The second semester got off to a good start. Both Steve and I were in classes which really interested us and we were enjoying life at Ole Miss. Football season had ended but our physical training went on at as demanding a pace as ever. We were both seeing real progress in our physical development, in our strength and endurance and coordination and in the rather spectacular changes in our appearance. We got a lot of lustful looks on campus, from both girls and other guys.

That semester I was taking two classes with Bardwell. One was the continuation of the honors seminar I'd been in during the previous fall semester. The group of students in it remained the same. I therefore saw Daniel a lot and he and I began to spend some time studying together.

The second class I was taking with Bardwell wasn't an actual class at all. It was an independent studies project dealing with film. I'd been flattered by Bardwell's interest in me and his willingness to work with me as an independent student on a guided reading and research project. He told me that he considered me one of the most promising students he'd ever had and wanted to work with me as much as possible.

I'd already read everything I could find about the history of film. Under Bardwell's guidance I went much further. It is odd remembering those days and how little scholarly material there was on film and film history. In the years since so much has been written. Cinema hardly existed then as an academic subject. Now there are departments at many universities and some entire schools devoted to cinematographic studies.

Bardwell encouraged me to look beyond the limited material available on film history and begin to look at the techniques and methods of script writing and development.

As part of my work with Bardwell he asked me to start keeping a journal. I'd attempted a few times in high school to keep a diary but each time I soon lost interest and let it lapse. But this time it was different. Bardwell wanted me to record events as well as my thoughts about them. He also asked me to try to record conversations I had with others, or conversations I had overheard. He said it was a good way to learn how to write dialog which sounded natural, dialog which sounded the way people actually talked.

For some reason at that time in my life, the discipline of keeping a journal stuck. I have never stopped writing, at least brief daily entries, in a journal. During that semester I even went back and tried to reconstruct events and conversations I'd had earlier in high school and during my first semester at Old Miss. Those journals have been the major source of the remembrances I've shared in these stories.

My academic life was exciting and challenging. My private life was also moving into new territory. With both of us in private rooms, Steve and I settled into a pattern of frequent sex. It never got at all ordinary, though. Steve had a talent for surprising me and was always introducing innovations in our love making. I quickly realized what he was doing in his attempts to keep our love fresh and began to bring my own ideas to bed as well.

I don't know how it started, but within a few weeks of the beginning of the new semester I realized that a kind of pattern had emerged. We were together every Tuesday, spending the night in his room. Then every weekend we seemed to end up in my room, usually from Friday afternoon after our last classes, until late on Sunday night. Some weekends Steve stayed over until Monday morning.

Our wardrobes were hopelessly mixed. We were the same height and size. Steve's clothes fit me and my own clothes fit him. In my eye, my things always looked much better on him than on me.

Our weeknight lovemaking took on a distinctly different character than the long, slow hours we spent in bed together on weekends. On the weeknights we spent together it had been agreed that we'd not stay over. It seemed to cause too many questioning looks when we came out of my dorm room or Steve's and headed to the showers early in the morning after an overnight together. On weekends it didn't seem to matter. All of the guys in my dorm were jocks and they were usually up and out on Saturday or Sunday morning at a fairly early hour. We, of course, slept in and almost always ended up having the showers to ourselves when we finally did climb out of bed.

On weeknights our sex was hurried and a little frantic. Steve had proven to be much more versatile than Rick had ever been. Rick always wanted to be fucked and I just naturally fell into that pattern, almost always being the top, although I eventually realized that Rick had been as much in control as I was. With Steve I never knew what to expect except that he'd show up horny and we'd get in on.

Some nights he'd be very aggressive. He fucked me in every position you can imagine and often had his cock in my ass before either of us were even out of our clothes. We did it in the bed, on the floor, in the face to face position I liked best, with my legs around him or hiked up on his broad shoulders. Other times we did it doggy style with him banging into me with such force that we actually made our way from one side of my dorm room to the other as he propelled me forward an inch or two each time he drove his hard cock into my ass. It took time but I got used to the massive size of his cock head and was able to take him without much discomfort.

A few times Steve almost raped me, taking me standing up while I leaned gasping against the wall. The first time he did that he'd come in and found me wearing only sweat pants and a t-shirt. He yanked the shirt off me and pulled the sweat pants down around my knees as he shoved me against the wall, unzipped his jeans and shoved his cock in dry. My unprepared ass hurt for a week but I dreamed every night of him doing it again.

As he fucked me he tended to talk softly, telling me how much he loved me, how he loved my body, how he loved my ass. He'd keep up a steady stream of talk as he nibbled my ears and kissed every part of me he could reach.

Rick and I had never been all that vocal while we were having sex and I found Steve's continual comments a real turn-on. I soon found that I was doing the same, telling him what I liked, what I was felling, how much I cared for him.

On weekends Steve the romantic would often emerge. One Friday night he called to say he had to run an errand before coming to my room, so I shouldn't expect him before nine o'clock. When he did show up he was carrying a big, bulging duffle bag and had an equally full backpack over his shoulders.

He bolted the door and then proceeded to tell me that we were not going out of the dorm until Monday morning when we had to leave for our classes. As he talked he unpacked packets of food, bottles of water and juice. He took out two gallons of milk and put them on the outside window ledge where they'd stay cold in the winter air. He then revealed enough chocolate to keep us on a sugar high all weekend.

When he was finished unpacking and was putting the food in some order of his own devising, he pointed out that everything he'd brought with him was edible or drinkable. He'd brought no clothes, other than what he was wearing and a couple of large towels.

"So get undressed," he grinned as he put the last packets in order, "we going to stay naked until Monday morning."

