that I liked, in a hot tub or a
swimming pool; just thinking about that gave me hard-ons for years.  So it
was pretty natural for me to get even more turned on by being in the lake
and the murkiness of the water gave me the perfect cover to masturbate
without being noticed.  Plus the water itself gave off a sexy smell.  It
was the common stale-algae aroma of open fresh water, very clean, very
natural, but in its staleness there was a hint of the bleachy chlorine
aroma of semen.  As I handled myself my dick began to flirt with the
glorious state of super-hardness that came right before ejaculation.  At
that moment, however, I suddenly realized Adam was swimming towards me, and
making very rapid progress.

I was lucky I stopped when I did.  I was probably one stroke away from
coming.  In fact when I let go of myself my dick twitched and shuddered,
unleashing a flood of intense feelings and I thought I was going to cum
anyway but I held it back, emitting an involuntary groan.  I probably could
have cum without Adam or anyone else noticing but, paranoid as I was about
keeping my sexuality private, I feared either that I couldn't re-fasten my
shorts fast enough after I ejaculated, or that a stray pearly tendril of
floating semen would give me away.  (Semen is heavier than water and
usually sinks, but in a body of fresh water with currents, thermoclines and
other unpredictable factors, anything goes).  I quickly re-tied my shorts,
hoping that the renewed contact of my trunks against my dick wouldn't
finish what my hand had suddenly been estopped from accomplishing.  Luckily
it didn't, though my dick remained as hard as steel.

Adam was a very quick swimmer, and in short order he reached standing
depth, ducked under the water and splashed up, slicking his hair back and
wiping water out of his eyes in a graceful motion.  He spat a little jet of
lake water and then said brightly, "Hey, man.  Saw you over here.  What's
up?"

"Just cooling off," I said, bending my knees and sinking down so the water
was right under my chin.  The bulge in my crotch was hidden by the water
now.  "You're a good swimmer."

"Thanks."  He moved a couple of steps toward me and more of him was out of
the water now.  I got my first good look at him, and it was beautiful.  He
didn't have a single hair on his front from neck to navel, but I saw a few
little kinky strands of dark underarm hair plastered against his skin in
the very crooks of his armpits.  His nipples were graceful ovals of
maroon-colored flesh.  His belly had the barest hint of a slight rounded
outward bulge.  If I could have custom-built a boyfriend in a human cloning
laboratory, the result would probably look pretty similar to Adam.

But the most alarming thing--pleasantly alarming--was that I could finally
see the little silver emblem on the chain around his neck.  It was, I knew,
a sign from God.  I literally took it that way, that this boy had been
brought to me for a very specific reason.  The little emblem on his chain
was a dolphin.

"I'm Adam, by the way," he said.

My eyes were still transfixed on the silver dolphin.  I had to jar myself
back to reality in order to answer.  "Dan.  Nice to meet you."

"You swim?"

"A little.  Not as good as you."

"Want to race to the island?"

"You'd win, I'm sure."

"Let's go halfway and come back," he suggested cheerfully.  "I won't swim
fast, I promise."

I wasn't a swimmer, but in that moment if Adam had suggested leaping off
the top of the Empire State Building sans parachute or bungee cord I doubt
I would have disputed it.  He began to swim again, and I followed, trying
to push myself to keep up with him as best I could.  The boy was well-toned
and very fit, and my own scrawny body was a disgrace in the water compared
to him, but he was very nice to me and paced himself to make sure he didn't
get too far ahead.  Toward the end of the voyage to the middle of the lake
he began to encourage me.  "Hey, that's good," he said.  "C'mon, get your
arms up a little bit more.  You'll make it!  Feels good, doesn't it?"

We reached the imaginary finish line in the center of the lake.  I treaded
water; the bottom was far too deep to feel with my toes.  My hyperactive
imagination wondered what ancient shipwrecks lay at the bottom of this
murky water--probably old Lake Guisowa pontoon boats, manned by rotting
waterlogged skeletons still clutching Coors cans and cigarette butts in
their dead bony fingers.

"It does feel good," I said, brushing hair out of my eyes.  I've had long
hair for most of my life and had just begun growing it that spring.  At
that point in the summer I looked like one of the Beatles, and compared to
Adam I was a hippie.

"C'mon, let's go back!"  Adam did a flip in mid-water that reminded me of
nothing so much as a dolphin, and suddenly I had to push myself again
toward the shore.  My erection had flagged but my attraction to Adam
certainly hadn't.  He seemed to be a wonderfully nice and exuberant young
man.  Considering he didn't know me from, well, Adam, in the few minutes
we'd known each other he was treating me like a real friend, which
impressed me considering that most people my age treated me like the
insufferable geek that I was.  This too was attractive, and enamored me
even more to my mysterious companion.

We reached the dock and Adam hauled himself out of the water with the same
carefree abandon with which he'd flung himself into it.  He didn't even
give a damn that he was sopping wet, for he never reached for a towel or
anything of the sort.  "C'mon, you want a Coke?" he said as I raised myself
to the dock, flushed and panting with the exertion of trying to keep up
with even his pity speed.  I grabbed for my own towel and wiped off my face
and my hair.  Adam had already barreled his way back to the ice chest and
extracted two gleaming red cans of Coke.  His chin and his fingers were
still dripping lake water.  I could tell that he moved quickly and rarely
sat still.  For me, someone who frequently chose the path of least
resistance, this was an exciting and alluring quality.  Realizing that the
second Coke he'd gotten from the chest was for me, I slung my towel around
my neck and hastened to join him back at the picnic table, leaving my
T-shirt where it was, draped across one of the dock pilings.

