These events occurred somewhere in a place I've been. A place where time passes dreamily. A place where our heart's desires are fulfilled. Where every yearning heart is held and kept and lifted up in loving embrace. Please play safe and be kind to yourselves and to one-another.

Our community always felt like a small town. In truth, it is a semi-rural enclave on the outskirts of a large northern city. But it is one of those places that people don't seem to move away from. Or they do, but only for a while, and then they're back again. Our parents and grandparents came here and put down roots -- and boy, what roots! Most of the people in this story still live in the same houses, these grand old cozy big homes that once rang out with the shouts of their parents' voices as children. Grandma's cooking smells are still there, in the walls somewhere, if your nose is keen enough.

Anyway, a few years have passed -- not a lot -- and some of us have moved away. But the place just keeps drawing us back. Some to raise a family, some to heal. And I still see these people in the course of a day and often we have a moment to stop, perhaps to touch, and to look each other in the face and smile, remembering how we were.

Before we could manage to crawl off to our cabin for a cuddle and a snooze, Brand let me slide down into the sail locker and onto him, full length. It was pretty hot down there, and so was Brand.

I didn't fool around: I pushed the leg of his shorts up and pulled aside the net liner. Began licking his bouncy sack in what I thought was a comically businesslike fashion. Maybe he got the joke, but he definitely scrunched and got to moaning, which incited me. Which made me want him. Want to engulf him, physically: I swallowed his nuts, getting my mouth around his whole tight scrotum, wanting them more, pressing, them somehow growing, filling my mouth more. Me sucking, pressing. His sack expanding to totally fill my mouth. Brand moaning, his deepest tones coming directly to my ears through the intimate contact of his body and my face. His sack trying to tighten again, speaking to some secret place that made me pursue them, suck myself to him, press my lips hard to his body, with the holy sack as deep inside me as I could manage, sucking, sucking, as his moans subsided and I let them escape, tenderly, blowing on them to see them shrink back up, freeing me to climb to the twin globes of his darling meat. Freeing me to draw a slow breath, absorbing the power of his musk. Inciting me to engulf the chubbiness of his desire and impale my throat in a mindless phallus worship and a consuming joy at giving him this satisfaction of his desire. Feeling the growing fullness, the enthusiastic hardening, just before the deep shuddering tremble and the soulful cry of unselfconscious release. My reward. The living proof of his release. My reward: the tenderness of his gaze and touch, of his pulling me to him to touch our cheeks. Of the tender words of love and the promise of forever that he murmured by my ear.

It was remarkably hard to stand up and crawl back out onto the foredeck: all either one of us wanted to do was go to sleep. But it was hot down there and smelled like some sailboat stuff. Varnish, maybe. I recovered first and dragged Brand up to be cool. The sun had moved and the foredeck was in shadow, now. With the stiffening breeze, it soon got a little too cool, and we were in the process of climbing back up to re-board Barbra Ann, to head to our bunk for a little snooze when Dad and Jake and the dinghy arrived, amid a whole bunch of loud talking and hustle and bustle and singing and Dad stuck his head around the corner still talking too loudly to Jake about water skiing or something, motioning us both to silence, with a sort of bulgey-eyed look of urgency.

Jake kept on jabbering about anything and everything, as Dad held up one finger in a "Mark my words" gesture. He pointed to a wall socket, then his ear, then his ass, then down, then held one hand cupped, pointed to his ear and brought the pointing hand up underneath the cupped hand. 'Electric ear on the bottom. Ear up under the bottom.'

Oh, FUCK! Is this the end of our vacation?

Brand looked shocked and then like "Cool!" His eyebrows shot up and he pointed "ear," "bottom," and tried to do this fake folded-arms Cossack dance thing. Then he saw the vodka bottle in the groceries we had just brought on board. He grabbed it and made his questioning eyebrow thing that I can't do.

Dad shrugged and said aloud, "You guys are coming to Jake's gig aren't you?" nodding vigorously.

"Yeah... " "Yeah, sure," " ...of course, " we said at the same time.

"Well, we'll have to get going real soon," he said, nodding his head exaggeratedly, "Or Jake'll be late."