"What about trips to the bathroom or showers?" I asked.

"That's what the towels are for."

We stripped, watching each other, marveling at our bodies, getting more and more turned on. Steve hung his clothes in my closet so they'd be fresh for classes on Monday and I folded my jeans and shirt and put them away.

When I tuned back to face him he opened his arms and drew me into a warm, tender embrace. We quickly settled on the bed where we kissed and touched and murmured our love for over an hour before ever getting onto anything more sexual.

"I wish I could express how much I love you," Steve said over and over in a dozen different ways. I thought he was doing a pretty good job of it but I knew how he felt. It is so hard to put into words what you really feel for another person. I guess planning that weekend was his way of expressing his love in ways words couldn't equal.

When we'd nearly exhausted ourselves with our kissing, Steve rolled over and took a tube of lubricant off my bedside table. He lowered his head with a look as shy as a timid child and whispered, "please, Rob, fuck me."

Much later, as I thought about that weekend, I realized that, between Friday night and the early hours of Monday morning, I had fucked Steve eight times. He never once fucked me, remaining, instead, totally submissive, spurring me on to dominate him.

A few weeks into the semester Steve announced that we were going to start dating. He'd decided that if we were always together it would soon be rumored that we were queer. The only solution was "cover," as he called it.

I pointed out that I was officially at least, still going steady with Joyce, but he informed me that that was no excuse. The very next week Steve and I went on our first double date. Steve arranged it and it was clearly designed for maximum exposure and minimum intrusion on our private life.

Since neither of us had a car, the plans were made with the lack of transport in mind. The two girls lived in the same dorm so walking there to meet them was easy. We went on to dinner at a small, but very nice restaurant near the university and then returned to campus for a dance which was being held in the Union. By midnight we'd returned our dates to their dorm and returned to my room and our own private world.

>From that point on Steve and I continued to follow that pattern at least one weekend per month. We rarely dated the same girls more than two or three times, not wanting our interest in them to be misunderstood and result in complications. We followed the established pattern of a slight kiss on the cheek on the first date and maybe a little petting on the second or third. Since we never dated any of the girls more than two or three times we ran no chance of things going any further.

Both Steve and I were good dancers and we soon established ourselves as popular "Ladies' Men." Our social life was actually fun and it certainly seemed to have the desired results. Guys we saw in the gym or locker room often acknowledged seeing us with some hot girls at the last Union event and our own relationship was accepted as nothing more than a normal friendship between two ordinary guys.

Steve continued to make teasing remarks about our "threesome" with Daniel Lipscomb in Memphis. We did ask Daniel if he'd join us and Sammy Hill in Gulfport over Spring Break and he readily agreed to come.

In anticipation of the trip we began to see more of both Daniel and Sammy. We often ate together in the commons and even spent one entire weekend together. The university union had put together a foreign film festival with showings on Thursday and Friday evening and then on through all of Saturday, ending with two Fellini films that night. All of us had some interest in films but I was by far the most interested of the four of us.

Under Bardwell's guidance I had begun to study film as a serious art form and had read everything I could get my hands on. The film festival weekend was a good opportunity to get to know Daniel and Sammy better and for them to get to know Steve and me. I'd been a little concerned that Steve might try to use our time with them to coax Daniel and Sammy into some sort of sexual situation. When I mentioned it to him he grinned and said he could wait for that until the four of us got to Gulfport.

Over that weekend the four of us had several meals together, punctuated by endless conversations. By Saturday night both Steve and I were even more aware of how bright and articulate both Daniel and Sammy were. We had begun to forge strong and enduring friendships.

I'd vowed to establish a better relationship with my brother and during the second semester of my freshman year at Ole Miss I spent a lot more time with him. It was easier to find the time with the demands of football season behind me and he seemed to take my involvement in sports as the reason for my lack of contact during the fall semester.

Betty and Ted were more or less living together. She was spending several nights a week at his apartment. It was an open secret so far as her sorority sisters were concerned and Ted's fraternity brothers were equally guarded about the situation.

In those days, of course, the university authorities would have come down hard on any students who were unmarried and living together, if the situation had become known. It would have been harder on Betty, of course, because the myth of feminine chastity was still perpetuated. At a university like Ole Miss, where southern traditions were prized, the idea of any students having sex outside of marriage was absolutely unacceptable. By the late 1960s things were changing but the façade of acceptable behavior was still strong. What actually went on was very different from what was officially countenanced.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get together with Ted, we figured out that Wednesday evenings were free for both of us. Steve had a seminar that evening and Betty, it turned out, also had commitments on Wednesday evenings. She belonged to an association for future teachers and had weekly meetings then.
Ted and I therefore fell into the habit of meeting for dinner on Wednesday evening and then going on to his apartment where we regularly spent another hour or two in conversation.

My brother was not the most interesting person I knew and he wasn't a great conversationalist but he was my brother and I found that I was truly interested in knowing more about what he thought and what he dreamed of for the future.

I wasn't surprised to find he was as conservative as our father and as certain of how the world should run. He was amazingly opinionated for a guy who was barely twenty but I suppose his whole world view was predicated on maintaining the status quo. We differed on almost every issue, especially on the war in Vietnam, which I saw as a growing disaster and which Ted saw in terms of national pride and international security.

It was clear that my brother also held ideas on racial issues which I considered medieval. I never allowed our conversations to get anywhere near the issue of sex diversity, knowing that Ted and I might really come to blows.

The semester settled into an enjoyable pattern. My academic work was exciting and challenging. My physical training continued to be demanding and I continued to make progress. On top of everything else I was having incredible sex.

To be continued.