Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2018 22:46:59 +0000
From: Zack McNaught <zackmcnaught@hotmail.com>
Subject: Fairground

Warning: contains consensual (and loving) sex between teenagers, and
between a teenager and a preteen. None of the really naughty bits happened,
not even to these fictional people in this fictional world. It's all a
fabrication.

Please get in touch if you enjoy the story:
zackmcnaught@hotmail.com. Authors are egotistical beasts, and we can life
for weeks on the residue of just one nice email. Please also consider a
donation to Nifty to keep stories like this on the net.


Foreword from the author:

For quite some time now, I've been slowly putting out chapters of a rather
involved story called 'Love or sex, or something like them'. That was only
ever a working title - more of a note to myself that anything else - but
because I was impatient to publish the first chapter, and uninspired to
come up with a better name, it stuck.

Now as I come close to finishing the story, and I've looked back over what
was written, I've decided that it's time to tidy up some of the work which
has come before, re-write a few bits and pieces, add the final chapter, and
publish it all in one volume, this time with a slightly less awful
title. In all, it has come to over 46,000 words. Which is a small novel.

Anyway, without further ado, here it is: the complete, unabridged
"Fairground", so-called because there are plenty of ups and downs, and
parts of it will make you sick, but there's fun to be had.


## Chapter 1

Clear, bright, sunny mornings always remind me of the moment when I was
finally able to admit to myself that I was happy, and in love. It was like
waking after a night-time storm in a bright, new dawn, with a ray of light
piercing the darkness which surrounded me and lifting me free into a future
where happiness was possible, and life was not always cruel and unkind.

Imagine those cinematic moments where the night has been survived, where
humanity has triumphed, where the good guys have made it, and you're
somewhere near the feelings which flooded through me when in a moment I
realised that I was OK, that I was capable of loving, and of being
loved. But let me not get too far ahead of myself. To experience the joy I
felt, you must have a flavour of the pain, and I'm afraid I must take you
there first.

Strike one was the death of both of my parents. There has always a family
rumour that they were killed for money (or perhaps, debt), but I've never
discovered any evidence of that. The official cause of death was a head-on
collision between their car and the ground at the bottom of a cliff in
Monaco.

Oh, I know what you're thinking - poor lad, alone in the world, an orphan,
and so on; don't bother weeping for me just yet. Honestly, at the time I
couldn't care less. I think I'd met my parents about three times before
they died, so it was hardly a terrible shock. At the age of eight I had
only ever known a succession of nannies, while mum and dad continued to
live the exotic party lifestyle they were unwilling to alter just to do
something as mundane as raising their child.

No, the problem with their early exit was not so much the loss of family as
the loss of equity. All those around me had expected young master Zachary,
on the death of his parents, to become comfortably well-off. Not, it
appeared, the case. In actual fact, rather than a huge fortune I had been
left a huge debt. My parents' assets were sold off to pay those debts, and
by the time their numerous creditors were satisfied, there was very little
left for me. Cue the end of expensive prep schools, and the exit of the
nanny, and the sudden realisation that there really was very little in the
world for me to hold on to.

I almost went into care. I was with a foster family for three days before
my father's older sister was finally traced, and persuaded to take me
in. It wasn't as though she particularly hated the idea of me living with
her, but we simply didn't know each other. She lived on the south coast of
the UK, surviving on what little she could earn as a cleaner while
desperately seeking her muse. She and my father had stopped speaking some
years before their death, and I couldn't remember ever having met her.

Aunt Jane was scatterbrained, flighty and forgetful. Not neglectful per se,
but certainly of an artistic disposition, and hardly perfect parent
material. That's not to say artists can't be great parents, you
understand. Just not Aunt Jane, at least in the mundane 'food on the table,
clothes in the cupboard' kind of a way. What she did represent, though, was
the first blood relative I'd ever known to actually care for me. It was a
revelation.

Strike two, returning to my misery, came three years later when, with a bit
of a start, I discovered that I really rather fancied one of the young men
who worked behind the counter in the local butcher's. That came as a bit of
a shock to my eleven year old self, when all is said and done. By this
time, life with Aunt Jane was happily carrying on without being
particularly spectacular in any sense, but this sudden realisation and all
of the associated implications slightly derailed the train.

Of course I dealt with it in a mature fashion: I repressed the whole thing,
and became obsessed with the idea of getting into a girl's pants. Oh, I
know, most boys that age are desperately trying to get into someone's pants
anyway, but there was a certain mania to my outlook.

I seem to have decided that the only way to cure myself of my budding
homosexuality was to purge it with a whacking great dose of 'straight'. I
wasn't that successful, mind, even if I managed to get Theresa Simpson to
let me feel her up - my dick was so regrettably limp throughout the
experience that she ended up laughing when she saw it. She didn't tell on
me, though. Nice girl.

Strike three, and the ultimate knockout (quite literally), came about nine
months later when, upon finally revealing to someone that I thought I might
be a bit different, things went all too predictably wrong. All I can say is
it seemed like a good idea at the time.

There was a sense in the national media that homosexuality was, if not the
norm, at least not entirely the work of the devil. People were coming out
all over the place, and there was almost a bit of a trend to it. And so I
made the decision, one fateful Tuesday, to announce, in utmost secrecy
(well, it was still a bit of a risk, right?) to my best friend in the
entire world that I might prefer boys to girls.

I woke up two days later in hospital. I don't recall exactly what happened,
and I was only ever given fractured reports of the truth, which rarely
agreed. The news seemed to spread like wildfire, in the sense that not only
was it rapidly dispersed, but it also inflamed many of those whom it
reached. I was confronted and set upon by a group of twenty or so lads,
including my former friend, who all saw it as their duty to protect the
school from the faggot. I don't think it was meant to go that far, but
there really was a hint of something animalistic in the boys that day. They
beat me so badly that there is still a soft section in the back of my
skull.

Nothing positive was done, of course. Police interviewed various boys, but
no-one was saying anything, least of all the school, who wanted the whole
thing to go away as quickly as possible. They hung me out to dry - I was
branded a trouble-maker, a known problem child, and summarily expelled for
reasons which were never explained. A paper record from the time simply
says, "Expelled for serious breach of school regulations." Apparently being
beaten to within an inch of my life was a serious offence. Or perhaps I was
expelled for being gay.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the reality was easy to see - I could
never return to that school. Nor to any in the area, because it was
well-known local gossip. Aunt Jane suffered for my lack of judgement,
too. Doors which had always been open to her suddenly closed. The stench of
homophobia settled over our little community, and before long one truth
became self-evident: we would have to move.

Aunt Jane should have hated me. She could have resented my very existence,
and right then I wouldn't have blamed her. It was my fault after all. I
didn't need to say anything, and it was my naivety which led to our
ostracism from a community she had lived in for years. But she never once
blamed me.

Instead, we quietly packed up and left.

---

I had missed a great deal, and had spent a miserable few weeks in hospital,
but finally - two months after the incident - it was time for me to return
to school. Aunt Jane gently reminded me as I left for my first day that it
was best not to say anything to anyone about a certain little thing. I
hardly needed reminding, but nodded mutely anyway.

A new school, a fresh start, in a new town. Aunt Jane had sold her lovely
little seaside home and bought another, less lovely, slightly less seaside
home a hundred miles along the coast. She never said a thing about it, but
I knew how much it hurt her to leave the life she had built. She was bright
and breezy about the new start, but I wasn't immune to the fact she was
deeply upset.

---

I had a meeting with the headmaster, Mr Clarke, first thing. He was a
kindly, middle-aged man with greying hair, who welcomed me into his office
with a soft 'hello' and bade me sit. I still remember the chair: bottle
green vinyl on a swivel base, a chair built to adult proportions. It
reminded me of the Mastermind chair - not a great first impression!

But he was a kindly man, interested in what I had to say, not just going
through the motions. We chatted about this and that, about my family past,
about my current situation, my academic record, the sports I enjoyed. In
fact, the conversation was so pleasant that when he brought it around to
more recent matters, I was caught completely off guard.

"So, you were expelled from your last school. Why was that?"

I didn't know what to say. How was I meant to answer that question? Aunt
Jane had already cautioned against mentioning my sexuality, but here I was
being directly asked by the headmaster. Could I lie to him? Would he know?
I hesitated too long.

"It's OK, Zachary, if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. I
learned what happened from a friend of mine who's on the board of governors
there, but I wanted to hear things in your own words."

I waited a little longer, trying to calm myself.

"I... I said something I shouldn't have said, and I got beaten up. They
said it was my fault for starting it, so they had to expel me."

"Yes, that was what I was told," Mr Clarke said, looking down at the papers
on his desk and frowning. "I must say, I find the decision
questionable. Uncomfortable, even. May I ask a very personal question,
Zachary?"

I shrugged. I imagined he would ask anyway, no matter how I responded.

"Zachary, are you homosexual?"

Another question I really didn't know how to answer. Obviously I knew what
the answer was, but the last time I'd come out to anyone was to my aunt,
and the time before that I had been hospitalised; so far, my chances of a
positive outcome were no better than 50:50. Again, it seemed I had
hesitated too long, because Mr Clarke raised his hands and said,

"It's OK, you don't have to tell me anything, Zachary. Nor do you have to
be concerned that your classmates will trouble you. I honestly don't care,
as long as you feel as though you are happy to be here, and don't feel
threatened. It's a subject with which we as a school have had some prior
experience, with, thankfully, a positive outcome."

I didn't respond, and Mr Clarke seemed to sense that I wasn't going to.

"Right," he said, "That's probably all I need to see you about,
Zachary. Miss Templeton outside will show you around the school and get you
settled in."

I stood and, having rather uncertainly shaken his proffered hand, let
myself out of the office. I was white and shaking. I waited until Miss
Templeton looked up rather than daring to disturb her, and standing there
gave me the chance to calm my breathing. Just as I managed to bring my
heart-rate below a full gallop, the door opened behind me, making me jump.

"Ah, Zachary, still here?" said Mr Clarke. "I forgot to say, if you happen
ever to cross paths with James McKinley, you might find him an interesting
person to talk to. Now, off you go."

The door closed again, and nervousness was joined by bewilderment in my
rapidly growing gallery of unwanted emotions.

---

What Mr Clarke said intrigued me, for some reason. It was barely a seed of
an idea sown in my mind, and yet I couldn't shake it - who the hell was
James McKinley, and why did the headmaster want me to meet him?

I found my place in my class hierarchy quite quickly; I was probably one of
the brighter kids, but not outstandingly so. I tried to make myself fairly
anonymous for the most part, and with the complicity of my classmates it
worked fairly well. They were a unit, a just-about-balanced corps of boys
and girls, and I was an intruder.

Not that I knew it at the time, but apparently it was well known that I had
been expelled from my last school, and the rumour was that I'd been in a
fight and the other boy had died. I can't imagine how my classmates had
come to that conclusion, but at least it explained why no-one asked about
the livid scars on my face and forehead, or the fact that I was excused
from PE lessons for the first two terms.

More importantly, no-one could tell me who James McKinley was, either.

---

I looked up from my homework and caught my aunt staring at me, a half smile
on her face.

"What?"

The smile broadened.

"You're quite cute, aren't you, Zack? All those girls at your school are
going to be disappointed, I'd say."

I scowled at her, whilst at the same time blushing furiously.

"Boys aren't meant to be cute, Aunt Jane, they're meant to be handsome."

"Well, I think cute is important. So, any 'handsome' boys at your new
school?"

I blushed an even deeper red; I could feel my skin prickling. Aunt Jane
seemed quite at home chatting about my sexuality, but I certainly wasn't,
not just yet. It was easier if I simply didn't think about it. I didn't
respond to her question.

"Sorry, Zack," she said after a few moments' silence. "I thought it might
make things easier if we just talked about it like it's normal. Look, I
have a couple of friends who know what you're going through, I think. If
you like, you could meet one of them."

I stared at her in horror. It would be like one of your parents getting
their friend the doctor to give you the talk about the birds and the bees,
and expecting you not to be embarrassed.

"I'm not.... I don't.... no," I stammered, then more forcefully, "no!"

Aunt Jane held up her hands to placate me.

"OK, sorry, I didn't realise it was such a touchy subject."

I groaned and picked up my books.

"I'm going to do my homework in my room."

---

I turned thirteen with none of the associated fanfare. I'd told Aunt Jane
that I wanted no fuss to be made, and she seemed to understand I was quite
serious. She complied with my wishes almost too fully. But that was fine,
because I was far too wrapped up in myself to really notice.

My sexuality was a constant source of introspection for me at the time. I
was perpetually horny, as I think most boys are at that age, but I knew
no-one I could discuss my attractions with. There were a few people at my
new school I could count as friends, but none particularly close, and none
who knew the truth about my sexuality.

Nearly six months on from the beating, I had retreated firmly into the
closet and locked the door behind me. I had nothing to say to anyone on the
matter, least of all my aunt, or any of her friends.

I had to get a fix somehow, though. Masturbation was fun up to a point, but
I needed more than my imagination to fuel my fantasies. I needed something
real. In those pre-internet days, most boys my age were turning to illicit
porno magazines for their kicks, but the only subject matter anyone could
get hold of was soft-core and aimed squarely at hetero males.

Pictures of naked men in magazines of the time were astonishingly rare, at
a point in history where Mary Whitehouse was still peddling her insidious
faux moral crusade and hiding her rampant homophobia behind a banner of
'protecting the kids'. God forbid anyone saw an erect penis on paper or on
film, for instance, or they might become a serial rapist, or worse, gay. I
like to think things have moved on somewhat since then, though sometimes I
do have my doubts...

So, what was I to do? I came up with all sorts of hair-brained schemes to
see naked men. I spent quite a lot of time swimming for about 6 weeks, and
changing in the men's communal changing rooms, until the swimming pool
closed for refurbishment and re-opened 4 weeks later with only individual
cubicles.

I tried to work out how long it would take to get to one of the UK's only
nudist beaches, at the appropriately named Studland, in Dorset, but I
realised that not only would I have to ask for money for the train, but I'd
have to tell my aunt where I was going in order to justify it.

One plan, though, did come to fruition. I had heard all the rumours about
the gents' toilets at Cray Park - the best advice was to stay well clear at
all times, but especially at night. Once the sun had gone down, if you
needed to wee you were better off running home, or finding a convenient
bush.

No-one ever explained what the threat was, so for all I knew the place
might have simply been crawling with muggers. But deep down I think I
realised what I would find there.

It was nearing dusk when I entered the toilet. It smelled disgusting,
unclean, the stench of stale urine pervading throughout. Unsure of what to
do, I walked nervously towards the urinals.

As far as I could tell, the place was entirely deserted. The dim light cast
by a single bulb bolted to the low ceiling cast plenty of shadows,
though. Thankfully I had made the decision to have a back-up plan, and as I
stood there with my dick sticking out through the fly of my jeans I let
loose a healthy stream of piss. I might simply have been a kid caught
short.

I was just beginning to relax into it when I heard the outside door
creaking open, and heavy footfalls on the tiled floor. A man came into view
on my right, a pleasant looking middle aged guy. He could easily have been
one of my teachers with the look he had, and he gave me a lopsided grin
when I glanced over at him. I looked straight back ahead of myself,
mortified that he'd seen me looking around. But fascination and a growing
sense of sexual need forced my gaze over to where his dick stood erect from
the fly of his trousers.

He made no move to hide it from me; he just stood there openly wanking. I
stared at it, my gaze frozen for what felt like hours but couldn't have
been more than seconds. I looked up at his face and his eyes were firmly
glued to my crotch, and it was then I realised that he was wanking because
he could see my limp little dick. I panicked, and ran.

Fuelled by fear and adrenaline, I sprinted all the way home; what was
normally a fifteen minute walk became a five minute run. I bounded up the
stairs, past the startled form of my aunt, and flew into my room. I slammed
the door shut behind me, and flung myself down onto my bed. Instantly, I
burst into tears.

I hated myself. I loathed the part of me which had become so desperate and
depraved that I went looking for sex in a stinking public urinal with a man
old enough to be my father. I felt like an outcast, a social leper, a
pervert. I was part of an underclass of citizens who didn't fit societal
norms. There was a place for us, and it was the place no-one would go given
a choice.

I cried myself to sleep.

---

Aunt Jane asked me nothing of it in the morning, but gave me a warm and
understanding smile when I feigned illness.

"I'll go and call the school. You just stay there today."

---

I was summoned to the headmaster's office the following week. At morning
registration one day, I was handed an official-looking letter on headed
school notepaper. My teacher looked particularly grave as he offered it to
me.

I scanned down the page as fear welled up inside, rising like a tidal wave
until it washed over me and I started shaking and sweating. I felt
physically sick. What could I have done to be in such trouble?

The letter was no help at all. It was short, and terse; I was to attend the
headmaster's office that very afternoon. My parent or guardian had been
informed that I would be late leaving school. I was to talk to no-one about
the meeting.

My head span with possibilities, the most frightening being that my secret
visit to Cray Park toilets had been discovered and that I was to be
expelled again; despite everything the headmaster had said to reassure me,
I still felt as though it might happen at any moment. Logic didn't really
stand a chance against fear.

Right at the bottom of the page, incongruously scrawled in red biro, was a
tiny, almost indecipherable note. It read, "Don't worry - E.L.T."

I assumed that was Miss Templeton, whose name plaque on her desk had
already revealed that her name was Emma. I wondered why she was telling me
not to worry, given that she had also sent the rather official note, on the
headmaster's behalf. And besides, her words did nothing at all to quell my
nerves, which would die down in lessons while my mind was occupied, only to
swell back up again, stronger each time, when I was no longer distracted.

By the time 4 o'clock came around, I was no longer a bag of nerves, because
I had passed right through fear and reached a plateau of calm acceptance on
the other side. I had decided that whatever the headmaster wanted to expel
me for, I would let him know precisely what I thought of him.

I wandered along the long, glass-walled corridor which due to a quirk of
architecture separated the offices from the main school building. A pond,
full of tall reeds and with a young willow at its edge lay to the right,
and to the left the view looked out over the school playing fields. It
should have been an uplifting experience, but I stepped heavily, like a man
condemned, taking my final walk to the gallows. With each footfall the
dread grew deeper in me, to the point that I wondered if it would be
possible for me to continue, but by some superhuman effort I made it to the
waiting room outside the head's office, where Miss Templeton greeted me
with a warm, motherly smile and asked if I would like a glass of water. I
refused, and took my place waiting on the row of chairs which stood outside
Mr Clarke's inner office.

A few moments later, an older boy also arrived. He looked a little more
cheerful, and I wondered whether he was to be punished, too. He greeted
Miss Templeton respectfully, but also like an old associate, someone with
whom he had clearly spent a lot of time sitting in this room. I wondered
how much of a trouble-maker he must be. He sat down a couple of chairs away
from me, gave me a silent 'hi!' and a wave of his hand, and then proceeded
to ignore me.

Seconds ticked by on the large wall clock to our right. Each tick seemed
louder than the last, until the sound threatened to engulf me, to drive me
insane. I wanted to rip that clock down from the wall and stamp on it
repeatedly until it spilled its gears like blood on the floor. I daydreamed
about pulling it down and throwing it through the plate glass window behind
Miss Templeton, to land with a splash in the pond.

Just as the tension reached boiling point and I felt the legs in my muscles
begin to twitch, as if they were preparing to make a break for it, the door
opened and there was Mr Clarke, beaming at us, as if our mere presence had
made his day.

"Come in, boys, come in. Sorry to have kept you."

I rose mechanically and followed him into the room, now more confused than
ever. The other boy came, too, though he showed no outward signs of the
distress I felt. Mr Clarke turned to us and spoke,

"Don't bother sitting down, I won't keep you long. I just thought you two
ought to meet, maybe have a chat or something. Zachary McNaught, this is
James McKinley."

I turned woodenly to the older boy standing next to me. He looked about
fifteen or sixteen, maybe a fourth or fifth former. He gave me a wry smile
and extended a hand. I shook it, and felt for the first time in my life a
genuine shiver run down my spine at the touch of someone's skin on my
own. But I was too worked up by nerves to consider for a moment what that
might mean.

"Well, that's it, really," Mr Clarke said, his voice still light and
airy. "Mr McKinley, I'd like you to talk to Zachary about a few things. I'm
sure you can guess why I'm calling on your particular expertise, and as you
know you do owe me a favour or two."

James was smiling again, this time with the defeated look of someone who is
being forced to do something they would rather avoid.

"Of course, sir. I understand."

"Right, good. Off you go, then," Mr Clarke said, moving to open the door
and usher us out.

---

We left the office together, though our destinations were, for now, quite
different. James was smiling ruefully and shaking his head.

"He treats me like a little pet project, you know," he said as we walked
along the corridor back toward the main school building. "Always showing me
off to people and getting me to do tricks."

"Um..." I said, speaking up for the first time, my curiosity finally
overcoming my nervousness. "Why?"

"Can't you tell?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, I'm not very good at things like that, all in code
and things."

He laughed. "Yeah, it was a bit like that, wasn't it? Like a secret spy
meeting or something. So you have no idea why he wanted us to meet?"

"No, nothing. He said when I started that I should talk to you, but then
no-one knew who you were, so I couldn't. And he didn't say why. Do you like
cricket? I said I liked cricket in the meeting we had."

James laughed again, this time genuinely amused. I could feel myself
blushing furiously.

"Yeah, but I bat for the other team!"

I still had no idea what he was talking about. The euphemism meant nothing
to me, gave me no further hint.

"You still don't get it, do you?" he asked. "Why did you get expelled from
your last place?"

"I wasn't -" I began, but he cut across me.

"Everyone knows you got chucked out, mate, so there's no point trying to
deny it. So, who did you beat up?"

I realised that there was little point hiding the truth any longer. And
besides, something about James' manner put me at ease; he was certainly
nicer than most fourth-formers.

"Me."

"What?"

"I got myself beaten up."

"What? That doesn't make any sense. Cut the bullshit, mate."

"I said something which got me beaten up. They said it was my fault and
that it was safer for me to not be there, and then they said I was expelled
for 'inviting violence' or something."

"I think you mean 'inciting'," he said, and then suddenly stopped in the
middle of the corridor. I carried on a few metres before noticing, then
stopped and turned to face him. He had the strangest look on his face.

"Wait a minute. What did you say to them?"

I froze to the spot, unable to move. He advanced on me.

"You came out, didn't you? You told people you're gay."

I expected there to be anger in his face, but there was something
else. Pain. Pity, perhaps. Something else, too, something I couldn't
read. By now he was standing close in front of me. I couldn't move,
couldn't respond to his questions. I just stared at him, mute. His voice
when he next spoke was soft, quiet, and broken with emotion.

"They beat you up because you're gay, didn't they?"

Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and he wiped them out.

"Didn't they?" he repeated. "You poor kid."

I nodded only very slightly. His arms engulfed me, drew me into him,
crushed my face against his chest. I could feel the sobs racking his body,
and they triggered tears of my own. Thank God the school was deserted.

## Chapter 2

We sat in the shade of an oak tree in the corner of the school playgrounds,
near where it met the fields beyond. The crumbling red brick wall was cool
beneath our backsides, but warmed quickly. Tiny little red spiders scuttled
back and forth over the surface of the bricks, and in the tree above us a
squirrel was industriously removing acorns for later use. My feet dangled,
not quite reaching the floor, and I gently kicked my heels against the
wall. There was near silence around us, the other kids long since gone home
- far in the distance a lawnmower droned on, and there was the high-pitched
chatter of birds above our head in the canopy, but that was all. We had
retreated here to talk, at James' request, though for the moment
conversation had stalled.

James sat next to me with his eyes still reddened from his tears, and
looked out over the playground. I didn't know what to say to him - he
looked like he needed to hear something nice, but I didn't know what would
help. I kept my mouth shut instead.

"I'm... I'm sorry, Zack," he said after what seemed like hours of
silence. "I shouldn't have reacted like that. Sorry."

I kept my silence because I still wasn't sure what I could say.

"I suppose I ought to be honest with you, if you haven't got it already,
Zack. I'm gay too. I guess if you're here at the school for long enough
you'd find out anyway, but lots of the younger kids don't really know. Or
understand. It wasn't easy, but perhaps I didn't have it as hard as
you. For fuck's sake!" he suddenly shouted, pounding his fist into the dirt
at the base of the tree. "Why the fuck would they do that to you? No, don't
answer that. Don't answer that."

We lapsed into silence again. Eventually, though, a thought occurred to me.

"Did they beat you up, too?"

He laughed, but there was no humour in it.

"No, but you're not a million miles away from it."

He must have seen the puzzled look on my face, because he began to explain.

"Two years ago I had a best friend, Matt. We were really close, but not
boyfriends or anything. He was really nice to me, we'd been best friends
since we were really little. I used to think about him in a naughty way
sometimes, you know, how you think about people when you... you know..."

I did know, and blushed furiously, looking down at the ground.

"Yeah," I said in a whisper.

"Anyway, I kind of thought of Matt like that sometimes, but I also just
liked him a lot. But then he got ill with leukaemia, and they said he was
going to die. I was gutted about it, and I went to see him when he was in
hospital one time. He was really ill and they said he might not live much
longer, so I figured it couldn't hurt to tell him what I was feeling. He
was lying there with his eyes closed and there was one of those machines
bleeping and everything. I started to speak to him, but he just lay there,
so I figured he was pretty out of it or something. I just told him
everything.

