In which Kevin gets a bit more practice and Jeremy unburdens himself.
Kevin
Things got back to normal on Monday: father went back to work, telling us that he’d be back on the Friday evening, and Chris and I went to school as usual. Nothing much happened at Chess Club on Monday evening – there was no match this week – and unfortunately Danny wasn’t able to come to visit again on Tuesday, so Chris and I spent that evening watching TV at home.
On Wednesday I went round to Silvio’s house again, and once again he let me do a pretty slipshod job on his boots. By now I was starting to take a pride in my work: I spent plenty of time on Chris’s boots, which I’m sure looked far better than when he cleaned them himself, and it was the same whenever I cleaned Mark’s, or the Microbe’s, or anyone else’s: I liked to get them looking as clean as possible. But Silvio obviously didn’t care – he just got me to get rid of the surplus mud and that was it, even when I offered to wash them and so on.
“Got any homework I can help you with tonight?” I asked, once he’d put the boots away.
“No, but… is it really true that you have to do whatever we tell you? I mean, I know you said it was, but there have to be limits, no?”
“Not really,” I replied. “Obviously you can’t order me to commit murder or anything like that, but I don’t suppose you’d want me to anyway.”
“No. So how many of us are you working for at the moment?”
I had to stop and think about that. There was Chris of course, and then Mark, the Microbe, Dwayne, Lee… that was it for the team, but of course there were quite a few others, like Dwayne’s brother, and Danny, and Jason, and Freddie and his cousin…
“A few,” I said. “Six from the team including you, anyway.”
“Oh. See, Dwayne told me something, and… well… I wondered if it was true.”
“It’s probably true,” I admitted. “What did he say?”
“He said… look, is it true that he made you suck his cock?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But he also promised not to tell anyone!”
“I expect he thought that as you have to do what I say anyway I’d have worked it out for myself… except I wouldn’t have ever thought of doing something like that. But, seeing that he told me it feels awesome… do you think you could do it for me?”
I looked at him. He was quite a small kid, shorter even than Mark and probably no more than an inch taller than Luke the Microbe, so I didn’t think there was any danger of him being big enough to choke me.
“Well… okay – but I don’t want you to go spreading it about,” I said. “Obviously it’s not something I want my friends to know about.”
“No, of course not!” he agreed quickly.
“All right. Get undressed, then.”
“What, completely?”
“Yes – I need to be able to get at you all over if I’m going to do it properly.”
He looked a little nervously at the bedroom door – clearly at least one parent was in the house – but then he decided that it was worth the risk. He stood up and began to get undressed.
I’d expected a body not unlike the Microbe’s, but once again I was underestimating the Mediterranean factor. I knew that Silvio was Italian – how could someone with a name like Silvio Cittabianca not be? – but still the hair came as a surprise: he had little thin curls of it at the base of his penis. The organs themselves weren’t all that big, but he was definitely a bit bigger than either Microbe, even though he was still some way short of the likes of Mark and Dwayne. And once it stiffened up – which it did without any intervention from me – it looked good.
“Sit on the edge of the bed,” I instructed him, and he went and did so.
By now I’d had enough practice with Dwayne, and especially with Mark, that I was getting quite good at this – at least, that’s what Mark had told me on our last evening together – and so I did my best to make him enjoy it, stroking him all over his body and taking my time over the actual sucking, although once I had his foreskin down and was getting to work on the head I was fairly sure that he wasn’t going to last too long. I slowed down a little, but it didn’t delay things for very long – and he had enough to taste, too.
”Thanks,” he said, once he’d got dressed again. “But I don’t think we ought to be making you do stuff like that. It’s a bit bad.”
“I don’t mind that much,” I admitted. “The first time I had to do it I didn’t like it much, but now I’m okay with it. It’s better than spending ages cleaning boots, anyway.”
“Really? I can’t imagine doing anything like that.”
“Neither could I until a few weeks ago. Anyway, if you liked it I don’t mind doing it again.”
“Oh, I liked it – it was incredible. So if you’re sure you don’t mind I will probably ask you to do it again.”