I was certainly glad I did, because Adam never went back for his shirt
which still lay in a heap on the dock.  In the heat of the afternoon our
bodies dried quickly, and Adam remained shirtless, evidently as carefree
and comfortable as he looked, chugging Coke and trying valiantly to join
the conversation of his father and Rick.  He listened intently for a while
even though they were talking about politics.  At one point he leaned over
to his little sister and said, "Hey, will you go get my sunglasses from the
house?  I left them on the counter."  The girl returned with a pair of
standard issue military Air Force style sunglasses, right out of Top Gun,
which Adam put on and in whose lenses I could see reflected the blazing
golden-orange orb of the sun setting behind me.  I don't know why but this
turned me on tremendously.  My sudden new crush, naked except for swim
trunks and sunglasses, sitting at a table across from me, occasionally
flashing me a glance that I imagined (or did I?) contained some kind of
subtle homoerotic flirtation.  My penis stiffened again.  I didn't make too
much effort to hide it this time.  If Adam was observant he would notice I
was hard for him, and suddenly I didn't mind.  I was acting on instinct
now, and my instinct was telling me that Adam might actually like me.

He paid no overt attention to me.  He was still trying to horn into the
conversation of the adults.  Most of the adults by now had gathered back in
the living room of the house where they were watching the news.  Something
terrible had happened.  An American warship on patrol in the Persian Gulf
had shot down an unarmed Iranian airliner, killing all the passengers
aboard, and the government of Iran--probably America's most visible enemy
in the '80s--was outraged, threatening that they might even declare war on
the United States.  "If this means war with Iran," said Adam's father to
Rick, "we're in a heap of trouble for sure.  Reagan talks tough, but our
military is pretty short on specifics.  Fighting a protracted war in the
Middle East is something we DON'T want to do under any circumstances."

"Are they gonna draft me?" Adam asked his father.

Both Rick and Adam's dad laughed.  "No, Adam, they're not going to draft
you," his dad said.  He watched Adam down several more swallows of Coke,
and commented, "You really can pack that stuff away.  You never even have
to take a leak.  Your kidneys must be made of iron."  He and Rick both
laughed and drank from their beer cans.  Then Adam's dad stood up from the
picnic table.  "Come on, let me give you the name of that contractor I was
talking about earlier.  I think I've got his business card in my car."

As soon as his father left Adam leaned close to me and he said, "I pissed
in the lake while I was swimming."

For a moment I didn't put it together with the comment his dad had made and
I said, "What?"

"He's right.  I had like five Cokes before I went swimming.  But I pissed
in the lake.  I figured, who would know?"  He gave a childish little giggle
and drank more Coke.  "Actually, I gotta go again in a minute.  Wanna jump
back in?"

Whether he meant to swim or piss I didn't know, and for a moment I was a
little appalled, realizing that my erection-inducing specimen of perfect
teenage manhood had been spewing urine into the water at random.

"Why don't we just hit the bathroom inside?" I asked.

"Who wants to go inside?" he muttered, wrinkling his nose in exactly the
same cute snobbish fashion that Meg Ryan would make famous in the movies a
couple of years later.  "It's just grown-ups in there anyway.  Go in there
and somebody's bound to ask about your report cards from last year, and
it'll turn into a whole big stupid conversation.  C'mon, let's swim again."

I was still exhausted from the last round, but I was willing to do whatever
Adam commanded, and as long as we were in the water he was not going to put
on his shirt which meant I could feast my eyes on his perfect physique all
the longer.  "OK," I said.

We lowered ourselves off the dock; Adam didn't dive in again as he had
before, perhaps out of respect for me.  We swam out a little bit.  Dusk was
beginning to paint the sky and lights were winking on in the houses and
docks surrounding the lake.  Distantly we could hear the whistle and
crackle of fireworks.  Adam backstroked a bit and then lolled a moment,
floating on his back, his arms outstretched.  A look of contentment crossed
his face.  Then he changed position and stood up on the bottom; the water
was about chest-high.  "Ahh, that's better," he said.  He giggled.

"Did you just piss?" I laughed.

"Yeah."

"You fucking pig."  I swam away from him.

"C'mon, Dan, do it.  You don't want to go back inside.  Just relax and let
it go."

In retrospect it was kind of a piggish thing to do.  If I was on land I
doubt I would have had the gumption to drop trou and relieve myself right
on the lakeshore, and certainly in a swimming pool or hot tub I wouldn't
have dreamed of it.  But, I told myself, at least piss was biodegradable,
and I had to admit there was something kind of sexy about it, just from the
standpoint that Adam was urging me to do something that was normally very
private and taboo, right there in front of him.  I floated back a bit,
letting the cool water caress my body, and I had to consciously will my
bladder to let itself go.  A warm feeling briefly spread through my groin
but dissipated quickly.  Adam made no moves to get away.  He remained there
treading water for a little while until I was done.  "Aw, wait, there's
more," he said.  He squirmed a bit and then laughed.  "Aw, shit, I just
farted.  Sorry."  No bubbles came up from the direction of his ass but I
took his word for it.