"Then I went home. My mum got a call the next day to say he died during the
night. When I went to the funeral, his mum came over and gave me this piece
of paper with my name on it. Matt wrote it to me before he died. It just
said 'I don't love you like that, sorry. But you're still my best mate'."

James paused for a moment. His voice was cracking, tears visible again in
the corners of his eyes. He took a few deep breaths and looked away,
brushing the back of his hand across his eyes. When he spoke again his
voice was was curiously flat, as if he'd forced all of the motion out of
it.

"I got really messed up by him dying. I started getting really angry, and
they had to send me to this psychiatrist bloke. I was talking to him, and
he said I should write a diary about how I felt. He thought it would make
me feel better. So I started doing it, and I even stuck in the note from
Matt. Then for some stupid reason I brought it to school, and when I got to
the end of the day it was missing. I looked around everywhere for it.

"Anyway, the next day I came in and I was walking across the playground and
all these kids were looking at me strangely, walking away from me, or
laughing. I didn't get it until I came round the corner and over there," -
he pointed to the far corner of the playground - "Marc Williams, who's a
complete wanker, was reading my diary out to everyone. I just went mad. I
ran at him and his friends held me away while he just waved the book in my
face.

"I don't remember a lot after that. I had some sort of blackout. Apparently
I broke one of the boy's arms, and knocked the other one out with my elbow,
and then started on Marc. He's still not right, can't see properly out of
his left eye."

I stared open-mouthed at James.

"I know I shouldn't feel good about it," he said, smiling, "and actually I
feel pretty shit for hurting them like that, but after hearing what
happened to you I feel better. Maybe it's some kind of justice."

"Did you get in lots of trouble?"

He grinned ruefully.

"Lots and lots. I nearly went to a sort of kids' prison, but Mr Clarke was
amazing, managed to get them to change their minds, promised them that he
would make sure I never did anything like that again. I'm on some mad pills
now, which calms me down, so I don't feel like hurting anyone anymore."

I moved slightly away from him, and he noticed, laughing.

"Oh, shit, Zack, I was kidding! I'm not on drugs or anything! I never want
to hurt anyone anyway, it was just that once."

He went to punch me on the shoulder, and then changed it into an
arm-around-the-shoulder hug.

"It's OK, mate, I won't hurt you. Especially not you."

There was something in his voice I couldn't quite decipher. It wasn't until
much later that I worked out what it was. Right then all I could think
about was the feel of his arm around my shoulders.

---

I wandered home in a bit of a daze, feeling disconnected, as though a veil
had descended between me and the rest of the world.

There was a space occupied by me, and James, and no-one else. We were the
same. We could talk to each other without fear of reprisal. We could chat
about the boys we fancied without being looked at like some two-headed
alien, or worse, with disgust. To know there was someone else like me out
there, and that it was possible to be out and to survive at school, made me
feel almost invincible. My thoughts were fractured, spinning off on a
thousand tangents. I couldn't think logically, and I couldn't get a handle
on what I was feeling.

"So, what was it about," Aunt Jane asked as I fell into a chair at the
kitchen table, dropping my bag to the floor next to me. For some reason I
didn't feel like talking about it, and so I lied.

"I mentioned to the headmaster that I liked cricket, so he wanted me to
meet the cricket coach and talk about trying for the team and stuff."

In fact, Mr Lescott, the games teacher, had taken me aside in PE one day
(since the damage had healed enough for me to take part) and quickly made
the assessment that I would fit straight into the under-14 team at third or
fourth in the batting order, and might even get a crack at the school first
team in a year or two. Thanks goodness I hadn't mentioned that to my aunt.

"Ok, right," she said. She looked a little unconvinced, but there had been
an official call from school telling her I would be late home, and she made
no attempt to challenge my story. "So, are you going to play?"

I shrugged, knowing that I probably would.

"I think so. We'll see."

"And you're well enough for it?"

"Yup," I replied, nodding.

"Well, that's good. Maybe you'll make some good friends that way."

---

I saw him next in the playground the following day at lunch time. I smiled
at him, feeling myself blush for some reason, and he half raised a hand in
greeting, the corners of his lips curling slightly, but nothing more than
that passed between us. It was as if we both understood that whatever
conversations we might have in private, when in school it was best to
remain distant.

There seemed to be no such boundaries outside school, however, and as I
began my walk home, which was usually a solitary affair, I heard my name
being called and stopped and turned. It was James, and he sped up slightly
to catch me.

"Can I walk with you?" he asked.

"Um... sure, yeah. I thought you lived the other way, though," I replied,
stupidly, to which he offered a shrug.

"I can go this way, just takes a couple of minutes longer to cut across the
fields at the back."

I learned later that it was more like fifteen minutes longer...

We began to walk, not really talking but definitely in step with one
another. Then, slowly but surely, a conversation sprang up, started from
some chance remark or other. We were off, chattering away, laughing with
each other. The journey flew by, and as I said goodbye to him and turned up
the path toward the house I was beaming to myself.

Aunt Jane was out until the early evening, according to the note on the
kitchen table. I knew I should have got straight on with my homework, as I
was meant to do as soon as I got home, but having the house to myself was
always an exciting prospect. At thirteen I was quite the little nudist when
I knew no-one could see; I loved to run around the house with not a stitch
on, my stiff little prick bouncing and waving in front of me as I went.

I took full advantage: I locked the door so I would have early warning of
Aunt Jane's return, and quickly stripped down. Very leisurely, taking full
my time in my solitude, I walked around the house with a hand idly toying
with my dick. My chosen spot to complete the ritual on this particular
afternoon was the sunlight reading nook which had been created out of some
dead space at the top of the stairs.

Warm sunlight spilled across the centre of my body as I lay with my head
and feet in the shade. As every boy does at that age I inspected myself,
checking for new hairs (only a scattering) and generally being pleased with
my little spike. I decided it looked nice, and I liked the way I could peel
my skin back and it would stay there, bunched behind the ridge. I pulled at
my sack, too, amused by the way it shrank and went even more crinkly when I
got a hard-on.

I could only deny myself pleasure for so long, though. The need for orgasm
overwhelmed any interest in self-exploration, and my hand moved quickly to
its favoured position - two fingers and a thumb loosely gripping my
foreskin, tugging it back and forth with increasing fervour. Closing my
eyes, I let images come to mind: the guy I'd seen in the showers at the
swimming pool, his short, thick dick sticking out from amongst
water-straggled pubes; the boy I'd seen only holiday running around naked
on the beach; guiltily, the rather magnificent erection of the man whose
forwardness in the toilets in the park had frightened me so badly. And,
suddenly, something new. James' face. Oh shit, James' face, smiling at me,
and then in an instant I was there, my balls firing precious, tiny droplets
of almost clear cum onto my body with astonishing force.

I ran naked to the bathroom, hoping the droplets didn't fall to the floor,
and wiped myself clean with toilet paper. My dick, still hard as a nail and
glistening with a droplet of semen, looked up at me accusingly.

---

James began to walk home with me each day, and I began to enjoy it very
much. I got the feeling that even had we not had our homosexuality in
common, James and I might have been friends, had there been any reason for
us to meet. However, that shared experience could not be ignored; he knew
something about me which I had taken pains to hide from all of the other
kids in the school. It didn't even cross my mind to worry about what people
might think when they saw us walking home together, because let's face it
there was little reason for us to be so close - we were two years apart at
school, lived in quite different parts of the town, and didn't really have
any hobbies in common. I was also too naive to realise that though no-one
else knew about my little secret, the same could not be said of James. His
situation was well-known, and my association with him must surely have
raised some questions, as well as a few eyebrows.

But all of that was lost on me, because I was entirely wrapped up in the
thought of James, and our budding relationship, if indeed that's what it
was. He became the key player in my fantasies at night, and I imagined all
sorts of things for which I had scant evidence at best - what he looked
like naked, how big he was down there, what it would feel like to have him
suck me, and what it would be like to suck him.


The last thought surprised me when it first came to mind one night, because
though I knew of blow-jobs the thought of giving one had never occurred to
me, at least not in a way that left my mouth watering. And yet I found
myself imagining what it would feel like, and taste like. I smelled my own
hand after I masturbated, and wondered if his dick would smell the same.

But that wasn't all. I wondered what it would be like to hold his hand as
we walked down the road, how people would react. I wondered what it would
be like to kiss him. And, after the hug he had given me in the school
corridor with no-one else around, I wanted to know what it would feel like
to have his arms around me again. Perhaps this time without any pesky
clothes in the way...

Quite simply, I was one rather lovesick little puppy.

---

It was a Friday afternoon, and we were chattering away as usual as we
approached the front gate of my house.

"Zack, before you go in..." he started, as I began to say goodbye.

"Yes?"

"Um... my brother, Tom's in a cricket match tomorrow. It's for the county
youth team. It's over at Cray's Park, you know, the cricket pitch bit
around the back. Want to go and watch?"

I had nothing better to do, but even if I had, I would have cancelled in a
heartbeat.

"Really?"

He grinned at my enthusiasm. "Yeah, if you want to."

"Yeah, that would be great!"

"Cool. My dad's going to take his car, so we'll pick you up. Don't know
what time yet. Can I call you later and tell you?"

I nodded eagerly, and told him our number, which he wrote on one of his
exercise books. I watched him to the corner, where he disappeared with a
wave, and then practically skipped into the house.

---

I thrilled at the sound of his voice on the phone that night. I think it
was possibly the first time I'd ever had someone call just to speak to
me. The conversation was short and broken - we kept talking over each
other, and the excitement was plain to hear in our voices. By the time I
had replaced the receiver there were butterflies kicking up a storm in my
tummy, and a smile so broad on my face that it threatened to unhinge the
top of my head.

Morning could not come too soon.

---

I was up and ready far too early in the morning, but that was to be
expected. I paced around the house like a caged animal, not quite sure what
to d with myself. Every so often I would catch Aunt Jane's eye, and she
would give me a knowing little smile, full of warmth and love. She couldn't
have missed the signs of my infatuation, even if I wasn't exactly chatty
about it; I had dressed myself up in what I considered to be my coolest
outfit, and had made a real effort to style my hair, rather than just going
for the messy look, as I usually did. It was hardly subtle...

When the car arrived, I was so excited that I nearly forgot to take the bag
of snacks and drinks I had packed. My aunt called me back and handed it to
me, rolling her eyes as she did so, then gave me one of 'those' looks, with
her head tilted to the side and a silly, soppy smile on her face. I gave
her a little scowl, and a smile, too, to let her know I wasn't really angry
with her.

James was getting out of the back of his dad's rather flash looking Ford
Sierra, and waved me over. I crammed into the middle seat in the back, and
buckled in next to James' brother, who was a year older than him. James
followed me back in, crushing me between himself and his brother, our
bodies touching, albeit innocently, along the length of arms, hips and
legs. Even before I had finished being introduced to his mum and dad, who
were in the front, I had managed to attain a quite sensational erection.

It was hot and stuffy in the back, and not that comfortable, but by God I
never wished that journey to end. James' hand landed on my bare knee,
sending my head swimming, and his older brother gave a small snort of
laughter. I looked across at the elder McKinley to find him looking out of
the window, but even so, I could see the smirk on his face. In an act of
defiance, the most I could muster, I pressed my leg even harder against
James', and felt his fingers squeeze my knee.

I never wanted that car journey to end, but perhaps it was better that it
did; if I had stayed there much longer, with James' hand on my leg, I would
have cum. Imagine trying to cover that up with your boyfriend's brother sat
right next to you, and his parents in the front...

---

What an incredible day it was. I got to combine my passion for cricket with
a day out with the boy I liked most in the world. And to top it off, it was
one of those long, warm - but not too hot - English summer days the likes
of which we rarely see anymore.

James, his mum and I found a spot on a grassy bank to roll out a picnic
blanket, while Tom and Mr McKinley went off so that Tom could join his
team. James' dad didn't come back to us all day, although I did see him
with some of the other dads of the boys on the team, drinking beer and
talking loudly. It seemed that was just a part of the day for him, though
it did cross my mind that he might be avoiding James and I.

I had caught him scowling at me as we left the car, when he thought I
wasn't looking, and I had the distinct impression that he resented me being
there. It was only much later that I rationalised that, and realised he
probably hated the very thought of me, because I was the physical
embodiment of his son's homosexuality. That I was James' boyfriend hadn't
been explicitly said, but no-one was under any illusions about it.

James' mum was a different soul entirely; she was a much more accepting
person in general, not just in my specific case. She rather doted over
James, and whilst she understood just as clearly as her husband what I
represented, she saw me differently, as she might his first girlfriend. I
caught her looking at me with a silly smile on her face several times, and
she would just turn away and blush.

The match? God knows. I spent the whole time talking to James, laughing and
joking around, generally having the time of my life. I don't recall having
felt so alive before that day, as if I had emerged from a cocoon as a
wonderful, rainbow-hued butterfly. The day passed so quickly that I
wondered where it had all gone, and although I was exhausted, I never
wanted it to end.

And, though I didn't think anything could possibly top that day, I was
proven wrong. James asked his mum if I could stay the night, and though at
first she refused, he knew exactly how to convince her, and before long, we
had permission. Asking her while we were alone was a smart move, because
I'm certain her husband would have vetoed the idea, and wouldn't have been
open to changing his mind.

All that remained was to pile back into the car between the McKinley
brothers - both hot and sweaty, but for entirely different reasons - and
drive back to my house to quickly pack an overnight bag. Not before another
scowl from Mr McKinley, of course, but that was to be expected, I suppose.

My aunt's expression when I explained the plan was a mixture of surprise
and a little concern. I didn't understand why she could be at all worried,
but then I couldn't at the time see things from her perspective. James was
quite some way older than me, and she must have feared (or perhaps simply
realised, and been resigned to the fact) that he would in some way force
himself upon me. Like most horny young boys, I was rather hoping he would.

But, to her credit, Aunt Jane didn't try to stop me, or to warn me about
the dangers my boyfriend posed, or even to ask me to be careful. She just
hugged me tightly and told me to be polite to my hosts. Then, it was back
into the now-steaming cabin of Mr McKinley's Sierra, and off to heaven for
the night. Well, James' house, but you know what I mean...

---

Of course, as soon as we were through the front door to his house, and he
was showing me around, I knew deep down that tonight was going to be the
night when I first had sex. I mean, not all the way, but something, at
least. Anything.

I was strangely calm. Not too excited by the idea, nor nervous. For the
entire journey from my house to his, there had been a hot ball of lead in
my stomach, a reflection of the enormity of what was about to happen, but
as soon as I crossed that threshold into his world, I knew that whatever
was going to happen would be wonderful, and fulfilling. Now, there was
nothing more than anticipation of an act so eagerly longed for, for so
long.

I could hardly wait for bedtime. It was a pleasant enough evening, I
suppose. Tom left after dinner to meet some friends in town, and James and
I sat down to watch TV in the living room with his parents. It wasn't long
before Mr McKinley left with a snort, muttering something about having to
read some papers before work tomorrow. I saw James' mum rolling her eyes as
he left, and in hindsight it's easy to see that she was annoyed at his
obvious show of opprobrium. But at the time, James and I ignored him, and
chattered away mindlessly about what was on the TV.

It helped to have something to distract us, because there was no doubt we
were both nervous. James had already confided in me that he had never done
anything with another boy, and I'd told him that I, too was in the same
boat, and didn't even know what to do. That, James had told me, was just
fine, because he knew exactly what men did together, and he could show me
if I liked. I remember giggling about it at the time, but looking back,
with everything air subsequently learned, I wish I had asked him how he
knew.

When his mother finally sent us to bed, cold fear washed over me. Suddenly,
what had been an exciting, but distant possibility, was now a very
immediate certainty. James and I were going up to his bedroom to sleep
together. In both senses.

But, though we both knew exactly what was going to happen in that double
bed of his, nothing had been said out in the open. So I still went to the
bathroom to get changed, and James was in bed under the covers by the time
I returned. My heart jumped into my throat at the sight, and he gave me a
nervous, lopsided grin in return.

So, this was it. Commitment time. When I climbed into that bed, there was
every chance I would be having sex with a boy for the first time. There was
no going back from this. It was at the same time the culmination of years
of unsatisfied desires, and the scariest prospect in the world. I hovered
next to the bed, not quite sure what to do, until James moved right to the
far side, as if making room for me to be in bed, but not quite in bed with
him, just yet.

I gratefully accepted the gesture, and climbed in near him. Not next to
him, because I still needed there to be a gap between us. I had no idea how
it was going to start, so for the time being I just lay there looking up at
the ceiling, tracking the mouldings in the plaster with my eyes, as if I
could distract myself from the inevitable.

James started talking, about this and that, about the day, the cricket
game, what we'd watched on TV that night. Just as long as he stayed away
from anything serious, we were alright. But it was hard to ignore the fact
that we were lying in that bed together. Despite the distance between us, I
could feel the heat of him, and realised for the first time in my life that
it was a lot warmer to be in bed with someone than alone. I could smell
him, too - sweat, and toothpaste, and his deodorant, and something else
which was just `him'. And when he turned to face me, and I did likewise, I
could see his gorgeous eyes, and a bare shoulder poking out of beneath the
covers, and his collarbone, his neck, his jaw, his ear, his hair, his brow,
his nose, and every little detail of him that I co Utd distract myself with
to stop thinking about what lay beneath the covers.

When his hand reached across the gap in the hot, dark confines beneath the
duvet, and touched mine, and his fingers twined with mine and bound us
together, calmness descended. Yes, I was rampantly erect - painfully so -
and yes, I was still apprehensive, but I was also ready.

"Zack?" he said, suddenly, his voice loud in the quiet of the room, even
though he was barely speaking about a whisper.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think about when you... when, well, you know... when you do
it?"

"Oh! Oh. Well. I....  uh...."

"Sorry, you don't have to tell me, it's OK."

"No, it's cool. I just... I haven't ever told anyone about it before. Um,
well I think about... about boys. About naked boys and men. About what
their dicks look like."

The admission was so much stronger than any I had made before, because
unlike simply stating I was gay, it was in fact affirming it. My heart
pounded in my chest and my head swam. James laughed slightly, a nervous
chuckle.

"Me too!"

I laughed too, not because it was funny, but because talking about it made
me so thoroughly nervous that I either laughed or ran away, and I so
desperately wanted to stay.

"Um, Zack. Um... there's something else. Please don't be freaked out, OK?"

"Oh. OK."

"I.... I think about you sometimes."

It came out in a rush, as if he wanted to say it before he could stop
himself. I laughed again, because it seemed so absurd. I really hoped he
thought about me like that, or what else were we doing in bed together?
Suddenly I realised that he was just as nervous and unprepared as I was,
and somehow that made it a lot easier.

"Me, too," I replied. "I mean, I think about you when I'm doing it."

He smiled at me, and then got up onto one elbow, and leaned across the
distance between us. I knew what was coming, and I was more than ready. I
watched as he came closer, then closed my eyes when I could no longer delay
the inevitable. His warm breath touched my face first, and then his lips
were upon me. I pressed back, surprised by the sudden rush of everything
which burst out from such a simple union.

He shifted further across the bed and I could sense his hand - no longer in
mine - creeping across the mattress towards my hip. Desperate for his
touch, I turned toward him, and as I did so his fingertips brushed along
the length of me, closing around and grabbing it in a fist through the
cotton of my shorts.

I pulled away from the kiss, gasping for air as he toyed with me. Squeezing
my eyes tightly shut, I savoured the feeling of the first time a lover had
ever touched me in that way.

"God, you're hard," he whispered as he continued to rub me up and down. "I
am too. Want to feel it?"

My eyes flew open and I nodded, perhaps a little too eagerly. But, I
realised, I wanted nothing more in the world than to feel his hard dick in
my hand.

James pushed back the covers. He was completely naked. God, it was just
there - his dick, I mean. Right there, waiting to be touched. I tore my
eyes off it to look up at his face, and he grinned in response, before my
eyes were inevitably drawn back down to his waist. I rolled onto my back
and pushed off my shorts, flinging them onto the floor in a moment which
felt deliciously naughty. He squeezed his shaft in anticipation of the
touch which was yet to come.

I reached straight across the gap between us and grasped him, before I
could chicken out. It was so thick, and warm, and filled my hand thoroughly
and completely. So much bigger than my own, and yet it felt right; it felt
as though it were made for my fingers to curl around its girth, to feel the
intense heat radiating from within, to squeeze the spongy exterior and feel
the responsive firmness beneath. I marvelled in the easy way the skin
slipped back from the head, and in the length my hand could travel down it,
and back up. I wondered at the glistening pearl of liquid which formed at
its tip, and the groan of pleasure I could elicit from James simply by
smearing this slippery essence across the gleaming purple skin with my
thumb.

I kneeled up by his waist, so that I could see it more closely, and feel it
better. I liked its scent; it smelled of boy, and smelled like my own. I
leaned in closely, to take in every possible detail, and admired the thick
length in my hand. I was impressed by it, entranced by it. It's skin moved
so easily over the flesh beneath, and I ran my hand up and down, not really
wanking him, just amazed at the thing I held in my fist.

When James asked me to, I sped up. With a frantic, panting explosion of
energy he came, firing globs of his sticky, watery semen all over his
tummy, my hand and the bed sheets. I gasped at the energy of it, and the
sheer quantity of his jizz; it covered everything! He lay back with his
eyes closed, head titled back and mouth open as he painted with the
exertion of going through such intense pleasure. I lay down next to him,
propped up on my elbow, and watched as the object of my fascination shrank
with every beat of his heart, until it lay across his hip, dribbling from
its tip.

I looked up at him, and he was watching me, his eyes heavily lidded, his
breathing deep and even; he looked on the verge of sleep. I moved up and
rested my head on his shoulder, draping my leg over his hip, happy to
ignore the pool of juice it was resting in. I was so content having been
the one to bring him such pleasure that I didn't need my own release. I'd
never known a feeling anything like it before.

I must have drifted off. When I woke, I was lying on my back, and James was
padding out of the room in his boxers. He noticed me stir, and whispered,

"Off for a wee!"

I nodded my understanding, and stretched languorously on the bed, feeling
my nakedness brushing sensually against the sheets.  My penis sprang back
into life, and I reached down to grab it, enjoying its unbelievable
hardness; how was it possible for something made of flesh to feel like
bone?

James came back a minute later, and slipped into bed beside me, but not
before shedding his boxers. I watched him with no little fascination - his
big, dangly balls, hanging much lower than his chubby, dormant penis, and
the thick curls of dark hair above it. He looked so much more a man than I
did, despite the fact he was only a couple of years my senior.

He came close to me, and drew me into a hug. Even in the dark I could see
his eyes widen, and his mouth form into a grin when he felt the stiffness
at my centre pressing into his lower stomach.  With a hand on my shoulder,
he pressed me back into the bed, then dived beneath the covers, leaving
only my head exposed.

He did everything by touch - finding my shaft deftly, and pulling back on
my foreskin. He toyed with it for a moment, gently running his fingers up
and down, his touch featherlight at first, then firmer.

Oh God, his lips. Those were his lips on my legs! And then my tummy, while
his hand held my penis. Held it firmly, as if it belonged to him, as if it
were his property. Right at that moment, it was. Entirely.

Then the lips moved closer, and his youthful stubble scratched at my groin
as he went. And then... and then, oh God. Oh my God, his lips were around
my dick, sinking lower and lower, agonisingly slowly, suckling all the
way. Until then, as one second seemed to stretch into eternity, he consumed
my boyhood entirely. Lips pressed against my groin. Nose on my hip, chin
the other side.

I was his.

He gently sucked, and lifted, and I wanted to cry out, to laugh, to weep
from the realisation of how ecstatic it was possible to feel. Not in my
wildest dreams had I imagined it would feel that good. Never, when I had
fantasised about this moment, did I believe that one human could give
another such pleasure.

He lifted, and my dick strained so hard with the pleasure that I thought it
must have broken. A strange, intense fizzing started in the root of it but
spread in a warm glow across my body until I was suffused with it,
overwhelmed by it, overtaken by it, overcome. And then it hit; sharp,
stabbing pleasure disguised as pain in the very tip, a jolt which sent my
muscles into spasm. I cried out, unable to prevent myself, begging him to
make it stop. It was too much.

I pulled James' head off me, lifting him away from the overwhelming
sensations he had caused. I couldn't speak, didn't even dare to try. He
grinned at me, and then leaned in to kiss me. His mouth tasted of dick, of
salty droplets of semen. My semen. I never came like that, never more than
a drop. I must have flooded his mouth to be able to taste it on his lips.

He lay down next to me, and I rolled closer to him, laying my head on his
shoulder just as I had before. This time, though, it was my turn to fall
asleep.

## Chapter 3 Sleep released me. Memory, falteringly at first, came with a
sudden rush to me, pinning me to the bed. I looked across. James was still
asleep, his naked form lying uncovered on the bed next to me, dick soft
across his hip, a few dark encrusted smears marring the otherwise
unblemished skin of his tummy. When I shifted I remembered that I, too, was
naked beneath the covers.

I became instantly aroused. No longer feeling the need to ask permission, I
reached across between us and grabbed his limp dick, feeling it swell
slightly beneath my fingers. I dragged the skin back off the head,
surprised by the smell which emerged - powerful, musky. It ought to have
been repellent, but it wasn't. It was attractive. I leaned in and swiped my
tongue across the exposed tip, and felt his shaft lurch beneath my
fingers. It swelled quickly to hardness.

I took a moment to observe it in the morning light. It seemed even bigger
now than it had in the dim bedroom light the night before. It was almost
twice as long as mine, and much, much thicker. This was a man's penis; mine
was a boy's.