So that was another name added to my list of people I could practise on. It was just a pity that the person I would really have liked to practise on probably wasn’t in the market – at least, if Mark’s assessment was correct, he wasn’t. Still, maybe Mark was wrong…
Thursday night at the Microbes’ was back to normal – Jason was there this evening, and when we played cards I lost, which meant I didn’t get to see either of them naked, and also that I had to give them a public demonstration, though by now this was a lot less embarrassing than it had been the first time. Actually I quite enjoyed it.
Father had arranged a seven-seater taxi for us for the trip to Thorpe Park. Because the park doesn’t open until ten o’clock we didn’t have to leave home that early, even though we had to divert to the station to pick Jeremy up on the way. Actually that worked out nicely, because I fixed it so that he and I ended up on the back row of seating, behind Chris, Mark and Colin, and that allowed me to look at both Colin and Jeremy without Chris spotting it and making snide comments.
Jeremy looked pleased to see me – in fact he looked happy and relaxed for the first time since I’d met him…
Jeremy
I still found it hard to believe that this wasn’t a wind-up of some sort: I’d half expected Kenton to have been waiting for me at my local station, or for there to be nobody to pick me up at the other end. And so when Kevin appeared and asked how I was I expect I looked pretty relieved, even though I tried hard not to let him see that I was surprised to see him. Anyway, he introduced me to his father and to his brother’s two friends and then we got into the back of the vehicle, which was one of those seven-seater people carriers.
As far as I was concerned, this was perfect, because it meant that the only person who could see me was Kevin, and that meant that if I said something stupid, at least everyone wouldn’t see me blushing like a girl. Of course, the best way to avoid saying anything stupid was not to say anything at all, and as Kevin’s brother and his friends were talking about football I had the perfect excuse to keep quiet, because I’m really not that interested.
After a bit Kevin got a pocket chess set out of his bag, and that kept us going for most of the rest of the journey, and so when we reached Thorpe Park I’d actually managed not to make a fool of myself at all. Perhaps today really was going to turn out OK, I thought.
Kevin had told me that his father was fairly rich, and this was obviously true because he’d bought us all Ultimate Fastrack tickets, which basically meant that we could jump the queues – or at least use a much shorter one – for all of the big rides. On the other hand it gave me far less of an excuse for chickening out if I didn’t want to go on something: if we had ordinary tickets I could say that I thought the queue for a particular ride was too long, but with Fastrack tickets I couldn’t do that.
Once we were inside the park the three younger kids headed off towards the Colossus, which turned out to be a scary-looking roller-coaster. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do this, but Kevin clearly did, because he called “Come on!” and ran off after his brother, and that didn’t leave me a lot of choice if I didn’t want to look like the world’s biggest wimp. I looked at the places where you go upside down and the sort of corkscrew bit at the end where you go upside down over and over again, and I wondered how hard Kevin would hit me if I threw up all over him.
Somehow I forced myself to get onto the ride next to him… and actually it wasn’t half as bad as I’d expected. In fact I enjoyed it. And so when Chris led us off towards the next big ride I didn’t mind a bit. I did wonder what Kevin would say if I grabbed his hand at a scary moment, but I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk.
By the time we’d been there an hour I was starting to regret that the newest ride wasn’t due to open for another two weeks. It had a massive vertical drop at one point, but I didn’t think that would worry me half as much now as it would have done when we first entered the park. Perhaps I wasn’t really such a wimp after all…
We stopped at about one o’clock to get something to eat. Of course I didn’t have any money, but Kevin had already told me not to worry about it and paid for both of us as if he had a bottomless wallet. I felt a bit awkward about it, but he told me to forget it.
“Come on,” he added, “let’s go for a walk. It would probably be a good idea not to go on another big ride until we’ve had a chance to digest our lunch a bit.”
His brother and the other two were heading in a different direction, which was both good and bad news. Yes, I was glad of a chance to spend some time with Kevin on our own, but I was scared I’d do or say something stupid and mess everything up.
We found a comparatively quiet corner and sat on a wall.
“Thanks for coming,” he said quietly. “I really like Colin and Mark, but they’re still Chris’s friends rather than mine, and if you weren’t here I’d feel like I was just trailing round behind them like a spare part.”
