by Blake Dawson* <blake@menetor.com>
From the Preface to Chapter 1:
If you like to read this kind of story but are concerned about possible legal implications, work to change the law! If you don’t, why are you here?
*Blake Dawson is the person the otherwise anonymous author would be if “trading places” became magically possible.
It should have been just another lazy Sydney late spring late Monday afternoon. I had as usual gone straight from school to the sports store and updated Mr Harris on what had been anything but a memorable Saturday morning of cricket. Maybe I was showing signs of seeing the reality behind the magic, and the turn of events an hour later had me placing extra import on Mr Harris’s caution that I should not expect it always to be as easy as it had been and that I would still have people who cared to turn to. From there, as always on a Monday in or near cricket season, I rendezvoused with Hayden, now nearly finished his first year of secondary and starting to grow rapidly, plus those two sixth grade bowlers who we continued to put up with, Troy and Joey, for our extra practice on the one night nobody else was at the club.
We didn’t really mind Troy, he had his father’s easy going approach which had let us have our heads and a premiership the previous season, and he was able to take the steam out of Joey whenever he got onto his high horse about what was right and what was wrong. They had almost finished their year as the big kids in the small pond of our local primary school, a status which Joey took very seriously and which made him silently hate having to take orders from little fifth grader me on Saturday mornings. That afternoon, there was just a little more tension than usual between us and it boiled over when Hayden and I were changing over between our established roles as first and second batter. Joey must have picked up a new word from the big kids which he produced as the two of us were skylarking a bit with the gear we shared use of: “What’s the matter Cap’n Faggot, won’t Hidin’ Jerkin’ help you with your ball protector?”
It was the first time I had ever heard any kid use that nickname to Hayden’s face, although it was pretty standard amongst the many who were jealous of the one extraordinary talent of an otherwise pretty ordinary kid. On the other hand I was used to the increasingly mocking tone with which the kids abbreviated my captaincy, and I allowed that Joey probably still thought I was a friend, so my reaction was in defence of my beloved rather than myself. As has often been the case, my tongue was faster than my brain: “We’d rather be faggots than virgins.” “Hear that Troy, they even admit it. Faggots. The batsmen are faggots. Faggots. Faggots. The batsmen are faggots.” Joey turned it into a chant which he kept repeating and trying to coax Troy into joining with him, which he couldn’t quite because everytime he opened his mouth to say something he broke into the giggles. It didn’t take long for Joey to have become more boring than ever before, and my brain decided it was time for my mouth to confront the situation a bit more positively: “Shut the fuck up and listen for a minute. I didn’t say we were faggots. I just said that I would prefer to be a faggot than a virgin like you. So why don’t we settle this once and for all with a little wager. If one of you two gets to fuck a girl before one of us does, then we will give you as much batting time as we get and you can call us what you want, but if one of us is first we never have to bowl to you and you never call us by anything other than our proper names.”
Troy protested that the bet might take years to decide, although I knew he knew better and was just trying to keep up appearances for Joey. However, I had spotted Felicity French heading our way before I proposed it and was confident we could win it there and then. As soon as they accepted the bet, I called her over and explained what was going on. She was in a different sixth grade class to the bowlers and knew they would not be in a position to say anything, so she was perfectly happy to go all the way with Hayden on the spot. They had always been a bit keen on each other and had fumbled round a few times, Hayden having admitted getting to eight with her when I was still eight years old. Now her tits had started to become visible and he had started to grow and not just in height as I well knew, but rarely felt with anything more than my hand.
In reality, the practice net area was so exposed it was not thinkable to expose bodies right there, but the slightly overgrown occasional barbecue area beside the club house was a different story—there was only one spot you could see into it from and from that spot you could see anybody approaching from anywhere across the park. I offered to stand watch so that the bowlers could properly witness their losing bet, and the two young lovers were soon into it. They had well exceeded the Australian standard for foreplay, I am sure as much to keep two pairs of eyes fully boggled as to prepare for something they had both long wanted, but eventually his dick found its way inside her and he was humping manfully.
Thirty metres away is a strange distance from which to watch your best mate and lover fucking a girl for the first time. From there he looked such an ordinary kid, a pallid complexion, untidy mousy hair, not enough freckles to be a feature, and facial features that were on the untidy side of plain. His recent growth had disguised the earlier signs of muscle tone and physique with a skin of soft looking flesh. I had to pinch myself to remember the elegance with which he moved towards and struck a cricket ball that had me entranced as always minutes earlier. And here was my beloved humping away inelegantly, if enthusiastically, and approaching a climax, just to settle a bet I had made to try to shut up a couple of dumb bowlers, at least one of whom was now getting more lessons in life in one afternoon than he might otherwise have expected within the next five years.