I realised all of a sudden that there was nothing stopping me sucking his
dick, except possibly my own fear. But that aside, there was no reason I
shouldn't lean forward, open my mouth and slip it over the head of his
dick.

I hesitated, then pulled the skin back over the head. It looked neater that
way. Then, while desire still drove me on, I did exactly what I had dreamed
of doing: I put the damn thing in my mouth.

He shifted in his sleep, but his eyes stayed shut. The head of his dick
filled my mouth so completely that I almost panicked. But then I began to
understand how to move my tongue around it, how to relax my jaw so there
was more room. It felt so right to have it there, so comfortable. I loved
its bulk, its heat, the smoothness of its skin. It was alive between my
lips, twitching. Saltiness seeped from the tip of it, and I learned that I
loved the taste. And then, as I bobbed my head up and down and sucked on
it, as he had done to mine, I felt it harden even further. The head was
thrown into stark relief, the ridge around it hardened and flared, and then
salty, gooey warmness flooded my mouth.

I pulled back instinctively, letting what had entered my mouth drip onto
his belly, before spitting the last of it out. The taste wasn't abhorrent,
but I couldn't stomach the thought of swallowing it, even though I knew
James had swallowed mine.

I looked up a his face, and he was watching me through hooded eyelids.

"I'm sorry," I said, though I don't know why. He could hardly have been
angry at me for sucking him off after everything we'd done together
already. But James just smiled down at me and said,

"It's OK. Thank you. That was a nice way to wake up."

I moved up and lay my head on his shoulder, putting my arm over his chest
and my leg across his body. I realised too late that my knee lay directly
in the damp pool of semen on his stomach.

"Ewww!"

"Better clean that up," he laughed, pushing me to the side and getting
up. His still half-hard dick swayed mesmerisingly in front of his hips. He
returned to the bed with an old pair of boxers.

"Lie back and open your legs so I can wipe it off," he said with a smirk.

His actions suited his words, and then he tossed the boxers aside and began
to stroke my legs, his fingers growing ever closer to my balls with each
upwards pass. I pushed my hips up, desperate to have him touch me, but he
continued instead to tease me. Frustrated, I leaned up, grabbing his head
and dragging it down to my crotch, pushing my dick into his face. He pursed
his lips, refusing to open them, and I laughed as I tried to force my way
in. Eventually my stomach muscles gave out and I collapsed back onto the
bed, resigned to not getting my dick sucked that morning.

James, finally seeing that the joke had gone too far, relented and sucked
me into the silky-smooth, hot, wet confines of his mouth. He already
understood how to get me off, and in moments I was feeling the aching
tingling in the tip of my dick, and the painful straining as it pumped what
it could into his mouth in rapid-fire volleys. There wasn't a lot of it,
but I was still impressed that he was so happy to swallow my spunk.

We lay back down, but this time there was no romantic snuggling - we lay
apart on the bed, still naked, staring at the ceiling. We were content for
now, though I could feel a resurgence tickling in my groin as I thought
about what we had just done.

"I've never done any of this before," I admitted.

"Me neither!" he answered.

"But you knew what to do," I said. "And you swallowed my stuff."

"Don't tell anyone this, OK? I've seen a hard-core porno video."

Now, let me take a moment to give you a brief history of why, at that
moment, I gasped and looked at James in shock. Britain was going through a
rather puritanical phase; I've already hinted at the moral standards of the
day earlier in my tale. We didn't have the internet to turn to, either -
the peak of technology was the VHS video cassette. For a young lad like
James to have seen a hardcore porn film was a proud boast indeed! It merely
added to his hero status in my eyes.

"What was it like?" I asked, eagerly.

He shrugged.

"Mostly it was lots of guys doing it with girls at the same time. They did
everything you can imagine. And some other things you wouldn't believe."

"Like what?"

"Well, they did it up the bum for one. And some of the girls had it in the
bum and their fanny at the same time."

"Up the bum? Why would they do that?"

He grinned.

"Don't know. They seemed to like it, though. They kept asking the guys to
do it harder."

All this talk was making me painfully stiff, and as I reached down to
squeeze and twist my little dick I noticed that James' had stirred again.

"Getting horny again, mate?" he asked.

"Yeah. You are, too, though."

"Yeah, well... Hey, want me to stick it up your bum?"

He laughed, because he was kidding. Of course he was kidding. I knew that,
he knew that. Except, and here's the bit I could never explain in a million
years, I knew I wanted him to do it. I actually wanted him to stick it up
me. He looked across and saw that I wasn't laughing.

"Oh shit, sorry Zack, it was only meant to be a joke. I thought you'd
laugh."

"No, it's fine, it was funny. It's just... I... no, forget it."

"No, go on. What were you going to say?"

I blushed furiously and shook my head. I couldn't tell him what I was
thinking. I couldn't admit that I really did want to feel what it was like
to have his big dick pushing in me.

"OK, fine, don't worry about it. Want to wank off?"

That got my attention, and we sat up opposite each other, cross-legged, and
went at it. Our knees touched, but other than this subtle (and thoroughly
electrifying) touch, there was no contact. I went at mine, and he, his. The
sight of him pumping his hand up and down his big fat dick was enough to
make me curl up in painfully strong orgasm in no more than a couple of
minutes. It was dry, because I'd already been there in James' mouth once
that morning, and he hardly did any better, shooting a single droplet up
into the air to splatter on my leg.

We fell back on the bed again, this time done for a good while.

---

It was late morning when I strolled into the house. My aunt looked up from
the sketch in which she had been absorbed and smiled at me.

"Did you have fun?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to respond verbally without bursting into an
excited fit of giggling. I was full to bursting with thoughts I could
reveal to no-one, except perhaps - and I thrilled at the idea - my
boyfriend.

My lips still tingled with the last kiss he had given me, so brazenly out
in the open, taking the risk we might be seen just for the thrill of
it. And the way my dick responded to every thought of him! I promised it
the sweetest release later, if it would just lie still for a moment.

With my aunt, I struck out on a different tack entirely.

"Aunt Jane, do you have a spare notebook or something?"

"What kind of notebook. Drawing or writing?"

"Writing."

"Well, there's nothing in the house. Plenty of drawing ones, but they're
rather expensive and a waste for writing in. What are you doing, starting a
diary?"

I blushed - she'd hit the nail on the head.

"If you want that kind of book," she continued, realising that she had
guessed correctly, "you'll need to go down to the bookshop on Harris
Street. I happen to know Mrs Kindel has opened up today for a special visit
by some horror writer or other, even though it's Sunday. I'm sure she'll
have something. Just tell her to put it on my account, she knows who you
are."

I dropped my bag in my room and wandered at a leisurely pace down to the
book shop. It was, indeed, packed to the gills with people all vying for
the attention of a rather harassed looking man, who sat behind a table
which bowed under the weight of a hundred or so hardback copies of his
latest work. I managed to squeeze my way past the crowd, who had occupied
the front half of the store, and wandered over to the corner given over to
stationary.

I loved that corner; I had - and still have - an obsession with notebooks
of all types. I rifled through what was available, searching for just the
right one. The problem was, when I found it, it was way too much. In those
days, nine pounds was a relative fortune, even if the book was
leather-bound and filled with the most beautifully textured paper. I was
wistfully handling it when a voice from behind made me jump.

"Lovely book, isn't it?"

It was Mrs Kindel, the elderly owner of the bookshop who, simply because
she loved books so much, had never quite given up being a librarian in my
school library as well as running her shop.

"Oh, yes," I agreed. "But I can't afford it. Nine pounds is way too much."

"Well, how much do you have to spend?"

"I don't know, really. It's meant to go on my aunt's account. But I didn't
think I should spend that much."

She smiled at me. "No, you're probably right, that is a lot to spend on a
notebook. What do you want it for? Starting a diary?"

What was it with middle-aged women seeing straight through me? I nodded my
head almost mechanically.

"Let me have a look," she said, and I handed over the book.

"Ah, just as I thought!" she exclaimed, with a twinkle in her eye. "Susan
was meant to mark these down, and she must have forgotten. Now, how much
was it meant to be? Ah, that's right. Three pounds, I think."

Only much later did I understand the kindness Mrs Kindel had done me that
day.

---

Back in my room I tried to work out how to begin writing a diary. I
supposed there must be entries for every day detailing what I had done and
what I was thinking. But even though this was going to be a secret diary,
as couldn't quite bring myself to record the full details of my night at
James'.

That said, it needed to reflect who I was, and what I was feeling, if it
was to be of any use. So, I had to make it about James.

"Sunday 31st August: Had great day with J. Think I'm in love. Didn't think
it would be like this. J is so cool and very sexy. Stayed night at his
house."

And that's it. I put the book down and, with thoughts of James swimming in
my mind, went to work on my already sore little dick.

---

Meeting in the playground was strange after all we had done that
weekend. There was a crackling tension between us, and words which
desperately needed to be spoken, but couldn't be because of the people
around us. I wanted to just be with him more than anything else, but the
politics of the playground made that impossible. I was a second year, he
was a fourth year, and there were limitations placed on us by the unspoken
code of the playground.

We walked home together, though, as we always did, and chattered away about
this and that, lowering our voices when we discussed sex. It was our
favourite topic, of course, and we both had great difficulty in hiding our
obvious arousal from passers by.

When we arrived at my house I was grateful to see the empty driveway,
meaning that we had at least a little time alone together. James eagerly
accepted my invitation inside, and we raced up to my room, bursting through
the door, giggling like little boys. We stopped, and he gently pushed me
backwards onto my bed and knelt in front of me, pulling down my school
trousers and blue jockeys so that he could slowly and lovingly fellate me.

I returned the favour passionately as he stood in front of me, his knees
trembling with excitement as, with hands on my head, he pumped in and out
of my mouth. He set the rhythm with his hips, and I was just along for the
ride. Knowing that I wouldn't feel comfortable swallowing his load, he
pulled out in time to send it splattering across my chest and into my naked
lap while I watched his jumping, spitting monster with fascination.

It became routine to find time to be together after school, and to have
sex, typically sucking each other off. I'd gone from never having
experienced anything like it, to getting so much sex that I couldn't quite
believe it. Our usual location was my house, because more often than not my
aunt was out. But as we grew bolder, we would even take the chance and do
it while my aunt was in the house. Thank a God those stairs creaked, so we
had time to hide what we were doing. I wonder if really she knew what was
going on, and was just content that at least I wasn't out there getting
some poor girl knocked up.

Eventually, I became brave enough to ask my aunt whether or not James could
spend the night. She gave me a strange look, sighed, then said,

"Well, I can't stop it, I suppose."

I assumed she meant she couldn't stop me having James over, but perhaps,
looking back, she meant she couldn't stop us having sex.

And there was, perhaps, another factor in the decision, because the day
after she agreed that James could come over, she informed me that she had a
date that Saturday, and that she might not come home afterwards. There was
a glint in her eye, and the corner of her mouth was set in an almost
permanent smile for the rest of the week.

We sat down at the dinner table on the Thursday evening, and I felt that
for the first time it became possible to talk openly and freely.

"So, who's making you smile, then?" I asked.

"Shouldn't I be doing the interrogating?" Aunt Jane replied, but the
twinkle in her eye told me she was joking. "No, fair's fair, I suppose, and
you did ask first. He's another artist from the gallery where I'm showing
at the moment. He's a Russian, and his name is Yevgeny. He's been living in
England for about six years."

I was slightly taken aback - the Cold War was extinct, of course, and
relations with Russia were certainly improving, but the Russians were still
not our best friends back then. Aunt Jane noticed my surprise.

"Oh, come on, Zachary, you can't be too shocked. After all, you're dating
some old man."

I almost choked on my drink. Adults weren't supposed to talk to kids like
that, were they?

"He's not that old! He's only fifteen."

Aunt Jane smirked, but I just sat there, stunned. It was the first time I'd
admitted it out loud. The worst kept secret, maybe not even a secret of any
kind. But I'd never actually said, "This is James, he's my boyfriend." And
I still hadn't, not exactly, but in reality I had just confirmed what we
all knew was going on. I was already openly gay, but nothing makes it more
real than actually being in a relationship, and what's more, discussing
that relationship with your family.

We sat in silence for about fifteen or twenty seconds, and then from the
sheer relief of a tension unbound we burst into laughter. Proper,
uncontrollable, belly-aching laughter. When, after several aborted
attempts, we had controlled our giggles, we sat and looked at each other
over the table. She reached out across the wooden surface and took my hand
in her own, gently squeezing. In her eyes was a depth of love and pity I
had never before seen.

"It'll be OK, Zack. I'll make sure it's OK this time."

Then she nodded to herself decisively, and went to the sideboard. She came
back with a wine glass to match her own, poured out a small glass, and
pushed it over the table towards me. I looked into the silken, ruby depths
of the liquid.

"I think you're mature enough to have a drink with your meal now," she
said, raising her glass. "To boyfriends."

"To boyfriends!" I responded enthusiastically. I took a small sip from my
glass and closed my eyes as the gravity of the moment engulfed me.

I went to bed with my head spinning with thoughts, emotions and not a
little drunkenness.

---

Aunt Jane was already on her way out when James turned up on Saturday
night. They met in the driveway, and exchanged a few words, while I watched
on anxiously from the window. What was she saying to him?!

When he came through the door at long last, he said,

"You know, that aunt of yours is pretty cool."

"What did she say?"

He grinned and shook his head.

"I can't tell you that. But she's cool."

"Fine, I'll make you tell me!" I said, pouncing on him and dragging him to
the ground, trying to get him into some sort of wrestling hold. I didn't
have the strength to master him, but he supplicated anyway and lay beneath
me, gazing up into my triumphal face.

"You're still not getting it out of me," he said, and we both dissolved
into fits of laughter at his unintended double-entendre.

"Not even if you put it in me?" I asked, still laughing. But the laughter
died quickly on both sides. I was sat astride his chest and began to slide
down until my backside was over his crotch. He was already hard - we both
were - and I settled my bum on the stiff, thick rod beneath the fabric of
his tracksuit trousers. It made me tingle inside to feel the heat of it
against my little hole. He flexed it and I gasped, then giggled; a sudden
jolt of pleasure had taken me by surprise.

"Would you let me?" he asked, voice broken with nervous excitement. My head
swam. I felt dizzy with anticipation of what I was about to say.

"Yeah..." I breathed, no louder than the quietest whisper.

---

He seemed like a giant above me, his nervously smiling face starkly
outlined against the bright light on the ceiling behind his head. He was on
all fours above me, knees between my spread legs, hands planted on the bed
either side of my shoulders. We were naked, except, for some reason, our
socks. My limp dick lay shrivelled on my lower belly, my balls drawn up in
a taut sack beneath, the skin prickling. I looked down the length of his
body to where the thick rod jutted from his mat of dark pubes, its length
glistening with cooking oil; it was the only lubricant we could find.

He knew somehow - perhaps from the film he'd seen - that something like it
would be needed. His fingers had already pushed into me, spreading the
stuff on the inside. We decided it might be good to get me used to
something smaller, but even his fingers had felt uncomfortable. But
wonderful, too, and that's why I hadn't backed out.

He leant down and kissed me, and then one arm disappeared from beside me on
the bed, reaching down between our bodies. I drew my legs up instinctively,
and as he lowered himself over me I felt the blunt tip of it running along
the crease of my backside.

I gasped. It felt incredible, like a tickle, but one inside me, at the root
of my penis. My limp little worm jerked upwards with each thunderous beat
of my heart. James smiled down at me when he saw it, and ran the thick head
back and forth over my hole. I wriggled my hips and pressed down against
it, desperate for reasons I couldn't understand to have have it spear into
me.

Then he stopped and just held it still, looking down between our bodies to
make sure he had it in the right place. I felt a dull pressure, and then
suddenly the sensation of something massive intruding into my body.

I gasped and clenched my teeth, but held his shoulders and wrapped my legs
around his torso, digging my heels into his backside, urging him
forward. It did hurt, oh God it hurt, but at the same time I desperately
needed it. There was no pleasure, but a fulfilment I couldn't describe, and
that made any pain I felt pale into insignificance. He pushed until I felt
I might die from the intrusion, and then stopped. I looked down and was
dismayed to see him only part way inside. My dick had shrivelled smaller
than I could ever remember, retreating so far that it was more foreskin
than anything else.

"I don't think I can fit it all in," I whispered to him. I was worried that
James might be disappointed in me, that he might think I was a terrible
lover for not being able to take him.

But he smiled down, and there was genuine affection in his eyes.

"It doesn't all have to go in, you know. It feels incredible just this
far. Can I screw you now?"

I nodded, and then closed my eyes as I felt him pull out and re-enter.

Long, painful minutes passed as he pulled out and pushed back in, out and
in. I closed my eyes so that he couldn't see the pain I was feeling. I
wondered if it would ever become easier, if I would ever be able to let him
have sex with me properly. But I realised that something was beginning to
happen. I was beginning to grow looser, and his strokes easier, and, I saw
as I looked down between us, deeper. Still, there was no pleasure in the
act for me. I wished I could stop, but I couldn't ask him to do that now.

He thrust and thrust above me, growing ever more urgent in his
movements. His eyes were shut tightly, and his brow was furrowed in
concentration as he ploughed into me rhythmically. He began to sweat, and
it dropped onto me. His breath came in short gasps. His hips slapped
against my own, his penetration of me complete. I could feel it plunging
deep inside my bowels at each thrust, until with a shudder it grew thick in
my ravaged passage, stretching it to its very limits, and I felt the
twitching of him as he came.

He collapsed, exhausted on the bed beside me, hand snaking across my
shoulders to roll me towards him so that he could smother my face with
kisses.

I lay in his embrace, too exhausted and abused to feel anything but a deep
desire to turn back the clock and change my mind.

---

I woke two hours later. He was gone, but I could hear the bath running. It
seemed strange to me that he would feel comfortable enough in my house to
take a bath, and in the middle of the evening, too. It was half past eight.

He wandered back into the room and looked down at me. There was something
in his look, something different to the lust he had been controlled by. He
helped me up out of the bed, because I no longer had the strength to do it
myself. He walked me into the bathroom and lowered me into the steaming
water and then sat on the edge as the bath soothed parts of me I didn't
know could ache.

"Um, Zack..." he started uncertainly. I barely heard his timid whisper
through the fog which had descended over my senses. I blearily opened my
eyes and tried to focus on him.

"Yeah?" I croaked.

"Are you OK?"

I nodded very slightly.

"Hurts, though."

"Yeah, I thought it would. Sorry... Uh, there's something I should tell
you. I wanted to before, but I was worried what you would think about me."

"'kay. What is it?"

"I didn't learn any of that stuff from a porno movie. When I was about ten
I had a friend called Max. His uncle used to do all this stuff with him,
and Max told me about it once. He used to hate it, and eventually his uncle
got thrown in jail for it. But I knew about it all because of him."

I just lay with my eyes closed and thought about what he had said.

"Did you know it would hurt?" I asked eventually.

"Yeah. I'm so sorry."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I really wanted to do it to you. Sorry, I understand if you hate
me. I shouldn't have done it."

I didn't have the energy to tell him that I wanted him to do it, that the
regret I felt was because it was meant to be this wonderful thing, your
first time, and actually all I wanted was to see the back of him. Part of
me never wanted to speak to James ever again. But as he rose to leave the
room, part of me wanted him to stay, too. The part which still loved him.

"Please, don't go," I whispered, laying a damp hand on his leg, feeling
goosebumps rise beneath my touch. He paused, and sat back down.

"I thought you would want me to leave," he said. I shook my head.

"No, stay, please. Help me out of the bath. I want you to hug me until I
fall asleep."

He pulled me from the water, and then he dried me, and dressed me as one
would a helpless child. Then he lay me down in my bed and spooned up behind
me, the delicious warmth of his body held along the length of my
own. Passion and then pain had given way to a gentle, loving embrace.

As I slowly drifted into slumber, I thought I heard him murmur something to
me. I asked him to repeat it. He shifted slightly, and I felt the warmth of
his breath on my ear as he whispered to me,

"I love you."

I grabbed his arm, squeezed it tightly about me and fell into a deep,
dreamless sleep.

## Chapter 4 If I thought the morning light would ease my discomfort about
the night before, I was entirely wrong. My whole abdomen ached, and my
backside was on fire. What's more, James' presence made me hate him even
more than I had when he had fucked me. Waking up next to him was not what I
had expected: his breath in my face disgusted me. It was a foul stench
which even when I wriggled free of his overbearing, lumbering embrace still
filled my nostrils. I ran to the bathroom, grabbing my toothbrush and
manically brushing my teeth until the clean taste of mint was all that I
could sense. I sat down on the edge of the bath, feeling the pain of my
damaged behind, and began to cry.

I didn't let him see me crying, because then I would have had to explain
it, and I couldn't do that, not even to myself. At the time I had no idea
why the tears came, no idea why I loathed him so much that morning. Looking
back it's clear that I didn't love him, and after what we had done I either
had to love him or feel the diametrically opposite emotion. I couldn't go
back to falling in love with him, couldn't be half way committed. And
that's what I was, before he fucked me.

It's easy to see this now. It's easy to look back with all the prejudice of
an adult mind and assign meaning to my feelings, to apply a filter of sense
to them. Back then, though, I had no such understanding. All I could think
was that what we had done was wrong, and I hated James.

He understood it, too, when he woke up, lumbering into the living room
where I was watching TV. He wanted to snuggle in to me, but I refused,
turning away from him.

"You wish we hadn't done it, don't you?" he surmised, quite correctly.

I stared at the TV and didn't answer. I knew that if I opened my mouth, I
would start crying and not be able to stop.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have forced you."

I wanted to shout at him that he hadn't forced me, that I had wanted
it. That I hated myself because the thing I was so determined to experience
had ruined our lovely relationship. I had done this to myself just as much
as he had done it to me. But again, I stayed silent.

He sat with me for a while, saying nothing and making no move toward
me. Perhaps he didn't quite know what to do with me. Then, he rose to
leave, and finally I relented, turning to him, pleading with my eyes for
him to stay. But still I couldn't speak, and he stormed angrily out of the
room. I heard him leave a minute later, and the tears came flooding out.

My aunt found me some time later, still on the sofa, curled up into the
foetal position. At first she assumed James had dumped me, but when I told
her that wasn't the case, she jumped straight to the conclusion that he had
fucked me, and that it hadn't gone well. Once she had established that I
had been willing, and that he hadn't raped me, she went off the deep end,
screaming at me for being so bloody irresponsible.

I didn't need to hear it. I already thought I'd made a massive mistake, and
what I needed from her at that moment was love and sympathy, not
opprobrium. I needed her arm around my shoulder, not a lesson in how stupid
I had been; I knew that well enough for myself.

So I lost it and shouted back at her. I slung any manner of accusations at
her, none of them founded in any truth, and most of them extremely
hurtful. We went at hammer and tongs for about twenty minutes, before she
swore extremely eloquently at me and left. I heard her car engine rev, her
tyres squeal, and then she was gone.

I sat on the sofa again, lost in my thoughts. In the middle of the
afternoon I heard the phone ring, and hauled my aching body over to answer
it. I thought perhaps it might be my aunt telling me where she'd gone in
such a hurry, but instead it was James, wanting to talk.

I let him do so, listening to his apologies until I had grown sick of it. I
shouted down the phone at him that he hadn't done anything wrong, but that
didn't stop me hating him. He begged to know what he could do to fix it,
but there was nothing he could do. Nothing could repair the damage to our
relationship.

Eventually, he gave in and accepted it, and just like that, my first
boyfriend became my first ex.

Aunt Jane came back that evening, and this time she did hug me, and offer
comfort. It meant more to me than I was able to say, so instead I just
cried on her shoulder until I was hoarse from it.

---

I woke utterly unprepared for the school week, but resolute. My aunt
suggested that I stay home, and though I briefly contemplated it, I dressed
in my uniform anyway, made my lunch and went; for some reason I was
determined not to let this beat me.

He was there. He saw me, and I, him. For only a second our eyes met, and
then parted, and I felt a wrench in my soul to have seen the pain etched on
his face.

He had been so central to my world, had meant so much to me, and now that
was gone. It was my fault that he hurt, and that I hurt, and that
everything was broken between us. Nothing I could say to him now would heal
that break, or make me feel any less wretched, so I turned away.

I turned my back on the few friends I had in my class, too. They knew
something was wrong, perhaps suspected it was something to do with my
friendship with James, which I hadn't wholly hidden from them. But I
couldn't face them. Perhaps I didn't think I deserved their friendship
anymore, or maybe isolating myself from them was simply a way of punishing
myself.

---

Outside school, I became somewhat of a recluse. I had no reason ever to
leave my room, other than for school or to eat, and so outside of those
times I locked myself away. My exile was self-imposed, of course. I had no
need to hide from anyone, except perhaps James, but in truth I was hiding
from myself. If I was alone in that room, I could think of myself as
victim, to an extent, rather than architect of my own downfall. But logic's
a funny thing when you're thirteen, gay and have been through a lot of shit
in your life. It gets in the way of clear thinking.

I grew used to isolation. I was at a stage in my life where I felt it
suited me. I could disappear into my own head for hours on end, and I
started to think that perhaps it was better for everyone if I stayed there.

My aunt didn't agree, and I was introduced to Yevgeny, with the primary
purpose of getting me out of the house. Yevgeny was not the most personable
man, and must have said no more than twenty words to me in the first month
that he was dating my aunt, but he had two things going for him: he seemed
happy to tolerate me, and he didn't have any issue at all with my
sexuality, though my aunt assured me he'd been made aware. It was only
years later that I learned that was unusual for a Russian man.