“I’m glad you asked me,” I told him. “I wasn’t really sure about it – I’ve never been to a serious theme park before, just little funfairs and things like that, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have the guts to go on anything. But I’m glad I did.”
“Good. Then maybe next time we go to Alton Towers you might be able to come with us. We haven’t been there in ages. Perhaps at Easter, if my father actually decides to take any time off work…. or if not in the summer. So… what sort of a week have you had?”
“You mean, did I get beaten up by Year Seven kids again? Well… no – at least, not like you saw a couple of weeks ago.”
“So what did happen, then? Because it’s obvious that something did.”
“Why would you care?”
“We’re friends, aren’t we? Or on the way to being friends, anyway.”
Not if you find out about me, I thought.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It does to me. Look, Jeremy, if you’re not going to talk to me, who are you going to talk to?”
“Why do I need to talk to anyone?”
“Because you can’t carry on the way you’re going at the moment. It’s messing you up big time. Maybe I can help.”
“And maybe you’ll just walk away and spend the rest of the day avoiding me.”
“Why would I do that? Look, everyone does stupid things. I certainly have – in fact you wouldn’t begin to believe how stupid I was a few weeks ago. So whatever happened and whatever you did, I’m not going to walk away from you, okay?”
I thought about it. On the one hand, I hardly knew him, and if he did walk away in disgust there wouldn’t be any long-term fallout because he didn’t go to my school or live anywhere near me. The rest of this afternoon would certainly be awkward, but after that I’d never have to speak to him again. But on the other, this was really the first time in ages that I’d had a chance to do anything with anyone, and if there was any chance of doing this again, whether to Alton Towers or anywhere else, I didn’t want to throw the opportunity away.
“It’s okay,” he said, when I kept quiet. “You don’t have to tell me. But if you change your mind later, I promise I’ll listen, and I won’t walk away, either. So… what ride do you want to try next?”
“We haven’t tried the Detonator yet,” I pointed out.
“Okay. We’re probably less likely to puke on that than on another big roller-coaster.”
He stood up, and at the same time I made a decision: I wanted to tell someone, because he was right when he said that my situation was messing me up. And, as I had already worked out, if he reacted badly it wouldn’t be half as bad as if I told someone at my school and they spread it everywhere.
“No, wait,” I said. “If you really want to know what the problem is, I’ll tell you…”
Kevin
“All right,” I said, and I sat down again. “And I promise I’m not going to react badly – at least, not unless you’re about to tell me that you like strangling babies, or something.”
“You swear not to tell anyone?” he said.
“Who am I going to tell? Nobody else round here knows you.”
He took a deep breath. “All right, then,” he said. “I’m gay.”
I tried not to let any emotion show on my face, because I simply couldn’t believe that I could be this lucky… and then reality threw a metaphorical bucket of cold water over me: even if he was gay, he was hardly likely to fancy a boy wearing glasses like mine.
“Are you sure?” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen you undressed, remember, and so I know you’re not too far into puberty yet. Maybe you’ll start noticing girls when you’ve grown a bit.”
“I don’t think so. I notice boys now, and that wasn’t happening a couple of years ago. Yes, I know some people seem to go through a phase of trying stuff with other boys, but that’s not what’s happening. I look at boys and want to get close to them. Yes, I’d quite like to try some stuff with them too, but this isn’t really about sex. So… look, I don’t want to embarrass you, so let’s just say I’ll meet you back here at twenty past five.”
I realised that my expression probably wasn’t very encouraging, so I gave him a smile, put my arm round his shoulders and gave him a brief hug.
“Let’s not,” I said. “Let’s say that we’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon together instead.”
“You mean… you really don’t care?” he said, staring at me.
“Oh, I care, but not in a bad way. You really thought I’d walk away?”
He nodded.
“Not everyone is like that,” I told him. “Is this why Kenton’s giving you a hard time, then?”
He nodded again. “It’s my fault,” he said. “There’s a small lake in the woods where we used to swim, and one day when we were getting changed afterwards I noticed that he’d started to get some hair. I commented on it, and then I reached out and touched them – I just wanted to see what they felt like. Then he noticed that I’d got an erection, and he basically lost it, calling me a fucking queer and… well, you get the idea. He got dressed in a hurry and stormed off.