"You're a pig," I repeated.

"No more than you!" he said cheerfully, and then launched himself at me
with playfully fierce abandon.

He grabbed my shoulders and tried to push me underwater.  I resisted, and
felt a swift kick of his leg trying to sweep me off balance and sink me
further into the water.  I retaliated, and we struggled playfully for a few
seconds, splashing and flailing at each other.  But the import of it wasn't
lost on me.  Adam had just touched me in a very familiar way.  I'd felt the
warmth of his body.  It was very arousing.

He went underwater to evade me, and popped up a few feet away, wiping water
out of his eyes.  "Oh, you want to fight, huh?" he said, laughing.  "OK,
let's fight."

He lunged at me again and we began half-swimming, half-wrestling in the
water near the dock which was perhaps three or four feet deep.  Evidently
the point of the game was to hold the other guy's head underwater as long
as possible.  I was older and taller than Adam but skinnier and not as fit,
and thus we were almost perfectly matched.  I don't know how long we
wrestled but it seemed like an hour, and I wished it lasted forever.  It
was extremely arousing.  My dick was a bar of hot steel the entire time we
were wrapped up in each other.  At first I was terrified and fought hard to
keep any part of Adam's body from inadvertently touching my groin area,
lest he discover my arousal and my secret.  But later on I started not to
care.  At one point as we were fighting he grabbed me around the belly and
then after I struggled loose of him his forearm brushed my crotch.  My
penis tingled contentedly through my swim trunks, but my stomach sank;
there was no way he couldn't feel it.  We splashed up out of the water and
Adam laughed, and again wiped water out of his eyes in a casual, boyish and
very cute gesture.

At first I thought he was going to mock me, but he didn't.  He was still
playing.  "How long can you hold your breath?" he said.

"I don't know.  Not that long, I guess.  Why?"

"Let's swim out a little farther where it's a bit deeper.  Then we can
wrestle on the lake bottom.  I bet you can't pin me down to the bottom for
three seconds.  That'll make it harder because we'll not only be fighting
but you'll be trying to float up to the surface naturally."

I told him that sounded dangerous, but quickly I came up with an idea: if
we were being held underwater and either of us couldn't hold his breath
anymore and needed to come up, he would tap the other person, anywhere on
his body, three times in succession.  That was the "safety signal" which
meant the game was over and we had to let go and come up for air.

"Good idea!" he said, taking off.  "You're smart."

Adam located a suitable area about ten feet away.  He did another graceful
dolphin-dive, and I treaded water while I waited for him to come up.  It
seemed like he stayed down a very long time.  Finally his head bobbed up.
"This is perfect," he said.  "The bottom's real flat and sandy here, no
sticks or anything."

"How deep is it?"

"Not that deep.  I've got the tip of my toe on the bottom."  The water was
up to his chin.  "You ready?  Deep breath."

I took a deep gulp of air and then followed Adam under the murky water.  It
was very strange.  The lake water stung my eyes so I had my eyes closed,
and therefore I was blind as well as submerged.  The watery sounds of the
deep made strange hollow sounds deep inside my ears.  Finally I reached out
and touched the end of Adam's hand.  I grabbed for it, and he for me.
Because we couldn't see and we were crouched down so the water was over our
heads, in order to wrestle we had to pretty much fall into an embrace
first, which we did.  Suddenly I was very taken with this game.  My whole
body was now up against Adam's.  I felt the skin of my belly press against
his hairless stomach.  It was unbelievably erotic.  I quickly made up my
mind to lose this round on purpose.  I struggled a little bit, but Adam
basically crawled on top of me and began to force me deeper.  He had been
right.  It's almost impossible to pin another person to the bottom,
especially if they're trying to resist.  It takes a great deal of strength
to overcome not only the struggling of your opponent, but the natural
buoyancy of his body as well.  I fought weakly but finally just relaxed and
let Adam pin me.  I felt my shoulders and my butt grind into the soft sandy
bottom of the lake.  He couldn't hold me for three seconds; basically I
touched the bottom and that was it.  I squirmed around him and he tried to
get on me again, but my lungs were bursting.  I tapped him on the shoulder
three times, and we went up to the surface.

Air never tasted sweeter to me.  Only at the surface did I realize how
turned on I was.  I breathed and wiped water out of my eyes.  Adam surfaced
in front of me.  "Ha ha, I won," he said.

"I let you win."

"I know.  It's tough to hold someone down."

We rested for a minute and then he said, "Want to go again?"

The second round was exactly the opposite.  After an initial struggle just
under the surface--our hands and feet were splashing up into the air--Adam
let his body go limp and allowed me to take him under.  I realized I was
hugging him.  Wrapping my arms around him and pushing him down ahead of me
with my body was pretty much the only way to get him pinned to the lake
bottom.  But something else happened this time.  When he stopped fighting
Adam sort of pressed his body against mine and into mine.  I felt something
warm, long and stiff up against my thigh, shielded by a few thin layers of
nylon.  With a shock that almost made me let go of the breath I was holding
in, I realized Adam was hard.