The other benefit of Yevgeny was that he had brought with him from a Russia
a love of angling. When Aunt Jane first informed me that I was going
fishing with Yevgeny, I thought she'd lost her mind. Nothing in the world
seemed less fun than sitting on a muddy bank watching a float bobbing
around in the water.

But I was wrong. Very wrong. You see, angling's big secret is that it's not
about catching fish. In fact, some of my happiest days angling were where I
didn't have to deal with one of the slippery buggers at all. No, it's
appeal for a lot of anglers is the chance to spend some quality time alone
while appearing to be involved in a hobby.

This was perfect for Yevgeny. He would sit and stare at the river or pond -
depending where we were fishing - and appear very much lost in
thought. Sometimes, he would take out a notepad and jot something down in
Russian, and then put it away. Very occasionally, he would say something to
me, guiding me in low, quiet tones how to do this or that. He smoked
incessantly, but insisted that I never took up the habit.

Angling with the taciturn Yevgeny wasn't the solution to my issues, but it
certainly helped. It got me out of the house, and made me concentrate on
something other than self pity.

---

Despite the fishing trips, I was still more than a little morose. I wasn't
happy with myself, and certainly not with the person I had become. I still
beat myself up over the emotional turmoil James had suffered at my hands,
and to an extent I was still struggling to come to terms with my sexuality.

What kick-started me out of this phase of general unhappiness was something
every teenaged boy has a surfeit of: my libido. Rarely held in check even
in my darkest moments, it was piqued one day when a new family moved into
the house next door to my aunt's. The place had lain empty for several
years, seemingly, though recent months had seen a hive of activity as
various trades appeared and carried out all manner of modifications. The
last white van had barely pulled away around the corner when a moving lorry
arrived, followed by a boxy, white Volvo estate car, which duly disgorged a
young family - mum, dad and two kids, a boy and a girl, both a couple of
years younger than myself.

My first reaction was shallow, to say the least: these were well-off
people. From what I'd seen, the house had been renovated to a high
standard, and their furniture looked like really solid old stuff, not
rickety self-builds from Argos. They were, I realised, the kind of people I
had known when my parents were alive and I went to expensive prep
schools. Oh yeah, it's easy to look back and feel disgusted at how shallow
I was, but that's how I felt. I wanted to know these people, because at
last I would be able to identify with someone.

There was something else, too, something a little more basic, more
animal. I rather fancied the boy, in the heart-quickening sort of way in
which I hadn't, I realised, fancied James. He was tall and lithe, with fair
hair which was dark at the roots and hung down over his head in a shaggy
mop. I could see the points of his shoulder blades beneath the soft fabric
of his orange t-shirt when he had his back to me, and the way his lower
back curved into a beautiful, tight little bottom. He was nicely tanned,
and though I couldn't quite tell at the distance between us, I thought that
I spotted blue eyes, too. Damn, he was good looking.

And, oddly, I found his sister alluring, too. She was a slightly more
feminine looking version of her brother - dress her in his clothes and you
might even confuse the two of them, except that unlike her brother, her
hair was well-tamed. For the first time in my life I had a gentle stirring
in the seat of my pants for a girl. I hid behind my curtain and spied on
her and her brother as they helped unpack the furniture. Though nothing of
a sexual nature happened, I still pleasured myself just watching them move.

I watched them again that afternoon, in the dying light of the sun, playing
with a frisbee in their back garden. They were so alike in their
excruciatingly graceful movements that they might almost have been twins,
except that the girl looked perhaps a year younger.

Even as I watched them, I felt a certain degree of revulsion at my own
perversion, but at the same time it was a huge turn-on to watch them and
secretly masturbate over their cute bodies. Guiltily, I came a second time;
watery droplets coated my palm in slime, and I fell against the wall,
breathing heavily.

---

I sort of met them the next day, a Saturday. They were meant to be helping
take boxes from the house and store them in the garage, but instead they
were messing around and avoiding doing any work. Their father shouted at
them a couple of times, but their mother just rolled her eyes and let them
get on with it. I was on the way to the newsagent to get my aunt's
newspaper for her, which I'd offered to do as soon as i spotted the twins
outside.

As I drew level with their front garden the boy looked up from the
tickle-torture he was applying to his uncontrollably giggling sister and
gave me a shy smile, and a soft 'hi', with his hand raised like a little
American Indian. I returned the salute with a silent smile and went on my
way, resisting the urge to turn around and look at them.

They were gone when I passed again ten minutes later, but that hardly
mattered. I needed time alone, time with the thoughts which had come
unbidden as I walked to the newsagent. Even in those days my imagination
was well-enough developed to build, with very little encouragement, quite
lurid fantasies about anyone I found attractive. Mt experiences with James
gave me all the necessary material to fill in any details I may have been
missing. On the short walk to and from the shop, I had already imagined the
boy doing several things which I could be fairly sure he had no idea were
even possible. Jesus, I even imagined what his sister might look like
naked, though given my experiences there were basically zero, I didn't have
a lot to go on.

I took my depraved little self off to my room, and watched for them out of
the curtain, but they didn't reappear.

---

I was driven to distraction by thoughts of the boy. Like a junky needing to
get a bigger hit each time, I needed more and more. A dusty box of my late
grandfather's possessions in the loft yielded an aged but powerful pair of
binoculars, so I could watch the two of them in far higher detail. This
vastly improved my ability to spy, but also had the effect of making me
even more of a recluse, using the view my bedroom had over their garden as
a substitute for television. My aunt must have wondered, or perhaps even
known what I was up to, but she said nothing.

If I wasn't already obsessed enough with the boy, the final coup de
grâce was that one window into his bedroom was opposite one room of
mine. This may take a little explaining! Although their house was far nicer
than ours, they were built on basically the same pattern; the difference
came in the fact that their house had been extended, and had been kept in
nicer condition, and was on a bigger plot. The upshot of all this was that
the houses were basically a mirror of each other. My bedroom was at the
back corner of the house, with a small window over the garden. To make up
for the fact that window was fairly tiny, and didn't let in a lot of light,
another equally small window had been added on the side of the house.

The first time I spotted the boy in there, and realised that it must be his
bedroom, was the evening of the day after they moved in. I walked into my
room just in time to see movement opposite, and the boy's father pulling
the curtain across the window while the boy seemed to be lifting his
t-shirt to remove it. I caught only the merest glimpse of his abdomen, but
it was enough to fuel my fantasies for several days.

He was pretty fastidious about closing that curtain when he was getting
ready for bed, but until that point I could watch him to my heart's
content. He showed no sign of ever realising that I was looking, even when
I stood brazenly in the middle of my room with my pants down and my hand
doing its filthy business.

I can recall with absolute clarity the first time I saw something more
intimate through that window. It was a dark, autumn afternoon, not long
before Halloween, and drizzle fell thickly outside. He was in his room with
the light on, and the curtains open, and he lay on his bed reading a
magazine. It was one of those aimed at teenaged boys - which he most
certainly was not - which border in places on being pornographic.

He lay there for a while, flicking through the magazine, stopping now and
then to linger on a story. Then, he clearly found one page which interested
him more than any other. He lay there staring at it for ages, and then, as
one hand continued to hold the magazine, the other slid down his tummy, and
pushed beneath the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms.

My breath caught in my throat and my head swam as I realised what he was
doing. He rooted around in there for a moment - I liked to imagine that he
was making himself hard - and then the hand started the slow, rhythmical
motion which is familiar to all boys and men over a certain age. I watched
with mounting excitement, barely able to stand as my heart hammered in my
chest. I murmured to him, begging him to pull down the front of his
trousers as he wanked, but they remained resolutely in place. It must have
been having the desired effect, though, because I could see his
white-socked toes curling with pleasure, and his little hips wriggling side
to side.

Just when I thought he must be getting close to the final, glorious outcome
of his onanism, something disturbed him. He sat bolt upright, and shoved
the magazine under his pillow. He his the bulge in his crotch by sitting
cross-legged on the bed, and by the time his sister came through the
door. She said something to him, and he nodded in reply, and then she was
gone again, leaving him with a look of sheer frustration on his face. He
pulled out the front of his tracksuit to see what lay inside, and
rearranged what by now must have been a somewhat deflated boyhood, before
getting up and leaving the room.

I fell back on my bed, and tugged myself to a truly breathtaking climax.

---

The image of him wanking was stuck in my mind, and as a result I became
obsessed with watching his window in case there was a repeat of the
show. Each evening he would come into the room having just showered, in
only a towel, and each evening without fail I would be disappointed as he
drew shut the curtains. The merest chink of light passing between them
raised my hopes, but there was never anything to be seen through those tiny
gaps.

This had to end at some point. I couldn't carry on spending my evenings
watching him. Here I was, a thirteen year old boy, so driven by lust for a
neighbour he hadn't even properly met, that I spent every evening watching
through my binoculars. Disgusted with myself one Friday night, lying back
on my bed with my pants around my knees and still-warm ejaculate dripping
off the backs of my knuckles, I resolved to do something about it.

---

A plan was needed, and it had to be a solid one. Unfortunately, what I came
up with was absolutely terrible, and why I ever imagined it would work was
beyond me.

I'd noticed the boy's wardrobe consisted of little more than one football
strip after another, and he was often to be spied in their back garden,
kicking a ball around as if he desperately needed a friend to play with.

Clearly, he was more of a normal boy than I was, because he liked playing
football. His love for the game would be central to my plan. Its biggest
flaw - and one that I was quite happy to ignore - was that I wasn't exactly
co-ordinated, and was considered by all those who had seen me play to be
quite the most inept player they'd ever set eyes on. You see, my genius
plan was in fact brilliant in its simplicity. All I had to do was stroll
casually over to his house one day and ask if he wanted a kick-about. I'm
not even sure I understood what a kick-about entailed, but that wasn't
about to stop me.

Except, of course, it could never be as easy as that. I had become so
obsessed with this boy, and so withdrawn from normal life, that I hardly
remembered how to go about approaching people. I sat one morning on the
edge of my bed, staring at my reflection in the long mirror on the back of
the door, melodramatically imagining myself as some sort of alcoholic or
drug addict in a movie, admitting my addiction to myself before I admitted
it to my friends and family. Except I could only ever confess to my
reflection, because I sure as hell couldn't tell another soul what I had
been up to in that room. Drug addicts who admit their addiction and express
a desire to turn things around get love and support. Spying teenage
perverts don't...

But sitting there had an effect on me. It was like waking from a dream. I
admitted to myself quite how much time I had been spending with my
binoculars, and quite how isolated I had become. I was a thirteen year old
boy, and most of my time was spent alone in my room, thinking of doing
unspeakable things to other boys (and mostly to one boy in
particular). Even with my limited capacity for introspection I realised
that this was not right. So, even if I wasn't going to be brave enough to
talk to the boy, I should at least get out and do something. It was a
Sunday, and my aunt was still mooching around in her dressing gown, so
there was no chance she'd already made the walk to get the paper. To her
surprise I offered to get it for her, and moments later had actually left
the house to do something other than catch the bus to school.

There's a certain truth to the idea that if you stop looking so hard,
sometimes what you were searching for finds you. While I might have
abandoned my silly plan to meet the boy, I was ultimately given a chance by
the hand of fate. Or should that be the foot?

As I walked past his house, the boy's football bounced out in front of me
and into the road. It had flown clean down the side path from the back
garden, and was followed quickly by its owner, looking as heartrendingly
cute as ever. I vowed to myself that something should happen, and lo, here
was my chance! So very easy after all, this human interaction business. I
stooped to retrieve the errant item, and lifted into my hands, feeling
utterly awkward all of a sudden. Such an alien object. I handed it to him,
and received a smile in return.

"Thanks," he said. And then, "You could've just kicked it back to me, you
know."

I chuckled slightly. Well, a lot. Way more than was necessary. What can I
say? I was nervous.

"Yeah, but that would have been a disaster," I said, and then immediately
cursed myself for being so honest, and by doing so scuppering the
barely-floating remnants of my plan.

"How come?" he asked, his gorgeous face tilted to the side. I would come to
discover that he always leaned his head over when asking a question, like
an inquisitive little owl. Utterly endearing.

"I can't play football to save my life."

Well, I'd already fucked my plan, might as well abandon any pretence now,
right?

"Everyone can play football," he said with a giggle.

"Not me. Not one little bit."

"OK, then I'll teach you."

Oh my life, it's happened. It's actually happened. Run, little boy,
run. Don't you know what danger you're in? Don't you know the perverted
thirteen year old who's been spying on you wants to get into your pants,
and you're playing right into his hands? Save yourself!

"Um, OK, yeah. That would be good. I have to get the paper for my aunt
first, but then I'm free all day."

"Cool. Just come round the back, I'll be in our garden. I'm Jack, by the
way," he said, holding out a thin, elfin hand.

"Zack," I replied, taking it in mine, finding it curiously limp. We both
giggled because our names rhymed, and that's the kind of thing you find
funny at that age, when you're both nervous.

I almost ran to the newsagent and back, and having changed into a pair of
shorts and a t-shirt, raced round to Jack's house. My aunt was in the
kitchen as I passed, and raised an eyebrow at my sudden change of attire,
but said nothing else. Jack smiled broadly when I entered the garden, and
immediately kicked the ball to me, and, over the course of the next hour or
so I managed to prove quite how thoroughly inept I was. Jack was a patient
teacher, though, and I gloried in the closeness of him as he came to show
me what to do, positioning my legs and hips with his hands. I fought my
libido and failed, and I hoped he didn't notice the unnatural bulge in the
front of my shorts. At least, if he did notice it, he didn't mention it. By
the time I had to leave, I was hot, sweaty, and above all else, buzzing. I
knew what it was to feel alive for the first time in weeks. I must have
floated back to my house.

My aunt intercepted me as I gulped down a glass of orange squash.

"Making friends at last, then?" she said. It should have been a cause for
celebration, but there was an edge to her voice which suggested something
darker beneath.

"Yeah. And playing outdoors, too!" I said, my face beaming.

She sighed and looked at me, something approaching pity in her eyes.

"Just be careful, Zack, OK? Be careful."

And she left the room before I could ask her what the hell she meant. Be
careful of what? Jack wasn't going to do anything to me, so what did I have
to be afraid of?

---

The knock on the door came that evening. Alone in the house - my aunt was
out with Yevgeny - I answered it, annoyed at the intrusion into my
daydreaming about... well, you know. On the step stood Jack's dad, a
handsome man and a looming presence in the doorway. We'd never been
formally introduced, but he certainly knew who I was.

"Is your aunt in, Zack?"

"Um, no. No, she's out. Can I -"

"Good," he said, interrupting me and barging past into the house.

"Shut the door," he continued, and stalked off toward the kitchen. I
followed like an obedient puppy, scared to death of the man.

"Look, I'll keep this short. Stay the fuck away from my son, alright? I've
got nothing against you doing whatever it is you poofters do in your own
home, but you stay the hell away from my Jack. I'm not having you
influencing him. Understand?"

I stood there speechless, my mouth opening and closing, but nothing coming
out.

"I'll take that as a yes, then. Good."

And he left.

I crumpled to the floor, utterly deflated. Sobs racked my body, and I cried
silently, tears streaming down my face.

I don't know how long I was there on the floor, but my aunt and Yevgeny
found me staring into space. She tried to get through to me, but nothing
would breach that barrier; I had retreated.

---

It was half term, a week without school. I spent it alone in my
room. Sometimes I would take a short trip to the toilet, or to the kitchen
to get food, but always I returned to my little cocoon. I sought
desperately for answers. Why had this happened to me? Was I being punished
for how I'd behaved toward to James? Or for my thoughts about Jack? Perhaps
this was God's revenge on me for having done what I already had, for being
who I was. And how had Jack's dad known? It wasn't that common knowledge,
was it?

I looked out of my window one day, and there he was, cutting a lonely,
dejected figure in his garden, kicking a ball about. He turned and looked
at me, and smiled, raising a hand in a small wave, and then darted his eyes
toward his house, as if afraid of being seen making contact with me. That
answered one question, at least - he, too, had been warned not to play with
me, as I had been warned off playing with him. Strangely, I was relieved -
we were both in the same boat, and hopefully he didn't hold a grudge
against me for ignoring him. By the time I'd waved back he was already
looking the other way.

My aunt asked why I wasn't playing with my new friend, but I couldn't tell
her what had happened. I was ashamed, as if I had a disgusting disease
which shouldn't be mentioned. I gave her no answer, and she jumped to
conclusions. I made no effort to rebuff her accusation that I had
frightened the boy off. Instead I accepted it, the sacrificial lamb,
because I had worked out by now that I surely deserved everything which
came my way. It was simply the cross I had to bear for my mortal sins.

Darkness replaced light, depression forced out happiness.

## Chapter 5

A letter landed on the doormat, simply addressed 'Zack'. Hand delivered,
but in the middle of the night. My aunt found it first thing the next
morning, and invaded my room to pass it on, as well as taking the
opportunity to complain about my lack of activity. I sat and listened to
the lecture, and made no complaints. She was right to lecture me.

I waited until she was certainly gone before opening it. My eyes flicked
downward and my heart jumped into my mouth when I read the name 'Jack'. I
have it to this day, so I can tell you verbatim what it said:

Dear Zack, I hope this doesn't get you in trouble! My dad said I wasn't to
play with you any more, but he wouldn't tell me why. Do you know why? I
think it's rubbish. I like playing with you. I think we should still play,
but keep it a secret. If you still want to be my friend, put a letter in
the apple tree between our gardens tonight.  From Jack

Other than repairing a little of his broken spelling and grammar, that's
exactly what he sent.

Oh, sweet rapture to read those words! How my heart soared! I felt as if
the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. I rushed to the
window, hoping to get a glimpse of him, maybe to pass on that I had
received his message. But the only person out in the garden was his mum,
putting out some washing, and there was no sign of Jack or his sister in
the house, at least through the windows I could see.

I sat down immediately to pen my reply, though the secret agent in me
reminded me I'd have to wait for darkness to deliver it to the named
location, and at this time of year that would be very late indeed. Still, I
threw wide the curtains and sat down at my desk, found some paper and a
pen, and set to work.

Of course, it had to be the ideal letter, its tone gauged perfectly - I
wanted to appear enthusiastic, but not overly so. I didn't want to do what
my aunt assumed I already had, and scare him away. That's why I eventually
ran out of paper and had to go and find some more. Some hours later, I
finally had a note I was happy with; I'd love to tell you what it said, but
that's one I don't have. I can't imagine it was a literary epic, but I
carefully and lovingly folded it into four and labelled it 'Jack'.

I paced, I sat, I paced again. I almost ripped it up and started again, but
no, it was good enough, good enough. What was I expecting the letter to do?
After all, I was simply confirming that I agreed to our secret
friendship. I was placing too much import on this simple little thing. I
sat, and I paced, and I tried to read but couldn't, tried to find something
else to do but couldn't. My aunt tried to talk to me but I wasn't
interested. She wasn't my friend at the moment. I distracted myself for a
few moments with photos of my parents, but that could not be endured. I
tried reading, again; still couldn't.

Darkness fell all too slowly, but by half past nine I thought it was
probably dark enough to risk putting the letter in the tree. I snuck
outside through the kitchen, trying not to disturb my aunt, who was
watching TV in the living room; the last thing I needed was her sticking
her nose in. It was a warm evening, the air close. For some reason, even
though the gardens were in all-consuming darkness I felt the need for
stealth, and so I ran in a crouch below the line of the hedge which
separated our gardens, down to the apple tree whose boughs graced us both
with fruit. There, in a hollow which seemed perfect for the job, I
deposited my note. As I stealthily crept back to the house and up to my
room, my heart hammered so fast that my head went light and I had to reach
out to the wall for support.

I thought I should try to alert Jack in some way, to tell him the note was
there. A subtle sign in my window, perhaps? Would he understand if I made a
little picture of an apple and stuck it to the glass? Or perhaps I could
just wait there until he went to his room.

His room! Of course! If I knew his schedule at all (and I did, in minute
detail) about now he would be going up to his room to get ready for
bed. Perhaps he would be there tonight! But as I looked out of my window
there was only darkness. Determined to wait in case he came to bed late, I
turned off the light in my room (to kill its reflection on the inside of my
window) and sat down to wait.

Ten minutes later - as I was beginning to give in to boredom and had
started fantasising - the light flicked on in his room, and there was
Jack. He turned round to shout through the door, possibly downstairs where
his parents would be. Then he closed the door and came over to the
curtains, pulling them shut. My chance had gone - he was out of sight
before I could reach my light to turn it on and let him know I was there. I
sat and stared at the closed curtains for a minute, annoyed with myself for
not moving more quickly.

Then, something out of the ordinary happened: the curtains split for a
moment, and there was Jack, opening the top window to let some air in; it
was a rather muggy evening, after all. Again, I was too slow reacting to
get his attention, but it didn't matter one bit, because Jack - who was
normally very careful about his privacy - left the curtains open a foot
wide and retreated into his room. It made sense to leave a gap for a breeze
to pass through, but it also gave me a perfect view of the lower half of
his bed.

By now my heart was fit to burst, and the metallic tang of adrenaline made
my mouth pucker. What happened next is still one of my go-to mental images
to achieve a very quick and satisfying climax.

He reappeared after a few moments and was totally, fully, shockingly
naked. I realised then that nothing would ever come close to that view. I
knew that however it happened I would have to have him. I doubled over as
the excitement of the moment made my stomach cramp.

Frantic with desire, I pushed down my jeans, desperately trying to keep my
eyes on the view. He stood there for a moment, as if posing, as if giving
me long enough to store the memory for ever, though he couldn't have known
I was watching. Then he knelt down and fished under his bed for something,
pulling out a white book.

I wondered what it could be, but then I saw the front cover and all was
revealed - even over this distance I recognised the book's cover, because I
had a copy myself. It was called "You and Your Body", and was a wonderfully
explicit sex education book for young teens which somehow made it past the
censors on the basis of being educational. I had spent hours alone in
private with that book, and it looked as if he was about to do the same.

He lay back on his bed, giving me the view from navel to feet. His little
penis - a floppy white thing with a pink tinge to the foreskin - fell
across his hip. His left hand drifted down to play with it and it quickly
bobbed and rose, bouncing with his pulse, until it stood firmly erect,
pointing to his chin. It was a slim, smooth tube, rising from an
unblemished groin. His balls were pulled up tight beneath, and he tugged at
the pliable skin, which had the effect of dragging the hood down over the
head of his spike until about half was showing. It quivered in its hardness
when he let go of his sack. I couldn't see which pages of the book he was
reading, but they were having the desired effect.

His masturbation was slow at first. He rolled his stiff little member
about, and pinched the tip. He was half-heartedly raising pleasure from his
boyhood, but making no serious effort to bring himself off. He would slowly
peel back his foreskin to expose his engorged, shiny helmet, then roll it
back into place, then pinch the tip of it and stretch it as far as he could
off the end. This went on for some minutes, his toes sometimes curling and
his stomach occasionally clenching when a jolt of pleasure radiated out
from his groin. Then, he must have found a particularly enjoyable page (I
wondered if it was the same as my own favourite), and he began the serious
work of building to orgasm.

His legs stretched until the muscles quivered, then relaxed, stretched and
relaxed, as with fingers and thumb he rapidly shuffled the skin off his
head and over again, off and over, back and forth in a blur. Legs
stretched, and relaxed. Toes curled, stomach clenched and legs jumped up,
and relaxed. Tensed, relaxed, tensed, relaxed, faster, faster, until legs
went rigid, back arched, hips pushed up into the air, fist grasped the
little spike and crushed it until the knuckles were white, and he held it,
on shoulder blades and heels until the very peak passed and he collapsed
onto the bed, hips still wriggling and writhing, pinching the head of his
deflating boyhood as tension drained. Stomach rising and falling rapidly
with his panting, and glistening with sweat in the light from his bedside
lamp. A squeeze of his over-sensitive member and the legs jerked, toes
curled. Sitting up, checking for wetness, finding none, sighing visibly and
then collapsing back onto the bed without the book, which lay open on the
very page I'd brought to my mind's eye.

I retreated to bed. My head span. My jeans were still around mid thigh. My
body was drenched with sweat and a spray of semen. I wanted to open my own
window to let a cool breeze through, but couldn't summon the energy to lift
myself off the bed.

I awoke at five in the morning, with the first grey light of morning coming
through the still-open curtains. Was that a noise outside? I was naked from
the waist down now, my clothes discarded unconsciously in the night, so I
shuffled to the window on my knees and looked out. No sign of life, but
there, dark against the shimmering silver dew on their back lawn was a set
of footprints, to and from the apple tree.

Jack had the note.

---

I had thought waiting for the chance to deliver my note was painful enough,
but it was nothing compared to the agony of anticipating Jack's
response. They left early in the morning, and didn't come back until late
afternoon, leaving me to stew over the possibilities. I ran through every
possible scenario in my mind, from the worst to the implausible best.

In the nightmare version of reality, Jack's dad found the letter I'd sent
back to him and stormed around to my house, finishing the job my attackers
had started the year before, and beating me to death. At the other end of
the scale, Jack realised that he was gay and tentatively admitted it to me
in his next letter, and from there everything spiralled into one long,
debauched orgy in my room. Neither was particularly likely, but you tell
that to an emotionally charged teenager...