"Well, why don't you two get washed up?" he continued, rolling his eyes to heaven, praying and making dual claw hands, "and make sure you... " (mouthing Shut UP! ) "use this shampoo I bought you," pretending to tape my mouth and then Brand's shut.

One more time, he held up -- and shook -- the warning finger. Jeez! Got it, Dad!

Jake commented that he had a gig tonight and had to work on "the Flamenco piece" some more, so he wouldn't embarrass everybody, "including Brand and Derek." When we looked at him, he shook his head and held a finger to his lips to stay silent.
Jake got this metal thingie out of his guitar case and put it on the floor and started tapping away and pounding the guitar body and playing up a storm, Spanish style. (He kinda sucked, actually.) Dad shooed us off to the showers, took off his shoes, and headed toward the off limits area, in the left hull, while Jake continued to pound.

We were in the dinghy. Jake had gone on ahead. Brand was all washed and combed and dressed up and cute. He looked about 12 and about 16 at the same time.

"Sorry guys," Dad started, and my heart sank. Fuck! There goes our tropical vacation.

" ... to stay at a hotel tonight," he was finishing.

I snapped out of it: "Who? Hunh?"

" I said, We'll all have to stay at a hotel tonight, " he repeated, "By tomorrow, we'll be back to normal."

"Cool! Which one?"

"Which normal? Well, I reckon the usual normal. You know, kind of the ordinary sort of... "

"Da-aad! Which... place?" I interrupted, growl-talking quietly through clenched teeth

"We'll decide at the last minute. Here we go! Here, Brand, take that rope and tie us to that cleat, if you don't mind. Derek, get the stern, wouldja? Careful and don't fall in."

I guess maybe I had a couple too many rum punches. The bartender didn't give a fuck, and when he saw that I seemed to know how to manage a few drinks, he just ignored me and served rounds to the table. I remember doing this hokey Tango thing with some lady and people clapping and how cute Brand was, nursing his third rum coke for two hours and smiling at me a lot. I'm sure I smiled back. In fact, I probably leered, knowing me.

Jake's gig was great: he mostly plays alto sax, with a tiny bit of 6-string. The shitty Flamenco was not in evidence. Guess it was just an excuse to make a shitload of banging noise. The rest of the ensemble was a weird mix of steel drum and amplified bongo and guitar, mostly electric. They were actually excellent, and I don't think I was prejudiced by knowing Jake, either.

Dad explained early in the evening, while the music was loud and we were sober, that there were a series of bogus taped conversations and radio traffic happening aboard Barbra Ann this evening, while the rest of Dad's team (whom we never even saw) did some checking and tracing. As Brand explained to me later, back at home, St. Croix is small enough and isolated enough to make it fairly easy to monitor all the phone and all the radio traffic to see whether those fake conversations were being forwarded elsewhere or monitored right there on the island. Whatever that might happen to indicate: who the heck knows. Anyway, once they knew where the signal was going, they'd arrange more permanent "entertainment programming" for the listeners, to keep them busy and out of trouble. And feed them full of bullshit.

I kind of figured out some stuff, watching Brand at The Buccaneer: we weren't normal boys for our age. I was watching these other kids: a pair of twins, maybe a year younger than me. (That would be about 13, since I was real close to turning 14.) There was a smattering of other teens in the place -- all tourists, judging from the sun reddened faces -- and there was a startling difference between us and them.

Brand was a month or two from 15, a solid specimen of teen boy and a trifle lanky. His face still held a boyish, angelic beauty -- still holds traces of it, to this day -- offset by a... presence... that radiated such personality and intelligence. By contrast, the other kids were bland, un-formed, almost blank -- generic in some way. When he talked, it was -- is -- so focused, so articulate. His voice had that reediness of adolescence, but the words held a clarity and focus, a conciseness of thought, that just somehow made him stand out from everyone. And he was mine! He loved me: those perfect lips had murmured the words to me this very day!

Brand says he noticed the same stuff about me, but that it was especially in my physical motion. Which stands to reason, I guess. He told me that, when we got to the hotel, I tried to make love to him, but I was snoring in, like, 30 seconds. The next morning, I had a little bit of a hangover and Brand gave me a ton of shit. Asshole! Cute asshole.