I pushed him to the sandy bottom, but by the time we got there we weren't
fighting anymore.  Our embrace was decidedly familiar.  I didn't touch his
groin with my hands, but I could feel one of his nipples against my palm
and I could still feel his erection through his swim trunks against my leg.
Then something even more exciting happened.  Because we were in an awkward
position, constantly shifting, and we had our eyes closed, I had no idea
where his left hand was; his right was holding onto my shoulder.  But I
felt something brush my crotch and I realized it was Adam's hand.
Unfortunately I was already seeing stars and my head was pounding.  He felt
me only long enough to ascertain that I was erect too, and then I tapped
his arm three times and we released each other.

When we came to the surface neither of us mentioned our mutual state of
arousal.  Adam said, "See how much work it is to hold someone down?"

"Yeah.  Still, it's kind of fun though."

It was a couple of minutes before we felt up to another round.  My head was
still hurting and I was very cognizant of not getting overtired, knowing
that was dangerous when you're swimming especially in open water.  I looked
over at the dock.  Nobody was paying any attention to us.

"Ready again?" he said.

I was very curious--and excited--what would happen on this third trip to
the bottom.  During the anxious minutes that we'd spent at the surface
resting and breathing, my mind furiously scrambled for a course of action.
I knew it wasn't a fluke.  Adam had deliberately felt my crotch to see if I
was hard, and even if by some miracle of misperception he hadn't discovered
it earlier, there was no way he couldn't know by now that this game was
really turning me on.  But it was taboo to say anything about it.  If I
possessed then the smarts and courage that I have now I probably would have
just asked Adam what he wanted to do.  But in this situation I had to guess
it, and try to come up with an action that would accommodate it as well as
give vent to my own desires.

There was no time to decide now.  Adam was already filling his lungs and he
vanished underwater.  I did too.  The game was on.

This time both of us totally dropped any pretense of the wrestling match,
except perhaps as a theoretical excuse to the outside world as to why we
were doing what we were doing.  As soon as the water closed around our
heads Adam made a beeline for my crotch, and in half a second I was soon
doing the same for him.  Our hands were all over each other, feeling,
exploring, touching.  We did not touch bare skin at first, but we felt each
other up through our swimming trunks.  Even through the folds of nylon I
could feel that Adam's penis was smaller than mine.  I think he was
entranced by my size.  I won't say I'm anything more than average, but
being two years older than him and pretty much over puberty, I was more
developed and it seemed obvious he was curious.  Finally he tugged on my
arm in a downward direction, as if reminding me that the point of the game
was to get to the bottom.  We did, but it was a mutual effort.  I touched
the bottom with my feet, but that motion sent me upwards toward the surface
again.  Adam held me briefly, his hands on my hips, and I was still.  A
moment later the most wonderful thing of my young life so far happened.  I
felt Adam's hand slip inside the leg of my swimming trunks.  They were
loose and baggy, so he easily reached what he was after.  He touched my
bulging dick and tight balls through the mesh nylon fabric of the interior
lining of my trunks.  His previous ministrations had moved the mesh
slightly off-center, and about half of one of my balls was exposed with
nothing between it and the skin of Adam's fingers.  He ran his finger
across it, feeling the few thin little hairs there.  I hated to have to go
up for air but there was no choice.  I tapped him on the top of his head
three times, and we went up.

"This is fun," is the first thing Adam said when we surfaced.  I realized
this was as close as he was going to get to asking me point-blank if I
liked what he was doing, and if we could continue.

"Yeah, it is," I said, hoping this meant "yes, let's continue."  I was
almost shaking.  I'd never done this kind of thing with another boy before,
though I'd thought about it a lot.

"Another round?" he said hopefully.

Unfortunately we were interrupted.  Adam's father was standing on the dock
shouting his name.  My hopes sank.  There was nothing I wanted to do more
in the world than dive with Adam again.  It was "my turn," and on the last
round we'd progressed to bare-skin touching, just barely.  In the minute or
so since we'd been up my mind was already filling with wonderful images of
touching Adam's bare dick.  I wondered if he'd let me reach down the front
of his trunks.  Somehow I thought he would, and was waiting for me to do
exactly that.  But now he was being called in.

"What?" Adam called back to his dad.

"Come on in!  We're going to start taking fireworks over to the island."

"Shit," Adam said softly.  He looked at his dad, and at me.  Then he
started swimming for the dock.  I felt like crying.  So close, and yet so
far!  I wasn't sure exactly where our "wrestling" game was going to
lead--if anywhere--but I wanted desperately to find out.  Nevertheless,
there was no chance.  Reluctantly I followed Adam back to the dock and
hauled myself out of the water.  Adam's dad gave him a towel.

"We thought you boys were drowning," he joked.  "We were about ready to
send a rescue party over."

As he was drying off a look of panic suddenly crossed Adam's face.  He
clutched a hand to his neck, which was now bare.  "My dolphin!" he said.
"Shit, it's gone!"

"Adam, watch your mouth," his father grumbled at him.

I bent down with Adam and looked on the dock and at the edge of the water
underneath the dock.  I was terrified too; there was something very
symbolic about that dolphin, and I was scared of losing it.  Alas, it
didn't turn up.  "It must have fallen off while we were swimming," Adam
announced, probably more to his father than to me.