I realised - as I was doing more and more often - that I needed to get out
of my room. Yevgeny was not around, but I grabbed my fishing gear anyway
and took the bus to the nearest decent spot, and spent the afternoon
missing almost every strike and being entirely happy about it.

Dusk was falling as I returned to the house. My aunt - who had found my
note explaining where I was going - gave me a big hug, crushing me close to
her.

"I'm so glad you got out and did something," she said, kissing me on the
cheek.

"Yeah, well..." I said, and didn't finish the sentence. I took my gear to
the utility room to wash it down, as Yevgeny had taught me. As I stared at
the water spiralling down the plughole, my mind filled with thoughts of
Jack. Just at that moment I heard their car pulling into the drive next
door. Slightly frantically, I finished up what I was doing and bounded
upstairs.

In the rapidly falling gloom I saw the light go on in Jack's room. He was
carrying a plastic shopping back with the Lego logo emblazoned across the
front, filled with a chunky-looking box. He pulled it out and laid it on
the bed. I watched on jealously as he opened the box of what was clearly a
very impressive Technics set; the truck and trailer with a helicopter,
maybe? I'd been very keen on Lego before my parents died, though since
their assets had been seized, which included just about all of my
possessions, I'd not played with a piece. Perhaps I was a little old at
thirteen to still be interested, but perhaps not; if Jack liked it, I loved
it.

Jack was still slightly in awe of his gift. I watched as he eagerly pulled
out the instructions and read through them. I remembered the feeling of
doing so, the pleasure of drawn out anticipation, the almost masochistic
denial of gratification. Given the opportunity, I would have analysed every
last diagram in the book, and then carefully arranged all of the parts, and
only then begun the slow process of building the kit, pressing each piece
into place with the utmost relish.

He placed the instruction booklet reverentially on the bed, and stood. On
stealthy feet he made his way to his bedroom door and peered out, looking
this way and that, and, apparently satisfied with what he saw he closed the
door. My heart leapt into my mouth and my mind raced with possibilities,
but he wasn't closing the door to have a wank. Instead, he went to his desk
and pulled a sheet of paper out of the draw, then stood up on the chair and
took down a book from his shelf, pulling something from between the
pages. He unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the desk, and I twigged
that it must have been the note I sent to him.

He set to writing a response. Occasionally he would glance my way, but my
bedroom was in darkness and I knew he couldn't see me watching him. He was
a careful, slow writer, taking his time over every sentence. It warmed my
heart to think he took so much care over the note to me, as if he, too,
were nervous that it came across the right way. In no version of reality
could he possibly be as nervous as I was, especially not for the same
reasons, but perhaps this friendship was important to him. I couldn't
imagine a boy like Jack having trouble finding friends, so perhaps it was
just his determination to defy his father.

By the time I'd come out of my private musings he was done. He carefully
folded the note, and mine, and placed them both in the book before
returning to his shelf. His secret task done he left the room, switching
off the light as he went.

---

Morning came bright, crisp, cold and dewy. I went on bare feet to the tree,
anticipation blocking the unpleasant sensation of the wet grass beneath my
feet. I glanced across at their house, but there were no signs of
life. They were clearly still in bed, as anyone sensible would be in this
murky half-light. A white rectangle of paper was the reward for my journey;
like the garden, it was cold and slightly damp.

Zack (it read), I'm really glad you want to be friends too. We have to keep
it secret from my dad. I heard him saying stuff about you to my mum. He
wasn't very nice, sorry. I have to ask you about what he said, but not
now. I'm going to tell my mum I'm going to play football, but do you want
to sneak off and go to the woods instead? If you do, put something up in
your window and I'll meet you down at the rec at 10.  If you have changed
your mind that is okay too.  From, Jack

---

I collapsed back onto my bed. I'd read the letter a dozen times, just to
see if I'd missed anything, and my Rubik's Cube was sitting in the window;
my sign. My emotions were mixed - there was the building sensation of
butterflies, the anticipation of seeing Jack and going into the woods to
play. I understood the draw of the place, but I'd never been in.

Then, overlying those positive emotions was the sick feeling of knowing I
was being gossiped about behind my back, of knowing that Jack's dad had
been speaking ill of me, and that Jack had heard it. I cared far more about
his opinion than his father's, but it hurt to know that suspicion followed
me around, as if I were some sort of criminal . Seemingly, people needed to
be warned off me. I couldn't stop the feeling of nausea it brought on, and
refused breakfast when my aunt offered.

Ten o'clock couldn't come round fast enough. Each time I decided it was
time to leave, I convinced myself to wait just a little longer, so as not
to appear over-eager. Then, when I looked at my watch and discovered it was
three minutes to, and there was a five minute walk ahead of me, I panicked
and rushed out of the door.

Jack was waiting there, and gave me a little wave and a shy smile.

"Thought you weren't coming," he said, the relief apparent in his voice.

"Yeah, sorry. So, what do you want to do?"

"There's a place in the woods with a rope swing. Want to go there?"

I shrugged, but accepted. It seemed a little juvenile, but then Jack was a
couple of years younger than me. As we walked he chattered away about this
and that. My initial nervousness evaporated as the minutes passed, until we
were having an enthusiastic conversation, laughing more often than not. It
was easy, and comfortable, and the happiest I'd been since James and I were
together.

The rope swing, despite my initial scepticism, turned out to be more fun
than I would have imagined. We took turns flying out over a dried out
gully, its sides thick with moss-covered, crawling tree roots. A magical
place to spend the day, with a cute boy who I fancied the heck out of.

We explored the woods afterwards. No-one else was there as far as we could
tell, so we took liberties, like pissing off the side of a high path into
the leaves of the tree below, seeing who could fire furthest. I took guilty
pleasure in seeing what little I could of Jack's treasures, and when he
caught me looking he grinned and stole a glance at mine. Of course he just
messing around, still in the dick comparing stage of his life, not the
lusting-after-an-innocent-morsel-of-flesh voyeurism I was practising. It
took all my strength to hold back from reaching out and touching his, and
by the time we were done my hands were shaking with the adrenaline which
had flooded my body.

"Yours is really big," he said, grinning. I shrugged.

"I'm older than you," I replied. "Yours will start getting bigger soon."

"You reckon?" he asked, pulling on his foreskin and stretching it
out. "It's pretty small."

"Oh, I don't know," I said, not really thinking what I was saying, "I think
it's nice."

He gave me a strange look - questioning, almost, rather than disgusted -
and put his away. I stood mortified for a moment longer, then snapped out
of it and also tucked mine back in my shorts.

The spell was broken, and we returned to being just two mates messing about
in the woods, and before we knew it darkness was beginning to fall. We
split up at the edge of the woods and I took a longer way home than he
did. By the time I slipped through the door and into my kitchen it was
almost dark. My head was full of thoughts of him, my heart with the soaring
feelings of nascent love, and my loins with fire at the memories of his
perfect little willy. And, floating above it all was the pact we had made
to meet the next day and do it all over again.

---

"Zack, what does being a poof mean?" he asked as we walked along. It was an
innocent question, he didn't mean any harm by it.

"Is that what your dad was calling me?"

He nodded. "A 'fucking poof', that's what he said."

I sighed. I knew this would come up eventually. He'd even warned me in his
letter that it might. But there was no escaping the truth of who I was. I
could lie to him, but I was tired of lies and concealment. If he couldn't
handle who I was, then our friendship was doomed anyway, so why keep it
from him any longer?

"It means I'm gay," I said, and when that didn't register with him
(remember, this was a more innocent time), I said, "It means I fancy boys
instead of girls."

His eyes flew wide. "Oh!" he said, the shock clear on his face. In his
innocence he made no attempt to hide it, and strangely I was thankful to
him for that. "Isn't that a bit icky?"

I had to laugh at the absurdity of the question.

"What?" he asked, looking a little offended.

"Well, put it this way," I replied, "I don't think it's icky. I think it's
great."

"Oh. Is that why you said my willy is nice?"

I nodded.

"Oh, right. Isn't it bad to be gay? Like against the law or something?"

"No, it's not illegal. Some people think it should be. Some people - like
your dad - think I'm sick in the head."

"Are you? You haven't done anything crazy while you've been with me."

"Yeah, well..." I said, "I did look at your willy, didn't I?"

"So? I looked at yours. And you can look at mine whenever you want, I don't
mind."

And with that he pulled down the front of his shorts, waving his little
dick at me. I gasped and went light-headed with the sudden rush of blood to
my loins. He giggled at my shocked expression, and pulled his pants up.

"Anyway," he went on, as if he hadn't just flashed me, "my dad isn't always
right. Sometimes I know the answers to my maths homework and he doesn't."

And that, apparently, was that. Jack's issue was with his father's attitude
to me, rather than the fact that I was gay. We didn't mention it again for
some weeks.

----

"Zack, do you know what a blowjob is?"

It was a characteristically straightforward, blunt and naive question from
Jack. Most people his age would have felt uncomfortable admitting their
ignorance about sex, but with Jack I got the impression that nothing would
have embarrassed him.

"It's... well, it's when someone sucks on your willy, when it gets hard."

"Why?"

"Because it feels good."

"But why would they suck it?"

"Because they want you to feel good. Or they just like sucking dicks."

"That's weird. Has anyone ever done it to you?"

"Yeah. It was... it was the best thing ever."

That was a lie, actually, but I couldn't quite tell him, nor admit to
myself, that getting fucked - when it stopped hurting - felt even better.

"How do you think I get a girl to do it to me?"

This was one of those forks in the road, those moments when your life can
turn one way or the other. I knew that I wanted him in my mouth, that was a
certainty I didn't need to question. The issue was, how would he read if I
just asked? Only one way to find out, I suppose.

"I'll suck you if you want," I said, my libido taking charge. Immediately
his face darkened, and I realised I'd made a huge mistake.

"Eurgh, no! That's gay, isn't it? I don't want some boy sucking on my
dick!"

My heart dropped like a stone into the pit of my stomach. How could I have
been so stupid? I should've just controlled my desire for Jack and said
nothing.

He made his excuses and went home shortly after that. It was a relief to be
honest, because the tension between us was palpable. As I wandered home
through the gathering darkness, I wondered if I would ever get to play with
him again.

---

Isn't it marvellous what short memories boys have?

The very next day my transgression had either been forgiven or
forgotten. Jack caught my eye when we were both out the front of the house,
and with a little pantomime suggested we meet in the woods a little later.

I managed not to say anything too disturbing, and Jack successfully avoided
raising any topics of a sexual nature, and for that day, and a few weeks
after, our world was a little more regular, a little less charged. Things
returned to normal for a thirteen year old boy and his eleven year old
friend.

---

The porno changed everything. Finding those few scraps of damp paper,
separating them, and carefully drying them was like some engineering
puzzle; it occupied us like none of the games which had come before. It was
a hardcore, too, a rarity in those days. It's hard to imagine now - in the
world of the internet where every conceivable kind of pornography is
available at the click of a button - how exciting it was to find something
like that. It was almost a complete magazine, dumped by someone in the
hedges and found by us. I still remember to this day the damp smell of the
pages; to this day, if I ever catch a whiff of that smell, my crotch
tightens.

The porno had something for us both - for Jack, it had women with their
filthy cunts spread wide open, hairy, gaping. And for me, the hunky men
with their rampant poles, huge members of such enormity that it made my
arse twitch, spouting thick geysers of semen, of which I was truly
jealous. And on one page, the young stud who became the focus of my
masturbatory fantasies for days or even weeks.

A northern European magazine from the seventies, it had a section which I
would imagine was called 'Rising Stars', had I been able to read the
language in which it was written. And there, in glorious technicolour, was
the most gorgeous boy I had ever seen - Klaus was my age, blond haired,
with a five inch prick which made mine look a little insignificant and a
fine patch of pubes which sparked both jealousy and arousal. I didn't care
for the older woman he was fucking, but she didn't matter, as long as I
could have that cock.

Some pages we argued over dividing between us, but those pages were
mine. Jack didn't even comment; he just passed them to me with a slight
grin curling the corner of his lips, as if to say 'there you go, you dirty
poof!', but in a friendly sort of way.

I lay in bed at night fascinated by the pictures of Klaus. How could
someone so young be so lucky? I didn't envy him bedding the woman, but to
be in porn at all, to have all the sex you wanted? That was truly something
to admire. I kept returning to one image above all - a close-up of his
rigid shaft, the woman's tongue licking at the exposed head, her hand
around it possessively, her little finger sticking straight out and buried
in the immature bush of hair at its base. I came and came, while I imagined
being that lucky, lucky bitch.

---

Perhaps surprisingly, the images in that magazine seemed to have gone some
way to thawing Jack's attitude, too. It wasn't long after we found the
magazine and split it up that we had our first sexual experience.

"You play with yours when you look at the pictures, don't you?" he asked
out of the blue.

I hesitated, not wanting to risk ruining things again by being 'too gay' at
him. But he had raised it, and just admitting the truth without going into
too much detail surely couldn't be harmful.

"Er, yeah. Sometimes."

Actually, all the fucking time, but I wasn't going to admit I did it until
I as sore. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank God. I thought it was just me."

I looked at him, slightly surprised. I wasn't that worldly wise, but one
thing I did know was that any boy who told you he didn't have a wank every
now and again was lying.

"All boys do it, Jack," I said, in a tone which I realised far too late was
thoroughly patronising.

"Oh yeah, I mean, I knew that. Of course."

He was blushing, making him look even cuter than ever. An image flashed
through my mind, a picture of him standing there in one of the poses of the
boy from the magazine - hand on hips, which were thrust forward, with his
boyish spike presented to the world. I had a vague idea of what his
erection looked like - having spied on him wanking - but up close was
another matter altogether, and even the daydream made my heart beat faster.

"How do you... um.. how do you do it?" he asked, eyes downcast.

"Like this," I said, pressing my thumb to my middle and forefingers.

"Oh good!" he said, with a nervous giggle. "At least I'm doing it right. Do
you get the feeling?"

"An orgasm?"

"Is that what it's called?"

"Yeah. And I get it every time. What would be the point if you didn't get
the feeling?"

He giggled again, and said, "I suppose so."

"How often do you do it?" I asked.

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"About one every two days. Is that too much?"

I don't know why he thought I would have the answer to that, but based on
my own frequency I was forced to laugh, which angered him.

"What?!" he snapped.

"Don't worry," I replied, "you're not doing it too much. I do it way more."

"What, like once a day?"

"Um... I think my record was nine times."

His eyes flew wide at that.

"Nine times?! In one day? How?"

"Dunno. S'pose I was just feeling really bonky."

"Didn't it get sore?"

"Haha, yeah, after about the fifth time. It started really hurting to have
my orgasm, and there was no spunk left to come out."

"Spunk?"

"Yeah, you know, the white stuff which comes out of the end when you have
an orgasm. Like in the magazine."

"Oh, is that what that is? I was wondering..."

He fell silent for a moment, suddenly looking very unsure of himself. I
went out on a limb, suspecting that I knew the issue.

"But you probably won't get that until you're about twelve or thirteen," I
reassured him. It worked - he looked up at me, his face brightening, and
said,

"Oh, OK!"

For a few minutes we carried on with the game we'd been playing before the
interruption, but it was clear that he was distracted, occasionally
grabbing at his crotch.

"You need to do it now, don't you?" I asked, teasing him.

"No!" he responded, but I could tell it was a lie.

"Go ahead if you want to, I don't mind."

"You just want to watch me do it!" he retorted, and he was right. I was
encouraging him to do it so I could watch.

"Yeah, well, you're the one who's got an erection."

My response was weak, largely because it was quite apparent from the front
of my jeans that I, too, was struggling with the same issue.

"Fine, I'll do it!" he almost shouted, as if he wanted to but wouldn't
admit it. "But you have to do it too."

That, as it happened, was not going to be as much of a problem for me as
he'd hoped.

So, we agreed: on three we both pushed our jeans and pants to the floor,
right there in the middle of the woods, standing two feet apart with our
stiffies out in the open. It felt amazing to be there, with my fingers and
thumb on my dick, with Jack doing the same to his narrow, three inch spike
opposite. We made no pretence; he stared at my dick just as avidly as I
watched him work at his. Not used to the idea of taking things slowly and
anticipating the pleasure, we pounded away.

It was over far too quickly. We should've taken our time and relaxed a
little, but barely two minutes after we started Jack, who had already been
horny for quite a while I guessed, started panting and doubling over. He
put out a hand to lean on a tree trunk for support, and was suddenly there,
drawing breath through clenched teeth then expelling it in one huge
puff. He crushed his erection with his fingers as he came, squeezing the
head hard and shaking all over. His head was down, hands on his knees, and
so he didn't see my explosion, triggered by the sight in front of me. I
came hard, firing a shower of watery semen to land between us, gasping at
the intensity of my climax.

After that, there really was no point in being shy about it. Without
hesitation we would wank off together in the woods whenever we were
there. Sometimes Jack used to tell dirty stories to get himself in the
mood, but more often than not there would be no need - we were horny boys,
so we were always up for a quick wank. I grew used to the sight of his
ramrod straight, hairless three inches, and in every nighttime fantasy of
mine, he overtook the boy from the magazine. Oh God, how I wanted that
morsel of rigid flesh in my hand, my mouth... my arse.

---

We never talked about what we did during those sessions; they were more
like a break between activities, a chance to relieve tension and then get
on with more important things. It was usually he who initiated things, and
it was always the same question:

"Do you need to do it yet?"

Always the same answer, too: of course I did! And if I didn't before he
asked, the prospect of seeing his willy again - no matter how often I'd
seen it before - would always get me interested.

One day after our session, we lay back on a grass bank to catch our
breath. Our pants were still around our ankles, our willies were rapidly
deflating, and the patch of grass to my left glistening with my semen. Out
of the blue, he asked me something really rather revolutionary.

"Do you remember when you said you'd suck my willy for me?"

"Um, yeah?"

"Would you still do it?"

I hesitated, fearful of retribution. But it was unlike Jack to try to trap
me; no, if he was asking, it was for genuine reasons.

"Yeah, sure," I said, trying to act all nonchalant, "if you want me to."

"Do I have to do it back?"

"Not if you don't want. But can I wank off when I'm sucking you?"

"Yeah, OK."

And that was that. He lay with his head on his arms whilst his willy
inflated of its own accord, going from a curled up little snail to a proud
monument to boyhood in a matter of moments. I rolled over toward him and
scooted down the bank a little, and came face to face with the most
wonderful thing I'd ever laid my eyes upon.

He was hard as nails, his anaemic little spike quivering with his
heartbeat. The protruding foreskin which hung over the end vibrated with
the rhythm of his pulse. It pointed up at forty five degrees, its very
stiffness preventing it falling onto his tummy. I marvelled at its almost
luminescent whiteness, and the minute tracery of thin blue veins which
criss-crossed its underside, and the way the head was clearly outlined
beneath the skin. I'd never before been so attracted to a penis, and that
was saying something. It was fatter than I realised, too, and my mouth
began to water in anticipation of nestling it on my tongue and wrapping my
lips around its perfectly smooth, hairless base.

I wasted no time leaning forward and for the first time in months I felt
the soft, warm skin of a penis in my mouth. It was harder than James' ever
managed to be, even at the point of eruption, but the skin was softer than
I could possibly have imagined. It slid so easily over the hardness
beneath, and as I rolled it back off his head with my lips I tasted
something altogether new. It was unadulterated boy, fresher than James, a
cleaner taste, slightly salty from the thinnest smear of seminal fluid
which leaked out of him as he came minutes before. A hint of something
metallic to the flavour, too.

I turned on the suction, and allowed my tongue to swirl around the
head. James looked down at me in wonder, and then his head fell back onto
the grass. His eyes scrunched tightly shut, and he panted slightly. Before
long - far too soon! - he was curling up beneath me, hands on the back of
my head, stomach tensed until the muscles bulged, knees coming up to press
his thighs against the side of my head. He gasped and shuddered as he came,
and the little finger in my mouth kicked and bucked uselessly.

Beneath me on the grass my untouched boyhood spewed out another meagre
load.

---

Blowjobs became part of the routine, just as wanking had. They didn't
happen every time, but if Jack was horny enough (and he was growing more so
every day, a sure sign of impending puberty) he would shyly ask,

"Would you..."

The sentence was never finished, nor the question answered. I merely
scooted down and took him into my mouth, grateful for the opportunity to
have access to that wonderful, smooth spike of perfect boy.

---

My fourteenth birthday should have passed without note, just as my
thirteenth had. My aunt, not quite willing to give up so easily on me, at
least bought me a card and some fishing gear; after all, I was still
spending the odd Saturday with the taciturn Yevgeny - now my aunt's
fiancée and therefore soon to become my stepfather - and I'd grown
to really love angling. He himself even managed to crack a smile, and told
me with a wink and a grin that I was a man now, at least by the reckoning
of the old ways, and ought to mark such an occasion properly. To my credit,
I didn't throw the neat, ice-cold vodka straight back up again, though it
hurt like hell.

Jack's gift to me was a surprise in more ways than one. For a start, he
shouldn't have known it was my birthday, but, sneaky bugger that he was,
he'd spotted the card my aunt had bought me through the kitchen window and
had put two and two together. But the real surprise was the present itself.

We lay wanking, as we often did, on a pile of old blankets in our little
hideaway in the woods. It was an old concrete shed which was still mostly
watertight, and we'd made it our little den, since no-one else ever seemed
to get that far into the woods.

Jack hadn't yet asked me to suck him off, so I assumed it wasn't one of
those days. But then he rolled over slightly and leaned up on his elbow.

"It's your birthday today, isn't it?" he asked. His voice sounded
different, but I couldn't quite work out why.

I shrugged, not really wanting to admit it, but not that bothered about
denying it either. I'd always hated my birthday, for no reason I can
remember.

"Happy birthday!" he said with a bright smile, and confidently reached
across the gap between us, pushing my hand away from my softening dick and
replacing it with his own. I gasped and closed my eyes, head sinking back
onto the ground and back arching at the sheer ecstasy of the touch. I
thought I had reached nirvana, that heaven had come to claim me. Nothing
could have felt better than his hand on my dick.

Nothing except for what happened next. As I lay there, gasping with
pleasure, writhing from side to side, I felt a hot wetness engulf the head
of my dick. A soft, wriggling worm teased the opening of my foreskin. I
didn't need to open my eyes to know what was going on, but I couldn't stop
myself. I looked down on the most incredible sight: Jack's head hovering
over my crotch, and, below that, my willy disappearing into his mouth.

It was all too much for me. I came, and came hard, pumping and pumping into
his mouth. He took it all in, then turned away to spit it out onto the
ground. When he turned back to me he was grinning.

"Actually," he said, ignoring the mingled expressions of shock and
adoration on my face, "that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would
be. Might even do that again, if you ask nicely."

---

His mum stood on our doorstep in the darkness of a November evening,
clutching Jack's little sister to her side. She looked pale in the light
spilling out of the house, and her eyes were rimmed red; she'd been crying.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course!" I said. My fear at opening the door to find her there was
overtaken by the sense that something was very wrong.

Her manner was of someone in desperate need. I moved to the side and she
stepped past me with a whispered 'thanks', her daughter trailing behind;
neither met my eye. I followed them down the hall to the kitchen, where
Jack's mum stood hugging her own arms, as if freezing despite the warmth of
the room. I waited for her to speak, not quite sure what I should be saying
or doing. She took her time, but eventually, following a huge sigh, looked
up at me with eyes full of fear and spoke.

"Jack's dad had left us," she said bluntly. "He told us all this
afternoon. Jack ran off straight after and I haven't been able to find him
since. I know you boys have been playing together even though we didn't
want you to. Could you find him for me? Please?"

Though part of me wanted to say no, given how they'd treated me, a much
larger part wanted to agree, for two reasons: Jack's mum was distraught and
had come to me even though it must have hurt to do so, and somewhere out
there on this freezing night was the boy who had worked his way into my
heart.

"Of course. I know few places to look."

"Thanks, Zack. Take this," she said, handing me his favourite blue and
green coat. "He only had a jumper on, he'll be freezing."

I took it, grabbed my own coat and the torch from the cupboard under the
stairs, and headed for the woods.

---

It didn't take too long for me to find him. I went straight to the hut, and
he was sitting in the middle of the floor when I arrived, hugging his
knees. He looked up into the torchlight and I could see he'd been crying.

"I could hear you coming a mile off," he said. "You'd make a rubbish spy."

He tried to laugh at his own joke, but his heart wasn't in it. I went and
sat down next to him, and put his coat around him and my arm around his
shoulders. My heart broke to see him like this. I held him to me and we sat
in the dark, not saying anything for ages.

"Is this what happened to your parents?" he asked, at last. I'd never even
explained my past to him; it had never seemed appropriate.

"No, they died a few years ago."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I hardly knew them. They abandoned me in a boarding school so
they could keep on having a big party all the time."

"That's rubbish."

"Yep. But then they died and I came to live with my aunt."

"What's going to happen to me?" he asked. There was genuine fear in his
voice.

"Don't know, mate. I suppose you'll live with your mum or something. Your
dad will probably send money. Your mum's dead worried about you, you know."

"Yeah, I knew she would be."

"You should go home."

"Yeah. I know. Thanks."

We rose, and he threw his arm around me, hugging me tightly for a
moment. It was nothing more than childish affection - brotherly love - but
to me it meant the world.

---

I stood at the end of his drive as he walked up and opened the front
door. Warm, soft light spilled out into the night, casting him in
silhouette, a vast shadow which reached half the length of his lawn. His
mum rushed up to him and grabbed him into a hug, then looked past him to
where I stood, nervously. She nodded ever so slightly, as if thanking me
but unable to say it, then turned with him and went inside. Jack hadn't
even looked back.