I was so lost in introspection, I didn’t notice a figure walking across the park until he was close enough to be trying to follow my gaze. Fortunately David Scott was already close enough to be instantly recognised and I was prepared to back my judgement that he would be cool, and rather than sending the lovers into a panic rather than their approaching orgasms, I shushed David and beckoned him to join me quietly. David had moved into the area mid-year and gone into year nine at the secondary school. He soon joined the Under 16 team at the cricket club and mixed freely, being the youngest member of a family which was constantly relocating because of the kind of work his parents were in. He treated me as a mate whenever our paths crossed although we had not until then found an opportunity to really get to know each other. I made sure he could see the action but wouldn’t be noticed by the lovers or their spectators and whispered the story of the bet before arranging that he would slip away as soon as they got there and appear to arrive once they had packed up and were ready to move.
As Felicity and Hayden got their clothes back on, I walked down to join them, and arrived in time to see a fully dressed Felicity grab both the bowlers by the bulges in the front of their pants and suggest that they would now have something worth pulling themselves off over. Troy’s giggles returned and Joey for once didn’t say anything till they were out of earshot, but close enough to be seen slapping and pushing each other in the way young boys often test each other, their shared doubts pushing them closer. David arrived just in time for four kids to be very relieved he hadn’t been a little earlier and he mentioned to Hayden and me that he had been hoping to join in with us for a bit of extra practice on those Monday nights when both his parents were working. We assured him that any other Monday would be ok and Hayden made it clear that he thought he should walk Felicity home, leaving me with David and I figured still a couple of hours before I would be expected at home.
David and I wandered back to the nets and took a turn each to chuck balls at each other so we could practice our footwork, within twenty minutes realising that it was pretty hard for just the two of us to keep that going, so I suggested I would walk home via his place. We horsed around plenty of the way there, to the point where I was a little surprised and disappointed that I didn’t get an immediate invite inside. Instead we sat on his stone front fence and talked some more. My suggestion that I would love a cold drink failed to shift the conversation, so a few minutes later I tried wanting a piss, to which he suggested that I could have one behind the overgrown bushes in his small front yard. “Whassa matter, lost your key?” I started to ask. “Nah. It’s just ...” Any it suddenly hit me. “Hey look. Being poor isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Mum and I came here because she wanted me to have a nice environment to grow up in, but the bloody rent killed and for years we didn’t even have loose change to rattle around. The last thing that’s going to worry me is bare boards and sparse worn out furnishings—it will make me feel at home.” “Ok, ok.” He gave me what could be best described as a low five and fished out his key. Reaching the kitchen, he went to open their old fridge and I wanted to make sure he really understood where I was coming from: “Fuck man, there’s nothing wrong with Sydney water when you’re thirsty.” He shut the fridge and poured a couple of glasses from the tap and we were both quickly back for seconds, but he was still reluctant to show me his room. “You said your parents definitely won’t be home till after late shift, but I’ll be expected home in an hour, so what are you waiting for.”
I had by then figured out his was the room with the big “keep out” sign on the door, so I grabbed him by the hand and with my other reached for the handle. “Can’t you read?” “That’s just for parents.” “Ok, fuck you, you little arsehole.” “Now who’s in a rush ... Wow! Your own wrestling mat.” I moved to make a wrestling throw, which I could not have done without his full cooperation, and we both landed in a giggling heap on the double mattress. Before either of us made a move, I stopped, gave him a peck on the side of the cheek, got up and walked back to the door which I closed and latched from the inside, taking enough time to take in the room without appearing to stare. A door off the built-in robes had been propped on milk crates to make a low table covered with all kinds of teenage boy’s junk, and the walls were almost covered with torn out pictures of male sporting action. I just noticed scattered seemingly randomly amongst the traditional sports shots a smattering that had been pulled from hard core porno mags—and not the standard buxom pin ups but, while all straight action, a selection that focused on the male anatomy rather than the female. David told me later that he also considered them to be legitimate sports pics. I jumped back alongside him and resumed half wrestling. “Hey, I thought that bet I nearly interrupted was to prove you guys weren’t faggots.” “Nah, you weren’t listening, it was because I said ‘we’d rather be faggots than virgins,’ and Joey tried to make something of it.”
We were happy just to wrestle but before long he got me in a hold which forced me to stare directly at what was obviously his choice of his greatest sporting heroes. And now it was my turn to be embarrassed as right in the middle he had stuck up the picture of me batting in an early season Under 12 match that the local paper had run above the scores from our cricket association a few weeks earlier. Our wrestling turned quickly to intimacy and we did everything but before it was past time that I should have been on my way.
David joined our Monday practice sessions whenever both his parents were on the same late shift and Hayden didn’t get in the my way of going home via David’s for a couple of hours of chatting and sex which got ever better but never further. Continuing these sessions into the late autumn and winter after we had taken a break from cricket was one of the few bright spots in my otherwise black sixth grade year that is another story, but even that brightness was snuffed out when it came time for his parents to make their next move. On our last night he finally let me stick by little dick in his arse and I gave him an extra copy of the glossy print of the photo from the local paper, on the back of which I penned a note: “When it’s time after one or two more shifts for you to follow your sister’s and brother’s examples and chose a place to call home, I hope you will remember. —B.”