"Well, there's nothing for it," said his dad.  "It's on the bottom of the
lake now.  You'll never find it."

I felt terrible, because I knew I was probably responsible.  The dolphin's
chain had obviously been broken while we were wrestling underwater.
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance even to tell Adam privately that I was
sorry.  Rick and Adam's dad had gotten a huge amount of fireworks--most of
them illegal--and had evidently been planning to take them over to Witch
Island by boat and shoot them off to give everyone who lived on Lake
Guisowa a fireworks show.  Adam was soon enlisted in the fireworks team.  I
tried to insinuate myself into their orbit; as they loaded the boat I kept
asking, "Need any help?" but Rick or Adam's dad would invariably say, "No,
I think we got it, thanks."  I went back to the patio, dejected.

Still, it was wonderful to watch Adam and think about our brief intimacy
underwater.  I noticed that he put his sandals back on but not his shirt.
I dried off and was a bit chilly, but I firmly resolved not to put my shirt
on either, hoping that Adam found me attractive and would like to feast his
eyes as much as I enjoyed looking at him.  I watched him help to load the
fireworks on the boat, and then as a brilliant golden dusk fell into indigo
blue the boat motored over to Wizard Island and its passengers became
specks in the distance.  Realizing that the sexual part of the show was
over, I went to the cooler to get myself a Coke.

"You boys enjoy swimming, do you?" said an elderly man sitting next to me,
after I sat down and cracked open the Coke.

"Yeah," I shrugged.  "I don't get to the lake much."

"I used to swim in the lake all the time before my knee went bad," said the
man, whom I realized was Rick's father, one of the owners of the house.  "I
still have some of my old gear.  Diving mask, fins and that kind of thing.
If you're going to be around tomorrow, you can borrow it."

Fortunately my sister, her boyfriend and I were staying the night, though I
had no idea whether Adam was.  Nevertheless I immediately took him up on
the offer.  "Sure, that'd be great!" I said.  "Thanks!"

I wasn't thinking of sex or even of continuing to play with Adam.  I was
thinking of going down to the bottom of the lake and finding Adam's
dolphin.  A diving mask meant that I'd be able to see underwater.  For the
next half-hour as the fireworks show on the island was being arranged I
carefully scanned the lake with my eyes, trying to pin down the exact
location where we'd been wrestling so I could find it again tomorrow.  I
thought I was pretty sure where it was.  I hoped against hope I'd be able
to recover Adam's lost totem.  Somehow it seemed--without being able to
understand why--that if I didn't find it, what had happened between us this
afternoon would be without meaning.

The fireworks show was fantastic.  The illegal rockets and candles
illuminated the sky above Witch Island, and Adam, his father and two or
three of the other menfolk remained on the island to shoot them off while
back on the dock and the lakeshore the rest of us spectators appreciated
the spectacle.  Toward the end of the evening my spirits began to rise.
Even if nothing else happened with my young friend, this had been the best
4th of July of my life, and that was worth something.  I just hoped it
would continue into tomorrow.

*** *** ***

My sister, her boyfriend and I were planning to stay over so we could go
boating with Rick tomorrow, so that night I slept on a sofa in the living
room of the lake house.  When the party finally broke up--at close to
midnight--my mood had swung back toward despair, for I saw Adam putting his
shirt back on and his sister gathering up their belongings to leave.  I
felt like I had to speak to him, so I went up to him.

"I'm really sorry about your dolphin," I told him.  "I know it must have
come off while we were fighting, and it was my fault.  I'm going to be here
tomorrow and I'm gonna dive down to the bottom of the lake and look for
it."

"It wasn't your fault," said Adam charitably.  Then brightly he added,
"Hey, I can help you.  My dad and I are coming back in the morning."

My mood suddenly lifted.  "You are?"

"Yeah, we'll be here.  We can have a rematch!"

Adam and his father--who I think lived in Sioux City--were evidently
staying at a motel in the town of Lake Guisowa proper.  I was delighted,
and excited, to learn that I might yet have another chance tomorrow.  After
the house was quiet and I settled down on the couch with the blanket and
pillow that Rick's mom had provided me, my dick grew hard again as I
replayed in my head the adventures of the last few hours, and the promise
of what would happen the next day.  I was very aroused and I thought
seriously of masturbating, but decided against it.  The lake house was very
small, and my sister and her boyfriend were in one of the guest rooms whose
doorway was only a few feet away from the couch on which I had been
billeted.  Plus I had nothing to cum into except my underwear, and I didn't
particularly want to try to go to sleep with a glob of semen soaking my
shorts, slowly growing cold.  I vowed then that I would cum tomorrow, and I
would do it in Adam's presence.  I hoped he had similar designs.