---

Over the weeks which followed, Jack went through the mill emotionally. He
became erratic, and would shout at me for no reason at all, storming off
and refusing to speak to me for days, then returning to our normal routine
as if nothing had been said. My aunt pleaded with me to understand, to help
him where I could, but it became increasingly difficult, and although I
felt a great deal of affection for him, I was still basically a selfish
teenager. I didn't want someone who was dependent on me, I wanted a
playmate, both platonic and erotic.

I missed our wanking off sessions. I missed the feel of his dick in my
mouth when he was horny enough to let me suck him off, and the soft heat of
his own mouth on those rare occasions he was hornier still and would agree
to suck me. I missed the cute way his eyes would drift shut and his whole
body would stiffen and shudder as his orgasm overtook him. I missed the
little high pitched noises which came from the back of his throat at the
same time, like a little puppy whimpering in distress because it felt so
good.

But far more than the physical side of our friendship, I missed the
companionship he gave me. He was just about the only friend I had in the
whole world at that point, partly due to my self-imposed exile, and partly
due to my reputation. He alone amongst my peers didn't seem to mind that I
was gay.

I needed him back, and soon.

## Chapter 6

Something changed in me at the same time as Jack was suffering his own
personal crisis. In my short life there had been two boys who I had shared
myself with - in one case, wholly, and in the other case with boyish
enthusiasm.

I started to become a little more introspective, capable of a higher degree
of self-awareness, not to mention self-criticism. I was no longer
introverted as such - I had gone about as far down that road as I possibly
could, and worked my way back to a semblance of normality - but very much
more aware of myself. I started to get out of the house more often. Not
just to go fishing or school, either. I found myself joining the burgeoning
after-school computer club, at a time when the ZX Spectrum was the height
of sophistication.

How I happened to arrive there I wasn't quite sure, but it was clear that
this was a group for whom social acceptance was not the norm. These were
the geeks and the nerds - to use pejoratives - and as an outcast myself we
had at least one thing in common. I was never going to be in the 'in'
crowd, and because of that they were prepared to ignore every other rumour
they had heard about me.

It was during the dark winter evenings spent in the cramped, humid computer
room after school that I began to analyse my attraction to other boys for
the first time. Up to this point, it had just been something to which I was
enslaved. Now, though, it became an enjoyable pursuit. Which of the boys,
if any, did I fancy?

Well, Toby had a nice bum. Bit old for me though, and that in itself was a
surprising revelation - Jack wasn't a one-off, I really did have a thing
for younger, less-developed lads. I thought about it for a bit one night,
and realised that, yes, I was a pervert. It didn't actually bother me that
much; I was more interested in knowing my type.

Alastair just smelled, poor boy, and was a bit ugly if I was being honest
(and in my head, I could be). He was a year younger than me, but almost as
tall. His trousers always seemed too short, although they were well-packed
at the front. That, however, was just about all there was to recommend him
to me.

Michael at first seemed different to the others, but you could see he was a
geek underneath it all. He was well known for getting into trouble at
school, but looking back that must have been because he was so damned
intelligent, and just got bored with the rest of us dunces. He was fifteen
already, tall and thin, and wore black clothes a couple of decades before
goth was popular. He was pretty, too - not handsome, but actually pretty. I
liked his eyes, steel grey and capable of boring right into your soul, when
he wasn't looking down at the ground. And he had a girlfriend, so he was
definitely just eye candy. It didn't matter to me that he was older, and
that came as a relief - perhaps I wasn't irretrievably fucked up after
all. Maybe there was someone past puberty out there for me.

The best of all, though, I have left until the last, and for very good
reason. Thomas. Oh, God, Thomas. If I had known then what I later learned,
I might never have had the courage to join the club. If there was ever a
boy who confirmed me as a dirty old man at the tender age of fourteen, it
was Thomas. Perhaps it's obvious what I'm about to tell you, but at the
time it seemed a bit of a coincidence to me, even though I was prepared to
admit to myself a certain attraction for younger-looking, thin, blonde
boys: Thomas was the youngest of the boys in our club.

He was eleven, and young for his year. He had only joined the school in the
first year intake the previous September. He was a slight little thing,
blonde haired and brown eyed, and lumbered with thick glasses through which
he peered myopically, though that couldn't disguise his delicate, elfin
features. He seemed so thin and frail, and so pale-skinned it was as if he
might almost be a ghost. He was almost always silent for the entire club,
watching what everyone else did. Afterwards he would be picked up by his
mum, and always had a hug for her at a time in life when most of his peers
wouldn't dare to show such affection publicly.

I found myself immensely attracted to him. He became a little bit of an
obsession, but then so did most of the boys in my life, sooner or
later. But Thomas wasn't so easily cracked as some others. I couldn't find
a way in. If I was shy, he was pathologically so. I tried to engage him on
several occasions, and yet nothing worked - he wasn't impolite, but he
would blush, and clam up, and be so utterly, painfully unable to speak that
I would take pity on him and supply him with answers, to which he would
either nod or shake his head. It made him no less endearing.

This went on for some weeks, during which time he became nothing more than
a casual acquaintance. I used to watch him out of the corner of my eye, and
then take those images home to do thoroughly perverted things with in my
mind, but in the real world Thomas and I were still just two boys at a
computer club. It would take a touch of fate to break down the walls
between us.

---

It was nearing Christmas, and as was often the case in those days,
Christmas shopping was a matter of trawling around the shops for endless
hours on a Saturday, with ever-growing armfuls of goods. This was a time
before internet shopping, a time before an entire Christmas shop could be
carried out with little more than a handful of clicks.

One particular Saturday I had accompanied my aunt into town to go shopping
(I wasn't quite old enough to be completely independent), and was sitting
in Marks and Spencer on the low stools reserved for customers trying on
shoes, while my aunt wandered around the shop looking for God knows what. I
wasn't the only child abandoned there, either - in every department store
up and down the land there were gaggles of us, sitting bored, waiting for
the opportunity to maybe go to the toy shop, or at least somewhere not so
full of bras, pants, socks and those little plastic cubes with clothing
sizes on them which always came off the hangars.

Another body joined our tribe. Each time a new one sat down I would look
around, perhaps share a nod of mutual understanding, then go back to
contemplating the pattern on the carpet or some such diversion. Each time I
went shopping like this I promised that the next time I would take a book,
and each next-time I would forget. Two kids left, and another landed to my
right. I looked round, caught his eyes, and nearly fell over backwards.

In my defence, he reacted the same way. It was Thomas, and he looked as
surprised to see me there as I was to see him. I saw kids from school all
the time in town, but I had never seen Thomas before, and now here he sat
only a few inches to my right. When I had recovered my senses slightly, I
found myself nervous and jittery, and the cause of those nerves was sitting
so close to me that the weight of his body had tilted me slightly toward
him, so close that I could see a little smudged fingerprint on the right
hand lens of his glasses, so close that I could smell the washing powder
his mum used on his clothes.

"Hi," I blurted out, raising a hand in some sort of pathetic little wave,
as if it were needed.

"Um, hi," he whispered back, blushing deeply. He looked down at his feet,
which hovered several inches short of reaching the ground. My God, he was
small for his age.

"Are you as bored as I am?"

He nodded and giggled slightly, nervously. When he looked up at me the
merriment was reflected in his eyes.

"Mum said this was the last shop, though," he offered. It was about the
longest sentence I'd ever heard him utter.

"Yeah, that's what my aunt said, too," I said. "I don't believe it though."

He giggled again, as if everything I said caused the utmost merriment.

"What have you asked for, for Christmas?" I asked, desperate to keep the
conversation going.

He shrugged.

"Some Lego, but I don't think I'll get it. There's a new space station one
out, but it costs loads."

I nodded, sagely.

"I hope you get it anyway," I responded, lamely, then kicked myself for not
having anything better to say. But Thomas took it on face value, and gave
me a big grin.

"Thanks!"

And that might have been that. Perhaps in an alternative universe I
wouldn't have done what I was about to do, and my life would certainly have
been emptier if I hadn't. But sometimes you just take a punt and things
work out. His mum was walking over to us, and I knew this was the end of
our conversation - Thomas would be going home while I sat here and
continued to suffocate waiting for my aunt. Where the courage came from I
don't know, but suddenly I was blurting out,

"Do you want to come over to my house one day?"

He looked just as shocked as he had when he sat down and realised it was
me, but then the surprise morphed into happiness. A big grin spread across
his face.

"Yeah! Yes, please. That would be so cool. I never go to anyone's house."

He was like an excited little puppy, and like so much he did it just made
me want him even more. I knew my aunt would have objections, or at least
ask awkward questions about my intentions, but she could be damned. Thomas
was coming over to play at my house and there was nothing she could do
about it.

---

I had been nervous all week, and it had only got worse as the day wore
on. I was pacing around the house like a caged tiger, just waiting for him
to turn up. 'Any time after 2', I'd said, but even at barely half past one
I was wondering where the hell he was, and if perhaps I'd been stood
up. Relief flooded through me when the doorbell finally rang at 2:07pm (a
time carefully etched into my memory), and I bounded down the stairs in a
manner utterly unbecoming of a mature fourteen year old. I opened the door
to find Thomas, overnight bag in hand, standing looking adorably nervous on
the doorstep.

Oh yes. Overnight bag. Thomas was coming over not just to play, but to
stay. His parents were all too keen that he had a friend to play with, and
had hinted heavily that he might like to stay overnight. I had agreed, and
my aunt had acquiesced, and the game was afoot.

So, there he was, trudging up the stairs after me, hauling his bag with a
silly little smirk on his face. Well, so what? I was grinning too. Both of
us, giddy little boys. You'd think we were in love or something.

Oh God, the very thought of that made me weak at the knees. I could feel
myself go slightly dizzy every time I imagined what might happen when he
came to stay. Perhaps, if I'm being uncharitable to myself, that was
because all the blood which should have been in my head was being diverted
elsewhere.

He dumped his bag at the foot of my bed. I hadn't really worked out the
sleeping arrangements, but in theory Thomas would sleep on the bed as my
guest, and I would be on the floor on an ancient camp bed my aunt had
rooted out of the loft. Of course, in my darkest fantasies we shared my bed
for the night, but that was never going to happen in real life.

And then, quite suddenly, I realised that it was up to me to work out what
to do! Thomas was my guest, and it was my responsibility to entertain
him. What the hell were we going to do? Our entire friendship up to this
point had been conducted in the computer club, and though we'd grown a
little closer since I'd bumped into him in town - for instance, we'd worked
together the previous week at computer club - we were still in completely
uncharted territory. What sort of things would he want to do? All at once I
became a bundle of nerves.

If Thomas realised, he didn't show it. His eyes were darting around my
room, taking it all in.

"Your room is so cool!" he breathed, slightly in awe. I couldn't quite work
out what he was so enthused by - it was a fairly ordinary room, a little
neater and tidier than it had been earlier that day, but nothing special.

Thomas, coming out of his shell a little, started to wander around. He
peered at things as if genuinely intrigued by everything he saw. Nothing in
my room was particularly special as far as I knew, but Thomas didn't seem
to agree.

Then, quite suddenly, he stopped. He turned his head this way and that,
staring around the room, and then said,

"Can I ask you a question? You don't have to answer it if you don't want."

"Go on," I replied, absolutely intrigued by what he might want to ask.

"Does your aunt stop you having posters up?"

"What?"

"Posters. You don't have any up. Most boys have posters up. You know, cars,
of films stars or... women, sometimes."

"Oh. No, I just don't..."

"Don't you want any pictures of women on the walls?"

At the time, I didn't realise this was quite such a pointed question, but
then I was to come to find out quite a lot more about Thomas in the next
few weeks.

"Uh, well, I... no, I suppose not."

"Me neither," he said with a little giggle and a rather conspiratorial
glance my way, his eyes twinkling. Like I've already said, the question
would take on far more significance in the fullness of time.

"How come you don't have any decorations up?"

It was a quick change of direction from him, but once again uniquely
perceptive. I wasn't quite sure how to reply. It was only ten days until
Christmas, and my aunt had decorated beautifully downstairs, as she always
did, but from the look of my room you wouldn't know it.

"Um, well, I've never really done that. There are decorations downstairs,"
I offered, weakly.

"We should decorate it. We could make it look fabulous."

I remember that moment so well. I remember the exact way he said that word,
'fabulous'. Such a bloody cliche, isn't it? The young gay boy with the jazz
hands and the camp little voice. But it was the first time I'd seen that in
Thomas, and all of a sudden there was a red alert right in the middle of my
gaydar screen. Jesus wept, this boy was obvious. Why hadn't I seen it
before?

My head went light, because a world of implications opened up to
me. Thomas. Gay. Likes me. Talks to me in a way he talks to no-one
else. Entirely my type. Oh shit.

I don't really remember the order in which things happened after that. I do
recall Thomas badgering my aunt for decorations, and the bemused look on
her face as she handed them over. I remember a lot of laughing as Thomas
messed around with the decorations, and we both put them up. There was a
moment where he got warm and stripped off his jumper, and I saw the tight,
slender expanse of his abdomen when his t-shirt was pulled up; I ogled it,
growing hot in the face. I remember Thomas dropping his jumper on my bed,
and the look of confusion he gave me as I just stared at him, lost in my
unclean thoughts, and the slight smile which grew on his lips when he
realised he'd caught me looking.

I remember the sexy little dance he did with a strip of tinsel, unashamedly
showing off for me, sticking out his tight little rear as if he knew
exactly how it turned me on. And my God it turned me on like almost nothing
else I'd ever seen. Looking back, it's so clear he knew exactly who and
what he was, and for some reason he was comfortable showing that off to me,
at an age where most kids were scared to death of being identified and
labelled. Perhaps he was simply naive, being who he was fearlessly, because
he didn't realise he should've been afraid.

Either way, I was quickly become consumed by lust for him. I could feel my
self-control ebbing away. At any moment, I thought, I'm going to jump on
him, rip those skinny jeans off his legs, pull down his pants and suck him
until he squeals. He was driving me utterly to distraction, in a way I
couldn't remember feeling. My rational mind was being subsumed by a fog of
sexual desire, and I was sinking second by second into its all-consuming
depths.

And then a lifeline, a saviour. My aunt came into the room. Thomas was
reaching up high, sticking a decoration high up in one corner, and I was
staring at his bum as he reached, and at the little inch-wide strip of his
back exposed by his stretch. My aunt saw it, too, and saw me watching, and
gave me a reproachful glance, but said nothing about it. Instead, she had
news.

"Jack's downstairs at the door, Zack. Wanted to know if you wanted to
play."

I was ripped out of my happy place in an instant. Oh God, yes, I wanted to
see Jack, I really did. But not now, not when I had such a wonderful thing
going on with Thomas!

What the hell was I supposed to do? I didn't want my afternoon with Thomas
to be interrupted, but up until a couple of hours before I would've given
anything to see Jack, after all that had happened. It had been a couple of
months since we'd last hung around together, and I'd missed him terribly.
Damn, there was only one option.

"Can he come up?" I asked, and my aunt nodded and disappeared back
downstairs. I looked across at Thomas, who was visibly nervous all of a
sudden, and disappearing rapidly back into his shell.

"It's OK," I said. "Jack's cool. He's really nice."

"Are you good friends?"

There was an edge to Thomas' question, something I couldn't put my finger
on. Had it been the way he emphasised 'good'?

"Yeah, we were. We don't see each other very much anymore."

Thomas relaxed a little, but he was still nervous, sitting on his hands on
my bed, his eyes glued to the door. In fact, I was still watching him when
I heard the creak of the stairs, and Jack came into the room.

The only way to describe Thomas' face would be shocked relief. His mouth
fell open, then shut again, and then broke into a smile.

I turned to face Jack just as he came through the door, and he, too, looked
a little surprised, but also smiled, and said,

"Oh, hi, Tom."

"Hi Jack," Thomas peeped, in his youthful falsetto, raising a hand in a
little wave.

I looked from one to the other, in a classic double-take. Jack grinned at
me, and when I looked at Thomas, he was giving me a shy smile, too. It was
Jack who helped me out.

"Tom's in my Cub group," he said, laughing at my confusion. "I forgot he
went to your school."

"Oh, right. Well, you know each other, then," I said.

"Yeah, we do," Thomas said, and once again there was something unsaid
there.

For a few moments there was an awkward silence in the room, but then Jack
noticed the decorations, and then Thomas explained what we were doing, and
then Jack wanted to join in and before long I had two boys, both of whom I
lusted after, putting up Christmas decorations in my bedroom. I sat down on
my bed and watched them, and felt astounded at my luck.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together, messing around, and by the
time Jack had to go home for his tea it was Thomas who was begging him to
stay longer, and Jack telling him - not me - that it was OK, he would come
back in the morning. I just stood mutely by, and watched the whole thing,
utterly perplexed at the afternoon's unexpected turn of events.

---

"It was cool that you know Jack," Thomas said that evening as we sat on the
sofa watching a film.

"Yeah, he's cool, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Thomas breathed, rather enigmatically. "He isn't like some of the
other boys at Cubs. He likes me no matter what."

"What do you mean, 'no matter what'?"

"Oh, nothing. Don't worry about it."

I got the distinct impression that Thomas was desperate to get something
off his chest, but scared to do so. But, being a fourteen year old boy, I
had quite a capacity for ignoring things I didn't really want to get
involved in, and the truth was I just wanted to get on with having a fun
evening, not chat about whatever it was that Thomas was trying to hint to
me.

So, instead, we watched the film - I can't even remember what it was - and
in my stupid, selfish little fourteen year old way, I spent most of the
time perving on Thomas. You see, my guest was a little bit young and
innocent, and he still wore cotton pyjamas. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
cotton pyjamas, although because this was England in the late eighties and
someone in government was being an utter twit, the word 'ninja' was banned,
and so Thomas was in fact wearing Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle pyjamas.

They really were a bit young for him, but Thomas either didn't realise that
he might be subject to ridicule, or he didn't care. It hardly mattered
either way - he looked damned cute no matter what the reason was. And more
than that, because they were quite soft cotton, and quite snug fitting, I
could tell even without having seen him change that he wasn't wearing pants
underneath.

Oh God, how I drooled over that little lump in the front of his pyjamas,
and his pert rear end. I sat there mesmerised by his body, desperately
trying to engineer a plot in my mind to touch him. As young boys' dicks
usually do when relaxed in front of the TV, his would sometimes swell and
lift slightly, and that would coincide - would you believe it - with a
similar expansion in my own upper leg area. Up and down we went in harmony,
though it must be said it took my boyhood a little longer to deflate each
time.

I got to wondering what it would look like. I was a bit of a late bloomer,
so by fourteen I was still only endowed to the tune of four-and-a-half
inches (or eleven or so of your metric centimetres). It was straight as a
dye, though, and stood upright at quite an impressive angle. I was (am!)
uncut, and had a fairly long nozzle of extra foreskin hanging over the end
even when completely hard.

What would Thomas's willy be like? Short, I guessed. Almost certainly not
yet into its pubertal growth spurt, and just as unlikely to be sporting any
hair. Probably uncut, too - he was a middle-class white boy from England in
the 1980s; he was bound to be intact. I found myself salivating over the
thought of having it in my mouth, completely ignoring the reality that
nothing of any kind had yet happened between us, and as far as I was aware
there hadn't been any signs that anything would.

How would it compare to Jack's? Longer, shorter, thinner, fatter? Had they
compared at Cubs? What did boys get up to at Cubs? Oh God, what if all the
little Cubs played games with each other? Imagining it did two things - I
went lightheaded and stiff as a board simultaneously. Why had I never
joined Cubs?!

At one point, for several long, glorious, unforgettable minutes, I saw the
lump in his pyjamas rise a little, and then, in a series of throbs, keep
rising, until it was at full mast. Thomas shifted a little, bringing his
knees up, hiding the erection from my sight, while all the time continuing
to watch the film. The TV gave the only light in the room, and it was only
in the brightest parts that I could really see anything, but when the next
explosion came, I was treated to a really breathtaking sight - with his
knees drawn up to his chest, Thomas's tight little rear end was fully on
display.

God, it was amazing. It made me realise quite how much I liked tight little
bums. How hadn't I realised that before?! But more than that, oh Lord more
than that, I could see the gentle swell of his immature balls, and even the
bulge of what I would later come to discover is called the perineum, which
in has case was swollen by the hardness of his dick. It even throbbed as
his willy did!

All this was new to me. I'd never sat and studied a boy like this. Things
with Jack were different, somehow. I lusted after him, yeah, but I'd never
minutely examined his lower half like this, even when I had his pants down
and his stiffy in my mouth. I hadn't stopped to observe him, to take in his
treasures, because I was too busy getting him off. But with Thomas, I
didn't have that option, and so I was forced to sit there and watch him,
and drink in every little bit of him I could. I may not have had my hand or
mouth on his treasures, but as compensation goes, watching him like this
was quite enough for now.

For most of the evening, I would steal glances his way every so often,
thinking that I was being subtle and getting away with it. But eventually
my perving came to a very sudden halt, when Thomas looked around from the
screen just as I was ogling his package.

"What's up?" he asked, out of the blue.

"Oh, nothing. I was just staring into space, thinking."

"What about?"

"Um... it doesn't matter. Not important."

"OK," he shrugged, and I assumed that was the end of it.

But then, much later, as we lay in the dark in my room - me in my bed, and
Thomas on the floor on a blow-up mattress - and our conversation had died
down from excited chatter to a laconic drawl, Thomas blew the lid off my
pre-conceptions.

"You were looking at my willy, weren't you?"

"I... I'm sorry," I stuttered out at last.

"It's weird, you know. You aren't meant to do that," he said.

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Please don't tell anyone."

"Why would I tell anyone?"

"Well, 'cause I did something bad."

"So? Doesn't mean I'm going to go and tell on you or anything. I'm not that
bothered. G'night."

And with that, he rolled over and quickly went to sleep.

I, on the other hand, struggled somewhat to drift off. The conversation had
left me confused and uncertain. Why did he tell me what I'd done had broken
the rules, and the in the next breath tell me that he didn't mind? There
was the way he'd said it, too, as if he was repeating something he'd been
told, rather than something he really believed. I could imagine him staring
at his dad's dick or something, and being told that it wasn't appropriate,
and then repeating the admonition parrot-fashion.

And of course, as the events of the evening ran through my mind, the
inevitable happened, and my horny teenage side came out again. Oh God, I
got stiff that night. Painfully, uncontrollably stiff. A little light came
in from the hallway through the partly open door, and spilled across Thomas
where he lay. Because of the time of year, Thomas was well wrapped up under
a thick duvet, and though my mind (and heart) raced with the possibility of
unclothing him in his sleep, and checking out his little package, the
reality was that I wasn't going to get close to actually doing
that. Instead, I settled with replaying the constant battle Thomas had with
his erection throughout the film, and that was easily enough to inspire the
launching of a couple of meagre droplets of cum into a tissue.  I was still
obsessing about Thomas when sleep finally took me.

---

The morning brought regrettably few chances to see Thomas naked. He didn't
even manage to crawl out of bed with a morning stiffy, and trust me, I had
a good look. We were so late getting up that there was barely time to eat
and get dressed (behind a closed door in his case, unfortunately), before
his mum turned up at the door.

The sleepover had one last twist in store for me, however. Thomas's mum
didn't just come by to pick him up, she came into the house, and I heard
her talking to my aunt in the kitchen. Then my aunt called me through, and
walked out, leaving me with my new friend's mum, feeling rather awkward.

"I... um... look," she started, nervously. Instantly I was on guard. "First
of all, thanks for having Thomas over. He doesn't make friends all that
easily, and it was nice of you to treat him like one of your normal
friends."

I frowned slightly.

"He is one of my normal friends, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, of course. Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. It's just that I
can't help wondering..."

God, here it comes. How she knew how I felt about her son I didn't know,
but she was going to accuse me of only having him over in the hope that I
could get off with him.

"Well, I can't help thinking," she went on, "that you only did it out of
pity, you know?"

Oh. Well. That showed me what I knew about where the conversation was
going.

"Um, actually it wasn't really that. We're just friends."

"Oh, good. I'm glad it's real friendship," she said, with a weak
smile. "Look, there's just one other thing, OK? The thing about schools is
that rumours go around about certain things, about certain people. I'm sure
you understand how that can happen."

Ah. So, I was right after all, and she was just taking a roundabout route
to telling me she'd heard all about me, and that she didn't really want her
son hanging out with a gay boy. I was so used to this kind of rejection
that I didn't bother getting angry anymore. This one was more frustrating
than most, but I was resigned to my fate.

"Anyway," she continued, "there were a few silly boys in Thomas's class at
his old school who jumped on something Thomas said, and accused him of
being homosexual, and you see, the thing is, he didn't deny it. Not to
them, or to me. He doesn't really want to talk about it, and he certainly
hasn't said that he is, it's just.... well, I wouldn't want him to lose
another friend over it all, so I was wondering if perhaps you would
consider still being his friend despite it all. Please..."

I looked at her, not quite able to speak. Tears were beginning to well up
at the thought of what Thomas had been through, and the desperation in his
mother's voice hardly helped. It was all so familiar - the older boy who's
been through it, who can mentor the younger boy all about it, except this
time I was Jamie and Thomas was me. I had to clear my throat twice before I
could croak out a reply.