The next day, the actual Fourth of July, dawned warm and hazy, and it
turned out to be even hotter than the day before.  By ten o'clock Adam and
his dad still had not arrived, and I had little choice but to agree to go
out with Rick, Lisa, my sister and her boyfriend on one of the speedboats,
where we did useless laps around the lake with the motor roaring in my ears
as the men chugged can after can of Miller Genuine Draft, leaving the
empties in a gleaming silver pile in a cooler at the back of the boat.
When we got back to the dock, however, I saw a lovely sight.  Adam was
sitting at one of the patio tables, sunlight glittering off his Air Force
sunglasses.  He was wearing the same blue and white nylon swim shorts as
he'd had on yesterday, but he wore a black T-shirt advertising the band
Motley Crue; I guess he must have been into heavy metal.  There was a
plastic grocery bag on the table next to him, its handle tied shut.  Next
to him Adam's dad was talking to Rick's father.

"Hey," I said, sitting down next to him.

"Hey, what's up?"

"You made it."

"Of course," he said.  He pushed the bag across the table toward me.  "Look
what's in here.  My granddad pulled this out for us.  Swimming stuff!"

I untied the handles of the bag and peered inside.  There was an ancient
set of neoprene swim fins, a diving mask, and a snorkel.  I told Adam that
his grandfather had mentioned the diving gear the previous night.  "This
means we can look for your dolphin," I told him.

"I don't care too much about the dolphin," said Adam.  He looked at me
mischievously.  "Wanna wrestle again?"

"Hell, yeah!"

My blood--and my hormones--were up at the mere mention of being alone with
Adam again, and I was eager to pick up our game where it left off
yesterday.  Rick, Lisa and the others were organizing another boat
expedition, but Adam and I begged off, saying we wanted to go swimming.
Actually, having the adults on the speedboat was a very good thing.  In
doing laps around Lake Guisowa they would notice our activities even less
than yesterday, and this time nobody would be back on the dock to watch us
either; Rick's parents were spending the day inside because it was so hot.
Adam and I quickly stripped off our shoes and our shirts, grabbed the
swimming gear and splashed into the water under the dock.

"You know how to dive with a snorkel?" Adam said as I fitted the J-shaped
tube into the cowl on the diving mask.

"I've done it a few times," I told him.

"We can trade off maybe," he suggested.  "You use it first, then me."  He
dunked himself underwater, came back up and wiped wet hair out of his eyes.
"I should warn you, I let you win too easily yesterday," he said.  "I'm
gonna fight like hell today."

"Well, I can see this time," I replied, putting on the diving mask, "so I
have an advantage!"

Our first round was pretty standard wrestling, which was probably for the
best; we both needed to get back into the curious mood we'd been in late
yesterday.  It didn't take long.  Grappling together in the lazy greenish
water, our skin brushing up against each other, and fueled with the
forbidden titillation of sex that we were not supposed to know about yet, I
could soon feel my penis lengthening in my swimming trunks and I welcomed
the pleasant hardness I felt in my groin.  Having the diving mask was
wonderful, because now I could see Adam as well as feel him.  When I went
underwater the world became a strange hazy continuum of blue and green, but
sharply focused and unusually clear.  Lake Guisowa was pretty murky, but I
could see the smoothness of Adam's chest and his belly, the ruffled
waistband of his swimming trunks, and the infinitesimal bubbles that clung
to the fine hairs on his thighs above his legs that disappeared into the
murk.  This time we did not go that deep.  We wrestled in mid-water pretty
close to the surface, close enough that Adam could pop up now and again for
a breath, and with the snorkel I was rarely below water level.  This time
there was no object to our contest.  Neither of us were trying to pin each
other.  We were just playing for the sake of playing, and it was arousing.

We parted and Adam swam out a little bit, to the same area where we'd been
playing yesterday.  "OK, let's do a real round now," he said, treading
water.

"You want the mask?" I said.

"No, that's all right," he replied.  "You take it for now."

Ostensibly to wash off the front of my face mask, I put my face in the
water and looked down.  I could barely see the bottom of the lake just
beneath my feet.  Indeed it was soft and sandy like we'd felt yesterday.  I
could see Adam too.  There was an unmistakable bulge in his shorts, and I
knew he was ready to continue our exploration.

The roar of a motor approached.  The speedboat carrying our kin whirred by.
Adam's dad waved to him; we waved back.

"Ready to fight?" he said mischievously, as the boat careened away.  I
nodded.

We dove, but not especially deep.  Indeed, I kept the top of my snorkel
above the level of the water.  Adam went underwater.  I saw him flail
softly in the greenish light, and he swam toward me.  We more danced than
wrestled, but very soon we were entwined in each other, moving slowly in
the semi-weightlessness of our underwater kingdom.  I had decided early on
today, given the disastrous results yesterday of waiting too long to take
any really decisive action, that I would be very aggressive.  I swam for
Adam and put my arms around his waist.  We hung together for a moment, and
then I reached for the string tying the gather of his swimming trunks.  The
knot gave easily.  His legs paddled suddenly, as if he was surprised by my
action, but then he relaxed.  I could feel my own hardness throbbing with
anticipation.  I glanced up.  Adam's head was just at surface level.  He
could--and indeed did--tip his head back and poke his nose and mouth up out
of the water long enough to get a few breaths.  I was hovering just at the
level high enough to keep the water from spilling into the snorkel.  My
breaths smelled and tasted like old moldy neoprene, but I could breathe.
And the murky water hid our activities from all.  Even if the family came
by again in the speedboat, they'd never catch on to what was happening.