I lifted my shirt a little on the right hand side, where the scar was still
visible across my ribs. They had been so badly kicked in that the surgeon
had opened me up to pull the bits out of my lungs.

"That's what I got when I told someone I'm bent," I said, barely making it
to the end of the sentence before my voice gave out.

Thomas's mum's jaw dropped, and she looked at me, horrified. "Oh God," she
kept on saying, over and over. "Oh God, you poor thing."

Then she was hugging me, and I was dissolving into tears, and Aunt Jane was
rushing into the room to find out what the hell was going on.


## Chapter 7 Though nothing had really happened between Thomas and I, I
still felt guilty. Isn't it amazing how we can make ourselves feel that way
just because of the thoughts in our head? When did a thought ever hurt
anyone? Actions based on those thoughts, perhaps, but the very act of
thinking something? We berate ourselves for letting our mind think things
we imagine that it shouldn't think.

I'm no better or worse than the average person in that regard, and so I
felt like an utter shit standing there getting hugged by Thomas' mum as
tears rolled down both our cheeks. I'd been holding this in for a long
time, not talking about it even with my aunt, because... well, I don't
really know, actually. I didn't know then, and I don't know now.

But now I felt able to talk, and I wanted to. Not then, not in the kitchen
of my house while Thomas waited in the living room, surely wondering what
the hell was going on. No, another time. And she wanted it, too. To talk
about all that had happened to me. Partly because she cared, but also in a
large part because she was frightened for her son, and wanted to be
prepared for the worst of it. I could have been angry at her for presuming
so much of her son when he hadn't really said anything, but I wasn't. I
understood. I felt protective of him, too.

So we arranged to meet a few days after Christmas, and sit down to talk,
without Thomas there. It felt such a grown-up thing to do, and Thomas's mum
(Janet, she insisted I call her Janet), treated me almost as a peer when it
came to her son.

When I arrived at their house, Janet was the only one home. She showed me
into the kitchen, and we sat down at the table. She offered me a cup of
tea, and then a Coke, and then laughed at herself.

"God, look at me," she said. "I don't even know whether to think of you as
an adult or a kid."

I didn't really know how to respond, so I said nothing. The whole situation
was still more than a little weird for me. She sighed heavily before
continuing.

"Look, Zack, I know this is strange, but I really think you might be able
to help me understand a few things. Is that still OK with you?"

"Um, yeah. I suppose so. What did you want to know?"

"OK, so... this is really personal, I know, but are you actually
homosexual?"

"Um. Yes. I suppose so. Yes."

"And you told people at the school you went to, and they beat you up?"

"Yes."

"That's terrible! What did the school do?"

"Um, they expelled me."

"For getting beaten up?"

"For being gay, I think."

Janet's hand flew to her mouth, and tears sprang up in her eyes.

"Can they really do that?" she asked.

"I don't really know, but they did anyway."

"And that's why you moved here?"

"Yeah. We couldn't stay there, they wouldn't let me into any of the
schools."

"My God, that must have been terrible!"

I shrugged.

"Not being allowed back into school didn't really bother me."

Janet turned and looked out of the window, silent. Occasionally she would
wipe a tear from her cheek. Eventually, she got up the courage to go on. I
realised how scared she must have been for her own son.

"The school here, do they know?"

"Yes, they know all about it."

"And they didn't object?"

"I suppose not," I shrugged. "The headmaster is quite good about it, if
that helps."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, he put me in touch with another boy like me. He's in lower sixth
now."

"And you and this boy, are you friends?"

God, how I wished she hadn't asked that. That was the last question I
wanted to answer! But I only had myself to blame. I hadn't been smart
enough to see it coming.

"We were. More than friends. But not now."

"Oh, sorry. I... I shouldn't have asked."

We fell silent for a moment. I looked down into my drink (I'd taken the
Coke...) and watched the bubbles burst on the surface.

"I just can't believe it," she said after a minute, her tone quite
different. "All this time worrying that I don't know anything about it, and
one of Thomas' best friends turns out to be the same way as him! What are
the chances of that?!"

I didn't look up at her. I couldn't tell her the truth - the chances were
pretty bloody good, actually, because if I'm honest my rapidly evolving
gaydar had homed right in on him. We were still friends because we got on,
but we started being friends for a far less innocent motive.

I could hear the penny drop.

"Oh!"

I looked up at last, and she was staring at me intently.

"Tell me that's not the only reason you're his friend. Please."

I didn't have to lie.

"No, of course it's not! He's my mate. It's just that..."

How do you tell the mother of the boy you fancy how you feel about their
son? That was too much embarrassment to ever let me finish the sentence.

"No, no, I understand. Sorry, I should have trusted you. But you can see
why I asked, though?"

I nodded.

"Just one thing, Zack. He's more than two years younger than you."

"I know, but... I just..."

"You like him," she said, finishing the sentence I couldn't. "You... you
fancy him."

It was hard for her to say, harder yet to wait for the answer. I nodded,
and she let out a huge breath.

"I should be angry, I think. Or worried. Or something. Truth is, Zack, I
don't know what to feel anymore. I don't think you're a bad person, it's
just not what I imagined for him."

For the first time in my life, I started to understand the impact of my
sexuality on the others around me. For far too long I'd been wrapped up in
how it affected me (or rather, how other people's reaction to it had
impacted on me), and I hadn't really taken much time to consider the impact
on others. Had my aunt imagined I would find a nice girl and settle down,
and have kids she could dote over? Would she betray the same disappointment
that Thomas' mum couldn't hide?

"If he is that way, he can't help it, you know," I said, carefully. "You
don't know how many times I've wished not to be the way I am. It would be
so much easier if I didn't feel the way I do."

She nodded. "No, I get it," she said. "I'd love to take this away from him,
so he didn't have to go through the pain you have."

I hung my head. She was right, of course - why would she want anything else
for her son than him not to suffer in the way I had. These days we
understand it's wrong to want someone to be anything other than what they
are born as, but at the time it was quite a common desire. Who would want
to be gay in that kind of environment?

---

I left Thomas' house not long after. The conversation had run dry, and I
had little desire to sit there any longer. Janet was kind enough to
apologise for putting me through the mill, and for asking questions which
so clearly upset me, but that didn't stop me feeling so down. I walked home
through a snow squall, barely feeling the freezing air burning my cheeks. I
was in turmoil, wondering if I could really take the chance to hurt Thomas
by getting involved with him. Assuming, of course, that he would be even
remotely interested, and in truth he'd shown no signs that he would be. I
could only go on what his mother had said, and a few little hints of
campness from the boy, and that really didn't add up to anything near
enough to make a move.

When I got home, my aunt called me into the kitchen and sat me down with a
cup of sugary tea. She sat with me for some time, saying nothing, but
making me quite aware that she understood what I had been through that
afternoon. When I had finished and stood up to leave, she pulled me into a
hug and kissed me on the cheek.

"You know," she said, "over the last few months you've become a really nice
boy to know, Zack. I wasn't sure about you and this boy Thomas spending
time together, but I get it now. I trust you."

I looked at her, unable to work out quite what to say. The truth was, I
couldn't really promise her that my intentions with Thomas were pure, but
they were at least romantic. For the first time since I had fallen for
Jamie, my interest in another boy went beyond mere lust. I had wanted to
get into Jamie's pants, and God knows he had a fantastic personality, but
in truth there was something about him which put me off falling properly
for him. Perhaps is was the fact that I knew deep down that he would never
reciprocate any feelings I had for him.

But, although logic told me that nothing Thomas had done hinted at any
romantic interest in me, I couldn't help the feeling that it was a
possibility. Just a hint of a chance. God, it was so confusing! Too
confusing for my teenage brain and heart. I went upstairs and lay on my
bed, staring at the ceiling.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew my aunt was
shaking my shoulder. It had gone dark outside, but my curtains were still
open. Through the fog of my barely functioning brain, I heard her tell me
that I had a phone call.

I stumbled blearily out into the hall and downstairs. The phone was in the
living room, and I sat down on the big armchair next to it, and picked up
the receiver. My aunt came into the room and shooed out Yevgeny, who was
staying with us for a couple of days. He looked confused, but did as he was
told anyway.

"Hello?" I mumbled into the phone.

"Hey, Zack, it's Thomas!"

Suddenly, I was wide awake, my heart beating rapidly. Over the next few
minutes, I sat there in heaven as the boy chattered excitedly at me. He had
no idea I'd been at his house talking to his mum, of course; that all
needed to stay under wraps. But he wanted to tell me all about his
Christmas, and what he'd been up to, and then he dropped a bombshell.

"Mum said tonight is OK, by the way."

"Sorry?"

"Don't you remember?" he asked, sounding slightly disappointed. "You asked
if I could come over and stay the night again, and you said today would be
a good day, but my mum said she wouldn't decide yet. But now she says it's
OK."

I sat there with my head spinning. "Oh, yeah, of course. That would be
wicked, yeah."

He giggled at me. "You're so forgetful, you know that?" he asked.

"Yeah. I know. When are you coming over, then?"

"That's what I was ringing about, silly. Is now OK? It's snowy, but mum
says it's OK if I put my coat and boots on, and walk over?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely!" I responded, delighted at the turn of events. "I'll
come out and meet you."

"OK, I'll come the park way, yeah?"

"Yeah, alright."

I didn't really care what my aunt thought as I tore about the place finding
my coat and my boots, and then disappeared out the kitchen door with a
torch in my hand. I didn't even tell her why I was leaving!

I raced along through the snow, sliding around in the slush as it melted on
the ground. I met Thomas about half way, and he looked adorable, his hood
up, the fake fur around its rim crusted with snow. I wanted to greet him
with a hug, but I couldn't risk being so forward, especially out here in
public, regardless of the fact it was dark and we were about the only
people in sight.

To her credit, my aunt barely blinked when we came through the door. She
greeted Thomas with a smile, and then made us both a hot drink, while we
disappeared up to my room to talk and mess around, and waste away the
evening.

---

As we lay in our respective beds that evening - me in my normal bed, Thomas
in a sleeping bag on the floor - we chatted about everything and nothing,
in the way young friends often do.

It was well into the dark of the night and we'd gone quiet for a few
minutes. I was actually waiting for Thomas to drift off so I could relieve
the tension I'd felt all evening, but he was resolutely refusing to do
so. It was he who broke the silence.

"Um, Zack, if I ask you something, you have to promise not to tell anyone,
OK?"

"Sure, no problem."

"No, I mean, really promise. And you can't laugh, either."

"OK. I promise not to tell anyone what you ask me, and I promise not to
laugh. Really, I won't. You're my best friend."

I heard him gasp a little when I said that, but it was true. He didn't
comment on it, though.

"Er, do you know what 'wanking off' is?"

I turned in my bed to look across at him, and I could see his eyes gleaming
in the dark. I felt all sorts of things - amusement at his innocence,
admiration at his guts for asking, and excitement at the possibility that
there might be a way to open up a conversation with him about all the sorts
of things I wanted to discuss with him.

"Yeah. It's rude stuff, though. Sex stuff."

"That's OK," he said, his voice hoarse. "Will you tell me anyway."

"It's when you play with yourself."

"You mean, with your penis?"

"Yeah, with your penis."

"Is that all?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, if you want to do it properly, you have to go until
you orgasm."

"Orgasm?"

"Haven't they done sex-ed with you at school?"

I could see him shaking his head in the dark. By this time I was as stiff
as a board, and making a little damp spot on the front of the boxers I wore
to bed.

"Do you want me to tell you about it?"

"Yes, please!" he breathed.

And so, over the next few minutes, I told him everything I knew, including
the important bits about orgasms, and wanking off.

"You mean, you just keep rubbing it like you're polishing something?" he
asked, when we returned to the subject.

"No, not like you're polishing something. You have to grab it and rub your
skin up and down over the head."

"I don't get it!" he said, sounding slightly desperate, as if it was
information he simply couldn't do without. I knew the feeling of having
tension you can't quite work out what to do with. I was a bit younger than
Thomas when I worked out about the mechanics of a good wank, but I still
remembered that urge to do something and not knowing what or how.

"Look, let me show you," I said.

"What?!"

"I mean, on my finger, OK?"

"Oh, right," he replied, sounding thoroughly relieved.

I flicked on my bedside lamp. He was staring wide-eyed at me. I could see
him breathing heavily, and the pulse hammering in his throat. He was one
turned on little boy, and one of his hands was buried under the covers,
presumably holding his willy.

"You do this," I said, putting a thumb and two fingers on my forefinger,
sliding them up and down. "Sometimes you go faster, sometimes slower."

Understanding dawned on his face. "Ohhh, I get it!" he said. "And you just
do that until you get the special feeling?"

"Yep."

"Then why is it so important? Why bother?"

"Because the special feeling is amazing. Really amazing."

"Do you do it?"

Now, that was taking the conversation to another level. Debate raged inside
me - should I be honest with him, or would he think badly of me? I decided
that honesty was the best policy.

"Uh, yeah. Actually, all the time. Most boys do when they get older."

"Really?"

"Really. Like, a lot. If a boy older than you tells you he doesn't do it,
he's probably lying."

"Should I be doing it? Am I meant to, or something?"

"No, you don't actually have to do it!" I laughed. "No-one's keeping tabs
on you. But once you know how amazing it feels at the end, you won't stop
doing it."

"Oh, right. Thanks. I'm going to go to sleep now," he said. "G'night."

Well, that was rather abrupt, I thought, but I turned the light out and in
the darkness reached down into my boxers to feel my raging shaft; it was so
hard it hurt. I couldn't recall the last time I had been so wonderfully
turned on. And pre-cum had dribbled down the shaft into the neat little
patch of dark brown pubes at its base, soaking them so that they stuck to
my groin. It was all I could do to prevent myself from cumming right there
and then.

Then I heard something coming from Thomas' bed on the floor. At first I
thought he might be crying, and trying to hide it from me, but I was being
naive. It was something else altogether - he was panting! The horny little
git was practicing what I'd taught him, right there in his sleeping bag, as
if I wouldn't know exactly what he was doing!

I lay as still as I could, trying to keep my breathing calm so the sound of
it didn't interfere with what I was hearing from the floor. I rolled my
head his way a little, hoping that he wouldn't notice me turning towards
him. In the darkness, I could see very little, but it was clear that the
front of his sleeping bag was bouncing up and down with the steady rhythm
of a boy determinedly working towards the ultimate pleasure.

The fact that it took a while was no surprise at all. I thought back to my
early efforts, where I would pound away for ages, never quite reaching the
goal I was striving for. I remembered having to strain my penis to heighten
the sensations, and the feeling of getting higher and higher, but not quite
making it over the crest of the hill. The first time I did tip myself over
the top, the feelings were so intense that it actually hurt, and I thought
I had broken something, even though I knew that there was meant to be a pot
of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was only the next day that I realised
what had happened, and went for it again.

So, here I was, watching Thomas going for it for the first time, squinting
through the dark to see what details I could. And he was getting close, too
- he had abandoned himself to the pursuit of his climax, and he no longer
cared whether or not I heard him. He was panting, and occasionally making a
little huffing noise. His head was lolling from side to side, and the front
of the sleeping bag was in turmoil as he frantically wanked himself off.

When it actually hit him for the first time, two things happened: I shot
quite a load into my boxers, and I fell heads over heels in love with him.

Now, I'm not for a moment going to suggest that that's an ordinary sentence
in any way. I get that it isn't, I really do. It's not as though the
context makes it any less bonkers, either. But the fact was, at that moment
when he came for the first time, I saw such utter vulnerability from him
that all I wanted to do was pull him into my arms and hug him, and to
smother his face with kisses until it was all better.

You see, he looked so utterly floored by the intensity of the sensation
that it seemed he might pass out. I'd learned to control myself a little
over the years, to the point where I could cum with a gentle grunt in the
back of a quiet classroom and still get away with it (something I'd managed
on more than one occasion, because it was so exhilarating).

Thomas had no such practice to fall back on. His whole body went rigid,
supported only on his heels and shoulders. He threw his head back and
gasped loudly, and then whimpered, then held his breath for goodness knows
how long before letting it out in a whoosh through gritted teeth.

I wanted to go to him, but I didn't dare. I wanted to let him know that it
was OK, that he had done it now, that this was the start of a wonderful -
if sometimes strained - relationship between him and the art of onanism,
but how do you do that without utterly and permanently scarring the boy?
You can't, so you don't, and you just hope that he's OK.

Genuinely tired now, feeling the same sense of relief that Thomas no doubt
felt, I drifted off to sleep.

---

If, in the morning, Thomas felt the slightest unrest about what had
happened the night before, he didn't show it. On the contrary, he was his
usual bright and chipper self, and it might have been just any other
morning. Except for one little incident, which I remember very fondly
indeed.

What happened was so innocent and everyday that it only bears mentioning in
context. It must happen hundreds of times a day, up and down the country,
in households with two or more brothers. I remember my brother and I
sharing this activity as young boys, and I'm convinced it happens in other
households, too.

I needed a wee. Thomas needed a wee. At the same time. So we went
together. In the same toilet.

I know. Doesn't sound much, does it?

It certainly wasn't planned, at least on my side. It wasn't forced, or
contrived, or done with a nudge and a wink. I went to the toilet, and then
a moment later there he was, by my side, with his pyjamas hooked under his
willy and balls, letting loose a stream. He didn't say anything, he didn't
ask if it was OK, he didn't giggle, or leer at my dick (although he took a
good, long look at it without a hint of shame). He didn't act as though
this was anything at all out of the ordinary, and so for a few moments I
didn't even think that it was.

Of course it was, though. We weren't brothers, we were just friends. And
friends in a society where it's culturally unusual for friends to do what
we'd just done. It was nothing more than innocent, casual immodesty on his
part. Even my sex-crazed teenaged brain didn't for a second think that he
was trying to start anything. But he didn't need to be coming on to me for
the image of his nudity to burn itself into my retinas, and re-appear every
time I closed my eyes.

My eyes bored into his nether regions, recording every single little
detail. His dick was smaller than mine, unsurprisingly. It was cute, and
short, and (I suppose) a couple of inches long, and it had this wonderful
little nozzle of foreksin which hung over the end, from which splattered a
golden stream of wee. There were no curly pubes in sight, but he did seem
to have very short, fine, translucent blonde fuzz over the whole area. I
filed it away as something else I wanted to find out more about.

But there wasn't time to explore the darkness of my obsession with him and
his body, because quite frankly we were still kids and there were better
things to be doing. He finished weeing, so did I, and we flicked our dicks
back into our pants and went downstairs to find something to fill our
tummies in preparation for what turned out to be a whole day doing nothing
but playing in the snow.

When Thomas finally left that evening, I was worn-out. It was the
exhaustion of a boy who has spent the whole day playing, and it was a
variety of tiredness which I hadn't felt in far too long. I fell asleep on
the sofa, and woke the next morning still fully dressed, but with a blanket
thrown over me.

---

Christmas had been and gone, and it was time to return to school, and the
spring term. Even at this stage, I felt a little nervous about going back.

There was always the sense that something might have happened during the
break to unsettle my equilibrium. Something over which I had no control.

So, with trepidation I walked through the gates one freezing January
morning, and straight into Jack and Thomas, who were having an excited
conversation. I normally didn't see them around - the first and second
years used a different entrance, which was why I never saw Jack about - but
with building work going on at their end of the school, they were forced to
come our way.

"Hey, Zack," Thomas said, with a shy smile. Jack raised his hand in
greeting, too. It was interesting to see the two together - just a
coincidence, or was it because we'd all hung out at my house before
Christmas?

We exchanged a few more pleasantries, but there was an unspoken code that
the years didn't really intermingle all that much, at least not without
drawing unwanted attention, so I left them to it. I promised to call Thomas
later, which made him blush cutely. Having no real friends in my year,
though, I felt a bit bereft. My period of self imposed isolation had caused
me to be a bit of a social leper, and though there were a few people I was
on friendly-enough terms with, there wasn't anyone I would normally speak
to in the times before and between lessons.

Funny, then, that this particular morning I was suddenly seeing all sorts
of people I knew. For instance, the lanky form of Tom, Jamie's older
brother, suddenly appeared in front of me. I'd only seen him around school
a couple of times since Jamie and I fell apart, and he'd blanked me both
times. Now, he seemed to want to talk to me, and I could hardly ignore
him. He was an upper-sixth-former now, a year above Jamie in the school,
and someone who would never normally have had any reason to speak to me.

"McNaught," he greeted me, his tone neutral. Whatever he wanted, he wasn't
being over-friendly, but nor was he particularly aggressive.

"Hi, Tom."

"You said you liked cricket, yes? And you were meant to be playing last
summer."

Tom was captain of the school team the previous year, the first time a boy
his age had ever taken the position. Rumour was, he was going on to play
county cricket, and had even been scouted by the England set-up.

"Um, yeah," I replied. "But then..."

"Yeah, whatever. Not particularly interested in why, mate. Just want to
know for this year. We're starting early, using spring term to get
ready. Nets are after school on Wednesday in the sports hall, until it gets
warm enough to use the outdoor ones. You in?"

"Er, yes. OK."

"Right. Good. Only one thing: you have to apologise to my brother for the
way you dumped him, or I'll make sure you never play for the team while I'm
here."

Jesus, that came out of left field! I reeled back physically from the
sudden ultimatum.

"But, I thought you didn't want... you know, me and Jamie to... y'know. Why
do you care how it ended?"

He sighed, and looked anguished.

"You really don't get it, do you, you twat? Yes, I think it's fucking
weird. Actually, I think it's funny, too. And God knows it isn't my thing,
but Jamie is still my little brother, and you still fucked things up for
him, as far as I can tell. So yeah, apologise to him for whatever shit it
was you did to him, and we're OK."

"Um, yeah. OK."

"Good," he said, turning to leave. Then, over his shoulder, he said, "When
you see my brother, don't mention we talked, or you're dead."

He laughed, but I couldn't see the humour in it. My blood ran like ice
through my veins. I really wanted to play cricket for the school. It was a
minor obsession of mine, but due to my protracted recovery from the
beating, I hadn't played for the whole of the previous summer. My only
contact with the sport was listening to Test Match Special in my room late
at night when England were touring, and as much as I could during the day
when they were at home. Now, my desire to play hinged on my willingness and
ability to apologise for my behaviour towards Jamie.

The willingness, I realised, was there now, though it had taken me the
intervening 6 months to realise that I ought to apologise. I had taken the
time to reflect on my behaviour, and realised that Jamie had done nothing
at all wrong. But there was more to it than that - I not only had to find
Jamie, but also deliver an apology for brutally ending a relationship that
almost no-one had known was happening in the first place. I clearly
couldn't say anything in front of his friends, and nor could I risk sending
a note, in case it was found by someone in school. That had worked out
badly in the past.

As I went to my first lesson of the day, my mind was filled with the
apology which I now realised was long overdue.

---

By the end of the day, I knew what I wanted to say, but still had no idea
how I was going to get Jamie alone long enough for him to hear it. I
thought about calling him, then remembered that somehow I had never taken
his number while we were together; he had always called me.

Dejectedly, I made my way from the school gates, head down, kicking a
pebble along the pavement. I'd hung back slightly to let most of the rabble
disperse ahead of me. It kept certain people from behaving in a certain
way...

There was simply no way I was going to be able to tell Jamie how sorry I
was before Wednesday, so there was no chance I was going to get into the
team. It didn't occur to me for one second - as it probably should have -
that team selection was made by the teacher in charge, not the
captain. Perhaps if I'd been braver, I might not have heeded Tom's
threat. But as it happened, apologising to Jamie was exactly what I needed
to do anyway.

I was so lost in thought that I didn't see the boy coming the other way. He
didn't see me, either, as he stepped out of a front gate, talking to
someone over his shoulder.

We collided full on, and both tumbled to the floor. He was quickest to
react, jumping back to his feet, already apologising, offering a hand to
lift me up. It was only when I looked up to accept that I saw who it was,
and froze.

"Zack!" Jamie said, looking as surprised as I felt. He reached further,
making up for my inertia. He grabbed my hand, and with one tug from his
powerful shoulders had me back on my feet. "I'm sorry, I wasn't looking."

Behind my eyes, my brain was going nineteen to the dozen. This was my
chance, sent to me by providence, or by God, whichever you prefer to
believe in. I had to tell him now.

"I'm sorry, Jamie."

"No, it was my fault, really."

"No, I mean, I'm sorry. For everything."

He realised what I meant, and it looked as though he shrank for a
moment. Then he squared his shoulders, and looked at me.

"I have to go back to school for something. That's why I was hurrying. But
I could walk slowly. Want to walk with me?"

"Yeah, thanks," I responded. Shouldering my school bag, I turned and headed
back the way I had come, and hoped I could remember to say everything I
needed to.

"How are you?" he asked, before I could begin my apology.

"Er, OK, I suppose. You?"

"Um, yeah, fine. Thanks. Have a good Christmas?"

"Yep. You?"

"Yeah."

We walked on a little way in silence, both lost for words. How do you start
talking again when the last time you spoke was at full volume with the
menace turned up to 11?

Eventually, it occurred to me that I already had something to say, and in
fact I'd been preparing it all day long.

"Jamie?"

"Yes?"

"I... um, I'm sorry. I mean, about everything. About the way I was. About
the way I broke up with you, the way I treated you. It wasn't your fault."

"Well, I did wonder what I'd done wrong, for a long time. I don't blame
you, though, if that's what you're worried about."

"Why not blame me?"

"Because I think I understand it. I think it was because we went too far,
too soon, and I wasn't the person you hoped you would lose your virginity
to."

"You're really clever, you know."