I pulled down Adam's now loose swimming trunks.  The folds of nylon rippled
eerily in slow-motion underwater.  For the first time I saw another boy's
penis in a state of erection.  Adam's rod was about five inches long, very
straight and symmetrical, circumcised, a smaller version of mine.  His
balls, however, were bigger than mine, fuller and they hung more loosely
from his body.  He had a thin patch of reddish pubic hair.  At first I was
more entranced by his testicles than his dick.  I reached out and touched
them, cradled and rolled the hard marbles nestled in the soft folds of
flesh.  Adam's penis twitched.  He was paddling slightly with his legs, and
that had the effect of slowly moving us out toward deeper water.  I didn't
care.  I could breathe, he could breathe, and the water would camouflage
our activities.  I had no intention of stopping.

Under the water I could hear the blood pounding in my ears.  Everything in
that underwater world was very eerie.  I wasn't quite sure what to do.  If
we were on land and in private, I might well have taken Adam into my mouth
and given him a blow job.  The idea of him ejaculating in my mouth was
irresistibly exciting.  But trying to negotiate that underwater would be
very difficult.  Instead I ran my hands over Adam's genitals.  Cupping his
balls in one hand, I closed my other hand around his penis and began to
masturbate him.  I could tell immediately that no one had ever done this to
him before.  His body twitched and thrashed.  I looked up and saw his chin
bob up and out of the water several times before he ducked back down again.
He was taking short little breaths.  He was enjoying this.  I thought I
felt his penis grow harder in my hand.

His swimming trunks, which were loosened but not really off, soon got in
the way.  Still keeping hold of his dick, I let go of his balls and gently
tugged the shorts down until they encircled his thighs.  Now I had free
access to his groin, and even more than that.  Still entranced by the
rhythmic hiss of my own breathing through the snorkel, I continued my slow
hand job--made slower by the lack of any lubricant, even the natural oil of
skin that washed away in water--and with my other hand touched his balls
and began to reach up and backwards.  I was searching for his butthole.
With my middle finger I found it, or thought I did.  I'm not certain I
penetrated his anus, but I think I got close.  His body convulsed suddenly,
and two or three bubbles oozed up his butt crack, glimmering toward the
surface.  I think he enjoyed this intrusion.

Finally I felt Adam's hands on my head.  He stroked my hair gently and my
ears.  He was still trying to stay upright in the water, but was finding
the more he relaxed the easier it became.  My own dick throbbed as I
imagined the feelings of pleasure that must be radiating through Adam's
young body.  I found a rhythm on his dick.  It felt good.  I enjoyed giving
sex pleasure to another boy.  In fact I enjoyed it every bit as much as if
it was being done to me.

Our play didn't last long, and Adam must have been coiled up pretty good.
Under the water his body quivered, his legs toggled and pedaled like he was
on an underwater bicycle, and as I looked up I saw him duck down under the
water, his eyes clenched shut, his cheeks ballooned out with the deep
breath he'd just taken.  I quickly looked back at his organ and felt its
sudden rock-hardness in my hand.  I used two hands on him now, one on each
side, rolling his penis like a snake of dough; that was a technique I'd
discovered recently, when employed at the moment of orgasm, added an extra
bit of intensity.  His body bucked.  A feathery ribbon of waterborne cum
suddenly ejected itself from the tip of his penis with the force of an
underwater dart.  It was followed in short order by several other quick
jets which hung in the water for a few moments, a pearly cloud of white
pleasure that seemed to glow eerily in the diffused sunlight from the
surface.  Adam's whole body went limp.  He fell downward until his feet
touched the sandy bottom, and then he pushed off with his toes back toward
the surface.  The cum cloud was dissipating now.  Semen looks entirely
different underwater, like a ribbon dance, lazy and weightless.  I took a
breath and dove under the water, following the largest jet of sperm all the
way to the bottom of the lake.  As I surfaced Adam was pulling up his
shorts.

I blew water out of the snorkel and took off the face mask.  Adam smiled
contentedly.  "Nice," he said.  He wiped water out of his eyes.  "It's my
turn now.  Let me use the mask."

I took off the gear and readily handed it over.  "Let's get in a little
shallower water," I told him.  He agreed.

We swam a few feet up toward the lake shore.  I realized now that I was
going to experience my first orgasm at the hands of another male.  I was
walking along the bottom now and found a spot that suited me.  I could
stand on the bottom, my legs apart, roughly at parade rest.  The surface of
the water was at the level of my neck.  Adam fitted the snorkel into the
face mask, and then he dove.  Under the glinting ripples I could see,
distorted, the white and blue of his trunks, and the pinkish white of the
skin of his back, but little else.  The tip of the snorkel, barely an inch
out of the water, moved closer to me.  I averted my eyes to Witch Island,
and the little cove where Adam and his father had landed the fireworks boat
the night before, as I felt a tug on the waist of my Miami Dolphins
swimming shorts, and then Adam pulled them down.

I gasped softly at the first feeling of his hands on me.  I think he was
fascinated by it, the larger penis of this older boy, and he examined it
and played with it and quickly made it his toy.  He ran his fingers all
around it, especially the ridge where the head met the shaft.  I felt a
gentle rounded pressure on my tip and I realized he was running his thumb
over it.  He caressed my balls and probed further up.  He accomplished with
me what I hadn't with him.  He zeroed in on my anus like a heat-seeking
missile, and I was almost shocked when I felt the probe of his fingertip
enter me softly.  I think I farted too, as he had done, but I didn't see
the bubbles.  He didn't penetrate me very far.  He began stroking my dick,
first with one hand, then with both.  He used a technique that I liked very
much and was surprised to see from someone younger than me and not as
experienced (I assumed) in the ways of manual pleasure.  He ran his hands
over me in one direction only, starting at the root of my penis and
continuing on to the tip, but he never stroked backwards; he released that
hand and started again at the root.  It made a wonderful endless one-way
tunnel of pleasure, drawing the sperm out of me, gently at first but then
more forceful.  My penis began to twitch in a glorious rhythm between
Adam's hands.  I was panting.  I could feel the heat of the day on my face
and I could hear the drone of Rick's speedboat somewhere on the lake.  But
I was consumed with the wonderful pleasure that Adam was giving me, and it
radiated out to every part of my body.  It was a wonderful and liberating
experience.

My dick seized up and became a bar of molten lead, and I gasped as the
orgasm welled up inside of me.  I had to tell myself to relax, and I did,
falling back in the water slightly, letting go the tension in my knees.
The pleasure crested and I came, shooting hot jets of fresh sperm into the
greenish water.  Adam held onto my balls as I ejaculated and he rolled them
like marbles, trying perhaps to squeeze all the semen out of them that he
could get.  When it was over I felt gloriously satisfied and very
fulfilled.  For a first sexual experience it was about as good as they
come.

Adam was very thorough.  When my orgasm was finished he pulled up my shorts
and even re-tied them, something I hadn't done for him.  Then he vanished
under the water.  I felt his hands on my ankles.  I felt something else
too.  I can't be sure but I think, strange as it may sound, that Adam
kissed my knees.  Why he would have done that I had no idea, but it felt
good, and was an interesting coda to the experience.

I swam away from him, but Adam did not come up.  He stayed underwater for a
long time, much longer than it seemed was safe.  Finally I began to get
worried.  "Adam?"  I looked around for him under the water.  I could see a
distant lighter-colored shape far beneath me; he must have been on the very
bottom.  Ten seconds passed.  The shape didn't move.  Finally I began to
draw a deep breath.  I was going to go under and rescue him, though it
seemed unlikely, as good a swimmer as he was, that he had gotten into
trouble.

Just as I was about to go under, the lighter shape moved and Adam surfaced
near me.  He blew water out of the snorkel exactly the way a dolphin blows
water from its blow-hole.  "I got it!" he said breathlessly.  A fist rose
out of the water.  Dangling from it was a glittering silver dolphin on a
chain.

"You found it!" I gasped.

"I thought I saw something glinting under there, so I took a look.  It was
sort of half-covered in the silt, but there it was."  He looked very
pleased with himself.

"That's incredible!  I thought it was lost forever."

"Me too.  And this isn't where we were wrestling yesterday.  It was way
over there.  The current must have moved it during the night."

He was about to put it on, but he suddenly seemed to think better of it.
He reached forward and dropped it in my hand.  "Here, you keep it," he
said, as if it was the most casual thing in the world.

"I can't take this."

"Sure you can.  It's not like it's valuable or anything.  Besides, you've
got all the Dolphins gear anyway.  You should have it."  He smiled.  "Let's
go back to the dock and get a Coke.  Then maybe we can wrestle again
later."

I put on the dolphin right then and there.  I was so overwhelmed by the
gift that I didn't take it off for the rest of the summer.  When school
started again in the fall I wore it to class every day, and everyone just
assumed it was part of my Dolphins image; I never told anyone how I had
come to acquire it.  I still have it, in a little curio box on my dresser.
I didn't see Adam again after that weekend, but I'll always remember him,
and my first odd sexual experience with another male, in the cloudy waters
of Lake Guisowa on the Fourth of July.

So that's the story of how I became the Dolphin.  The Dolphin wasn't really
me--it was him.  But "Dolphin Adam" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
So Dolphin Dan will just have to do.

Stories By This Author:

Last Days in the Dorm
/nifty/gay/college/last-days-in-the-dorm
(A student stumbles into an encounter with an attractive Native American
college student the night before moving out of his dorm.)

Lust In Iraq
/nifty/gay/military/lust-in-iraq/
(A war-weary sergeant becomes infatuated with a young PFC recently
transferred to his unit.)

Rip the Jacker
/nifty/bisexual/masturbation/rip-the-jacker/
(An outwardly well-adjusted high school student becomes a serial
masturbator, causing a tremendous stir in the community.)

Shifter
/nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/shifter/
(A college student's sexual fantasies have the unintended effect of
transporting him backwards in time.)

Wet Lucidity
/nifty/gay/masturbation/wet-lucidity
(An exploration of the link between wet dreams and lucid dreams.)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
/nifty/bisexual/college/slouching-towards-bethlehem/
(A student on a summer abroad program in Eastern Europe shortly after the
fall of Communism becomes involved with an attractive classmate...and her
boyfriend.)

Lust in the Deep
/nifty/gay/military/lust-in-the-deep
(A crewman on a submarine develops a crush on a crew mate, which leads to a brief but sexy encounter on shore leave.)