"Was I right, then?"

"Pretty much. I just realised in the morning that we had actually done
it. There was no going back from it, and that made me freak out. I mean, I
really liked you. I still do. I just wasn't in love with you."

"Wow. That hurts. I mean, I kind of guessed it, but it still hurts to
hear."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. At least you're honest. So, you seeing anyone?"

"Ha! No. I mean, there are people I like, but none of them are gay."

"Oh, did you ask them?" he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

"No! Of course not."

"Then they might be, right?"

"Whatever. What about you?"

"Well, yeah, as it happens. Only for about two weeks now, though."

I was totally intrigued. Who had Jamie managed to find?

"Go on, tell me about him, then," I urged.

"It's not a him," he confessed, looking away across the school fields,
which we were just passing on the way back to the gate.

"You have a girlfriend?" I couldn't keep the incredulity out of my mind.

He looked back at me, with a guilty grin on his face.

"It's not like I planned it, alright? It just happened. It's... it's
nice. Different."

"But girl bits. I mean..."

Jamie laughed. "They're not that bad. And besides, I haven't seen any of
her `bits' yet. Like I said, it's only been two weeks."

"You didn't take that long with me!" I quipped.

Jamie laughed, but then his face took on a more serious expression. "Maybe
I should have," he said, softly. "Look, Zack, no hard feelings, OK? It
didn't work out, but maybe that's just how it was meant to be. I don't hate
you, or anything."

We were at the school gates now, and Jamie needed to go in for whatever it
was he'd forgotten. It seemed like a good place to part.

"Friends?" I asked, offering my hand.

"Friends," he responded, shaking it.

I turned to walk away, but stopped when he called out to me, "By the way,
you can tell my brother thanks for looking out for me."

He laughed, and then turned out of sight around the corner. I stood there
for several minutes, not knowing quite what to think. When I finally turned
for home, there was a great deal on my mind.

##Chapter 8 Wednesday came around more quickly than I was really prepared
for. I was rusty to say the least, and a quick warm-up in the park with
Jack had done nothing to take the edge of it. It was nice, though, to know
that there was one sport where I definitely had the edge over him.

Since he had turned up at my house over Christmas, we'd started seeing a
little more of each other once more. I think I realised we could never go
back to the way we were - our friendship was a little too intense. Jack no
longer had any desire to mess around with me sexually, either - he made it
quite clear that he only wanted to do that with girls from then on, and he
was working on getting a girlfriend.

I'd miss the sex, of course, but it was actually a bit of a relief to know
it wasn't on the table. It removed a bit of the tension from the
relationship, a stress which I wasn't aware was even there.

So, my friendship with Jack was seemingly back on track after the emotional
train-wreck caused by his father's departure. Even at the time I didn't
think he was 'better', but he was at least capable of being a friend
again. And I'd apologised to James, and while we wren't exactly best
buddies, we were at least on speaking terms.

Next up on the great rehabilitation was getting onto the cricket team and
making up for lost time.

---

I should have been better prepared, but nothing could be done about
that. Indoor nets had been set up in the sports hall; for those unfamiliar
with cricket, nets are practise spaces for bowlers and batsmen, with mesh
hung over a rigid frame. It's much the same as a baseball batting cage.

When I arrived, I was immediately greeted by James' brother, Tom. At my
age, everyone was a bit of an all-rounder, so he didn't bother asking if I
bowled or batted, he just sent me straight into bat against one of the
team's specialist fast-bowlers. I watched him send a couple down before I
went to the crease, just so I could get an idea how fast he really
was. Which was extremely rapid, as it turned out.

I fended the first couple away, and then ducked a bouncer, for which the
bowler was unrepentant. I swore at him under my breath, but his attitude
just made me more determined to show him what I could do. I flashed at the
fourth and caught a thick edge which would probably have carried to second
slip, and then, finding my rhythm quicker than I thought possible, I caught
the fifth ball with a straight-batted drive, directly back at the
bowler. He threw himself out of the way of the ball, rather than even
thinking about trying to catch it, and ended up tangled in the net, much to
the amusement of all those around him.

He was removed from duty straight away, and a more sensible, reasonable lad
- a fourth year, called Mark - came in to throw a few down at me. Because
he wasn't trying to knock my block off, I was able to get a fair amount of
useful practise; I'd always been proud of my cover drive, and I had a
couple of chances to show it off. I shouldn't have paid any attention to
them, but I did notice the coach and Tom watching me, and talking quietly
to each other.

The session was over far too soon, of course. I packed up and was leaving,
when I heard my name being called. Mr Howell, the teacher who doubled as
the team coach, wanted a word.

"Where were you last year, McNaught?" he asked, as I walked back toward
him.

"I'd only just joined the school, sir. I didn't think it was right."

Well, it was sort of true. Mostly, I was struggling to breath from all the
scars on my lungs from the ribs they'd smashed in.

"You would've have been fine, you know. But no bother, you're here now. You
wear a helmet, I see. Not a lot of boys your age do that. You don't think
you're special, do you?"

(I ought to explain, back in those days batting helmets at school level
were pretty rare. Now, they're mandatory)

"No, sir. I had a fractured skull, and the doctor says I can't play without
it."

He nodded, apparently happy that I didn't see myself as some sort of
special snowflake. Or a sissy, I suppose.

"Fair enough. Well, I'll tell you this, you're going to be giving a few of
those lads in the first team a run for their money in the next few
years. You're a third year, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

He smiled, and said almost to himself,

"Hmm. Never had younger than a fifth former opening the batting, and that
was Keates. Went on to open for Somerset, did Keates."

He dismissed me, and I went on my way, feeling like I was on cloud nine. Mr
Howell was notorious hard to please, but clearly I had done something
right.

---

It only took getting home to be brought back down to Earth with a
bump. Janet, Thomas' mum was there, talking to my aunt. When I arrived, my
aunt stood, and very pointedly left us alone. Janet made small talk for a
few moments, but then got to the point of her visit.

"Zack, I need to know if something happened between you and Thomas, the
last time he stayed the night."

"Um, sorry? What do you mean, 'happened'?"

"I mean, did you do anything sexual to him?"

I looked at her, astonished. It was a remarkably forthright line of
questioning. I wanted to tell her to fuck off and mind her own business,
but my aunt had done a better job raising me than that.

"Um, no. I mean, not exactly. He was asking me about some stuff, and I told
him about it."

"What about?"

"Um, like everything. But mostly he wanted to know how to... how to- "

I really didn't know what word to use, but helpfully Janet filled in.

"Masturbate?"

I nodded.

"How did you show him?" she asked, growing a little agitated.

"On my finger, like this."

Across from me, a little of the fire went out of her eyes.

"Not on his, you know?"

"His penis?" It was my turn to fill in the missing words. "No. I didn't
touch him."

I desperately wanted to know what could possibly have triggered all this,
but I couldn't quite work out how to ask the question.

"Oh, thank God," she breathed. "Sorry, Zack. I know this is weird, but
since he stayed here I've caught him, you know, doing it. Twice. I've never
known him to do it before, and since his dad left we've been very close. He
and I share everything, but he never talked to me about this."

Of course he fucking didn't, I didn't say.

"Maybe he didn't want to talk to his mum about something like this," I
suggested. I was completely winging it; at fourteen years old, the last
thing I was, was a wise relationship counsellor.

"But who else would he talk to?"

"Me?"

"But you... but..."

She stopped for a minute, and ran her hand through her hair. She looked
desperately at me.

"That's why he asked you, isn't it? He trusts you."

"I think so."

"Zack, did you tell him it was OK not to be normal? That it was OK to be,
you know... homosexual?"

"He never asked anything about that. I didn't say anything to him."

"He might need to hear it. If he asks, please be kind."

"Why wouldn't I be kind?"

She opened her mouth to answer, then paused.

"That's a very good point," she admitted at last. "You've never given me
any reason to doubt you."

She got up to leave, gathering her coat and bag.

"I'll see myself out. Please thank your aunt for letting me talk to
you. You're a lot more mature than most boys your age, Zack. And I
think... yes. Yes, it's OK. If you and Thomas end up being... well, what
would you call it?"

"Boyfriends?" I ventured.

"Yes, I suppose. If you and Thomas end up being boyfriends, I won't stand
in your way."

I looked at her for a moment. I wasn't quite sure what to say. She nodded,
and left, and I sat down heavily in my chair. What an utterly bizarre
woman.

---

On the way back from school on the Tuesday of the following week, I heard
my name being called, in a very familiar voice. I spun around, but couldn't
see anyone. The call came again.

"Zack, up here!"

I looked up, and there, with his head sticking out of an upstairs window,
was James.

"Wait there!" he shouted, and I did as instructed.

"Hey," he said, casually, when he'd run down the stairs and come out to the
street. I realised it was the same house he'd been leaving when I last
bumped into him. A girl looked out of the window at us, and I assumed this
was his girlfriend. I waved, and she nervously raised a hand in reply.

"Is that...?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. That's Christine. Or Chris, for short."

"Boy's name," I teased, and James blushed.

"Trust me, she's not a boy," he said, enigmatically. "Look, I just wanted
to tell you how impressed my brother was by what you did at cricket the
other day. He said you nearly took Mike Morley's head off."

"Was that the wanker who tried to kill me?"

"Yeah. He's a total tosser. Everyone's meant to be scared of facing him,
but by the sounds of it you weren't."

I shrugged, though I was glowing inside at the praise.

"It's probably because I wear a helmet. Fast bowlers aren't so scary when
you have one on."

"Well, whatever it was you impressed Tom. He wouldn't stop talking about
you all evening."

"Bet that was annoying."

James laughed, and then turned serious. "Actually, I was really proud."

I blushed heavily. "Thanks. I, um... I have to get home."

"Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry. Oh, just one thing before you go. The fair is
coming to town in a couple of weeks. Normally a group of us go down
together. Did you want to come? You could bring a date, no-one would mind."

I stared at him, open-mouthed. Take a date to the fair? Was he mad?

"I... OK, thanks. I'll see if I'm free."

He gave a little chuckle; he knew exactly how empty my social life
was. "Let me know either way, OK? Find me at school or something."

"Yeah, OK," I replied, then turned away. "See you later," I called over my
shoulder.

---

All the way home, I couldn't stop thinking about what he had said. Take a
date to the fair? Was he mad? I mean, even if I wanted to, who would I ask?
Well, actually, that one wasn't so difficult, was it? I mean, Thomas was
the only boy I would think about asking, but it was probably way too soon.

I had to stop myself thinking about it! I was beginning to convince myself
that maybe it was possible, and I had to squash any thoughts like that
before they took hold.

There was no chance, and that was that.

---

Thomas sat, bleary-eyed across the breakfast table from me. We'd stayed up
far too late playing on the NES he'd brought with him, and we were both
shattered. My aunt was at Yevgeny's - she'd left first thing, they had a
wedding to attend - and that left me and Thomas alone in the house. At that
moment, we were hunched over bowls of cereal, trying to see if we could
summon the energy to do anything.

Quite out of nowhere, I found myself saying,

"The fair's coming to town in a couple of weeks."

"I know. I don't usually get to go, though," he replied.

"Oh. Right. Maybe you could if you were going with me?"

He smiled ruefully.

"If you can convince my mum..."

"You'll go with me?"

He looked up at me sharply. "With you?" he asked, heavily emphasising
'with'. There was something in his look that I couldn't decode.

"Oh, I mean, there will be other people there, too."

"Well, obviously, it's a fair."

"No, I mean-"

He cut me off with a grin. "I know what you mean, dummy. I was just
teasing. Going 'with' you would be nice. Really nice."

"So all I have to do is convince your mum, and it's a date?"

Even as the words came out of my mouth, I wished I could take them
back. Wrong choice of phrasing, Zack! But perhaps it wasn't. Thomas was
looking at me with the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

"Please don't tease me," he said.

I carefully put my spoon down, and reached across the table, taking his
hand in mine.

"I wasn't," I said, looking straight into his eyes.

He squeezed my hand, and shuddered, and a tear rolled down his face. He
reached up with the hand I wasn't holding and wiped the tears away from his
eyes.

"Please convince my mum," he whispered, smiling weakly.

---

I wanted to be able to claim that I had done wonders with Thomas' mum,
astounding her with all my logical reasons why taking Thomas to the fair
would be fine, but she rather took the wind out of my sails by agreeing
straight away.

"Will it be... will there be lots of you?" she asked, with a tremor in her
voice.

"A few. I'm going with the McKinley brothers, and some of their
friends. They're nice, and they'll look after us."

"Oh, I'm sure they will. I know their mother, and the boys have always been
very polite."

I wondered then how she didn't join the dots between what I'd told her
about having previously had a boyfriend at school, and what she must know
about James, if she knew his mum. But either she hadn't, or she didn't want
to mention it.

"Just one thing, though," she continued. "Will you and Thomas be... will
you be on a date?"

Suddenly I lost all confidence. My throat closed up, and I was unable to
speak. I only nodded in reply.

Thomas' mum put her hand to her mouth. "Does he... what did he... oh, God,
I don't know what to ask. Does he realise it? I mean, really understand
it?"

I thought back to the heart-stoppingly wonderful moment Thomas had gone up
on tiptoe to kiss me gently on the lips as he had left my house the day
before. It had surprised me then, and it still did now. I'm not sure Thomas
had exactly planned it, either, judging by his shocked expression once it
was over.

"Yeah," I shuddered. "I think he gets it."

---

Everything was suddenly moving so fast! The kiss had been the culmination
of a long morning of dancing around the topic of whether or not we were
boyfriends, without ever actually discussing it. After we'd agreed to go to
the fair 'with' each other, as Thomas so charmingly put it, there seemed to
be a step change in the way we interacted. There were touches all the time
- hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, the little brush of his fingers on my
arm. I wanted more than I judged him ready for, but he did show a rather
modest lump in his pyjama bottoms at various points during the morning.

When he had kissed me and then calmly walked out to his mother's waiting
car, I closed the door and fell against it, sliding down to the ground. I
sat there, hugging my legs for quite some time, and wondered how the hell
this had happened.

---

A couple of days later, I was talking to Thomas in the school playground -
happily ignoring the unwritten rules - when Jack came over.

"Are either of you going to the fair?" he asked, without preamble.

Thomas looked at me, and I looked at Thomas, and we both giggled. "Yeah,
we're going," I answered.

"You could've asked me!" Jack said.

"We only just decided," Thomas lied smoothly. He was always keen that
others weren't hurt. "Are you coming then?"

"Yeah, of course! It's going to be brilliant. Are you two taking dates? I
think I might ask Alison. Who are you going to ask?"

Bless him, Jack was so naive. He had absolutely no idea about Thomas and I.

"Uh, I don't know. Maybe I'll just go alone," I said. "What about you,
Thomas?"

"Well, there was this one person, but I don't think they're cool enough for
me, y'know?"

I laughed, and Jack gave Thomas a rather strange look. "Well, OK then," he
said.

With that, Jack joined our party.

---

As the days passed, and the night of the fair drew closer, I grew
increasingly unsure of myself. It had seemed such a simple decision to go
with Thomas, but what if our exuberance had got the better of us? What if
it was actually a terrible idea?

I swung between confidence - we were just going to the fair, no-one had to
know it was a date, right? - and trepidation. Sometimes I could rationalise
it away, but other times I couldn't help imagine the very worst
happening. What if we went to the fair, and people saw us together and I
received the same punishment I had the last time I came out? Worse still,
what if it happened to beautiful, innocent Thomas?

Woven through all these emotions was the single thread which kept me going
- the excitement of being Thomas' boyfriend. Well, nearly. We were in a
strange limbo, actually. After the first kiss, we hadn't seen each other
for a few days, though we'd spoken on the phone each night. Then he had
come over after school, and we had spent a happy few hours together, but
without anything particularly interesting happening. Other than the kiss he
gave me as he left - a rather special caress, where he had tenderly held
the back of my head as he kissed me very lightly - there had been nothing
to signal that our relationship was anything other than purely platonic.

Obviously, Thomas was inexperienced. But he was also delightfully naive and
innocent. It was as if he believed only in romantic love, and had no use
for sexual attraction. Perhaps it was something to do with his age, but
then again maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe it was his personality; he
had shown himself prone to flights of fancy, and seemed to have a different
view of the world than I had. A rosier tint, a less libido-driven attitude
to falling in love.

Whatever the cause, my start with Thomas could hardly have been more
different to the first throes of my fling with James.

---

The night before the big day, I was so worked up that I almost decided that
I couldn't go. But then Thomas called me to tell me how excited he was, and
to whisper that it was his first date, as if I didn't know, and I felt
invincible again. Yes, it would be fine! No-one but us would know it was a
date, and no-one would bother us. It was bound to be fine.

We were going on the Friday after school, and all day the talk was of who
was going to the fair, with whom, and when. I tried to stay out of it,
although I was asked by Tanya in my class if I was going, and I had to
admit that yes, I was, and yes, I had a date. Whether or not she had any
idea that I was taking a boy was a complete unknown to me.

The plan was to meet at 7 o'clock by the gates to the park where the fair
had set up. It wasn't necessarily the perfect meeting place, given how many
people would be going to the fair, and so to avoid any issues I told Thomas
that Jack and I would pick him up at 6:45 from his house, and we would walk
around together. There we would meet James, his girlfriend, Christine (I
still couldn't get my head around that one!), and his big brother, Tom, who
ironically didn't have a girlfriend to take because she dumped him a
fortnight before the night. Our little posse should be big enough to
prevent any issues, but I was still nervous of what might happen.

Why I was so concerned is a mystery. We were a bunch of friends - a strange
bunch, admittedly - going to the fair for the night. No-one had to suspect
that any of us were in an unconventional relationship, and yet I fretted
over it like mad. I mean, I was walking around to pick up Thomas with Jack,
and I didn't worry that anyone would think that he and I were dating. So,
why should I imagine people would jump to conclusions about Thomas and I?
Isn't it funny how irrational our fears can become?

Jack was so excited that he wouldn't stop talking as we walked around to
Thomas' house, which turned out to be a huge relief, because it took my
mind off what was to come. Thomas was waiting by the window for us, and
came running out as soon as he saw us approach the house; laid back he was
not! But I loved the fact that he showed his enthusiasm instead of trying
to act cool when he wasn't. While he and Jack chattered excitedly, I walked
up the garden path to the front door, where his mother was waiting. She
looked nervous, and I could understand why. With only her and Thomas in the
house, she felt over-protective of him. My aunt had been guilty of the same
behaviour in the past.

"Hi, Zack," she said, with a weak smile.

"Hi."

"You'll be sensible, won't you?"

I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but I nodded nonetheless. Janet
ran her hand through her hair, as she had before; it was a nervous tick.

"Please don't let anything happen to him, Zack. He's so innocent. He
doesn't know what people are like. He could get hurt so easily."

I looked out to where Thomas and Jack were waiting. They were still
chatting to each other, and paying little attention to us. A lump formed in
my throat. I turned back to Janet.

"I'll look after him. I promise."

She nodded, and thanked me, and sent us on our way.

We were just about on time to meet the others. Jack and Thomas spoke to
each other - but not to me - all the way there. I hardly minded; it was
just nice to spend time in their company, especially Thomas'. Our meeting
at the park gates with the others was a little awkward - I realised I was
the common thread, and had to make introductions, as there was no reason
for James, his brother or his girlfriend to know Jack or Thomas.

As we walked into the park, and the two youngest boys walked excitedly
ahead of us, James indicated that he wanted to talk to me.

"How do you know those two?" he asked. There was something in the tone of
his voice that I couldn't interpret.

"Jack's my neighbour. We used to hang around a lot more than we do
now. Thomas is from computer club at school. We just kind of... hit it off,
I suppose."

"No wonder, he's as bent as a nine bob note!"

"Shut up!" I laughed. "How can you say that?"

"Oh, come on, Zack. I know what I'm talking about. So, are you and he...?"

I rolled my eyes at him, but truth was, I was rather enjoying having the
conversation.

"Yes. We are. He's my date tonight."

"Jeeesus," James breathed. "He's what, like eleven?"

"Twelve. Just."

"And he knows he's gay?"

"I don't think he knows anything much. But we have kissed."

"Oh yeah? Bet you were snogging away like mad!"

"No, it's not like that. It wasn't that kid of kiss. It was gentle
and... and..."

"Romantic?"

I sighed, and nodded my head, and James burst out laughing.

"Oh my God, Zack! You're in love!"

"Shut up, McKinley, or I'll punch you!"

James laughed, then grabbed me into a one-armed hug.

"You know, no matter what happened between us before, I'm happy for you."

---

A British fairground is a somewhat magical place, but only in the dark. In
the daytime, you can see the grime, and the cracked and peeling paint. You
can see how tired the place looks. But at night, with the lights on, and
the joyous chatter and terrified screaming of the patrons, it takes on a
truly different cast.

It was so dark between the pools of light from the attractions that at
times I was able to take Thomas' hand in mine, and I felt his slender
little fingers twine in between mine possessively. It only ever lasted for
a few moments, and then for some reason or other (and it was mostly nerves,
truth be told) we would separate. But while our palms were pressed
together, I felt for the first time in my life that there might be hope for
me. I might not be irretrievably broken and incapable of being loved.

In the darkness we touched hands, and in the light we laughed, and joked,
and it seemed as though the rest of the world might just leave us alone for
the night. We might be free from doubt and judgement. We were made so
confident by our experience that for a few moments, Thomas and I decided to
leave the safety of the rest of the group, and to wander off alone, just so
that it felt as though we really were on a date. It was a decision which
might well have turned out a lot less well than it did.

I saw him coming towards me before he spotted me. Chris Butler. I wanted to
avoid him if at all possible, because I knew if he saw me and Thomas, and
saw that we were alone, he would immediately jump to conclusions, and he
would make it his mission not only to ruin my night, but my whole life.

Chris knew I was gay, and he didn't like it one bit. I avoided him as much
as possible at school, because the sniping was constant. It was bullying,
of course, but in those days nothing would be done about it. Especially
since Chris was on the school football team; successful sports team members
were never punished at that school, for fear they would leave. The school
seemed to be of the opinion that we were nothing without the success of our
various teams.

I wished I could have avoided him, but suddenly we were hemmed in by a
crowd, and before I knew it, we were face to face.

"Oh, hello, look! It's the poof! This your boyfriend, poof?" he spat. A few
people in the crowd turned to see what was going on, but then turned away
again. Chris was flanked by a couple of his friends; one of them I didn't
recognise, as he didn't go to the school, and the other was a fifth-former
called Ahmed, who was on the cricket team. And he also had a date with him;
her name was Sarah, and I was surprised she went anywhere near him, as she
usually seemed quite intelligent.

I began to fear that Chris might do something stupid despite the crowds
around us. It wouldn't be the first time I was physically punished for
being gay, and last time I'd been blamed for the whole thing, so I didn't
hold out much hope of the crowd brining swift justice if Chris did try
anything.

I didn't answer his question, which seemed to annoy him even more.

"What's the matter, poof? Can't talk 'cause of all the dick you've had down
your throat?"

For Chris, that was the height of sophistication. The friend I didn't
recognise laughed, but it was a brittle, nervous laughter. Ahmed and Sarah
did not.

I could see Chris getting agitated. My silence wasn't what he was
expecting, so he didn't know what to do next. He was just about to say
something more, when I felt Thomas brush past me. I thought he was going to
say something to Chris, but instead he addressed Sarah. He looked from me
to Chris and back again, and then said,

"Rather mine than yours, darling."

Then, as Chris gawped and Sarah tried to hide a smirk behind her hand,
Thomas turned to me and ostentatiously took my hand.

"Come on," he said, "you said you wanted to go on the ferris wheel."

I hesitated a moment, not quite ready to turn my back on Chris, not knowing
what he would do. Ahmed was shaking his head, and said,

"You're a fucking dickhead, Chris."

Then he turned to me and said, "See you at cricket on Wednesday, Zack."

With that he walked off, leaving Chris even more fuming than he already
was.

By now, Thomas was quite insistently tugging my hand, so I relented and
went with him. We were only a few metres away, when Sarah called out to me,
and came running up.

"Um, would it be OK if I hung out with you guys for a bit?" she asked. "I
don't really want to be with Chris anymore."

I turned to Thomas, who smiled and nodded.

"Sure," I replied. Just then, the other members of the party arrived, and I
informed them that we had gained another member.

As we were walking away, James fell into step next to me.

"You OK, mate?" he asked. "You look white as a sheet."

"Yeah, I'm fine. Close shave, is all. I'll tell you about it later."

---

"So, the ferris wheel..." Thomas said, with a grin.

"You really want to go up?" I asked.

"Yep!"

"You know what people usually do on there, don't you?"

Thomas looked up at me, his eyes bright in the thousand lights of the fair.

"Yeah," he breathed, then grinned even wider. "Come on!"

---

The town almost managed to look beautiful from the air. The screaming
carried on down below, but we somehow seemed to be insulated from it up
here. Thomas and I sat hand-in-hand as the gondola shuddered its way into
the sky. If we turned around we might have been able to see James and
Christina in the one behind, but there was an unwritten rule that you never
looked behind on the wheel.

We started off pointing out landmarks as we were lifted upwards, but as we
neared the apex our conversation died away. Thomas leaned into me, and put
his head on my shoulder, hugging my arm. Then, he looked up at me.

I leaned forward.

His eyes closed. So did mine.

His cotton-candy breath filled my nostrils.

My lips touched his.

We kissed.

And this time, at last, it was a proper, proper kiss.



THE END


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