“Next morning at the station we told me that he hated perverts and that if he spread it round the school I’d get beaten up every day, which is what I deserved. But he said that because we used to be friends he wouldn’t do that as long as I gave him my allowance from then on. And so I’ve been paying him to keep quiet about it for the last six months or so. But just taking the money isn’t really enough for him, so every now and again he takes me to the woods and…”
He broke off.
“It’s okay,” I said, gently, putting my arm round him again. “You don’t have to tell me. I get the idea.”
“No, you don’t. He doesn’t just beat me – he makes me do other stuff too. Really bad stuff.”
”Tell me,” I said gently.
“He makes me…I have to suck his cock,” he said, looking at the ground – presumably he expected me to be disgusted and he didn’t want to see my face.
“Okay,” I said. “Um... do you enjoy it?”
“What? No, of course I don’t – it’s disgusting!”
“Oh. But I thought… well, isn’t sucking something that most gay boys do?”
“I don’t know – I’ve never met any. But I bet that if they do do it, they do it somewhere warm and comfortable, and they do it because they want to. I have to do it outdoors in the woods, and I don’t have any choice. Kenton likes it – he gets excited every time – but I think that’s more because he hates me and likes to see me naked and on my knees in front of him. I don’t know whether I do it properly or not, because nobody’s ever told me how.”
“But would you want to do it if you had a proper boyfriend?” I asked. “Suppose it was someone you really liked, and you were on your own in the house and could do anything you wanted. Do you think it would be different doing it like that?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it might, but it’s never going to happen, so I’ve never wasted time thinking about it. And even if a miracle happened and I met someone, Kenton would mess it up for me. He messes up everything.”
He was trying not to cry, so I put my arm around him and hugged him again.
“Not everyone is like Kenton,” I told him. “In fact, most people probably aren’t like him. You were just unlucky. You see, you’re not the only one who made a mistake. Six or seven weeks ago my brother caught me wanking. Okay, you might say, that’s embarrassing, but surely everyone does it? Well, they don’t all do it while holding a photograph of their brother’s football team.”
He stared at me.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m gay too. Nobody knew before then, because I sure as hell hadn’t ever told anyone, and looking the way I do there was no chance of anyone, male or female, ever trying it on with me, so the issue had never arisen. Chris hadn’t known either until then.”
“So what did he do?”
“He thought it was funny. He told one of his friends – Mark, the little dark one – and between them they came up with this scheme to try to stop me wanking… anyway, the short version is that every time I mess up someone else on the team gets to order me about. Chris hasn’t told any of them that I’m gay, just that he’s trying to stop me playing with myself, and every time I do he tells someone else about it. Usually that means I have to clean their football boots, but a couple of them have made me suck them, so I do know what that feels like, except I’ve only had to do it indoors and in private.”
He stared at me again.
“So how many people know you’re gay?” he asked.
“Four now, including you: Chris, Mark, Danny – the kid who plays chess on the next board to me – and you. Danny worked it out for himself, but he doesn’t care at all; Mark is probably an even better friend now than he was before he found out, and Chris and I still get on as well as we ever did. That’s why I think you were unlucky with Kenton, because nobody who knows about me has reacted badly at all.”
“I suppose it’s good to know that, but it doesn’t really help me much,” he commented.
“Yes it does! Now you’ve got someone you can talk to completely openly without having to pretend, and you know that I’m not going to walk away, whatever you tell me. If you like I can come and visit you, and you can come up to see me at weekends if you want – we’ll sort out something for the fares. You’re not alone any longer. And I’m pretty sure that Mark and Chris won’t care about you being gay either, if you decide to tell them – except that we can’t tell them today. Colin doesn’t know I’m gay, and I don’t want him to know either. I like him a lot, and I don’t want to risk him reacting badly. Okay, he probably wouldn’t – I don’t think he’s anything like Kenton, even though Mark says he likes girls – but I’d prefer not to take the risk. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I wasn’t intending to tell the others anyway – there’s no reason they need to know, is there?”
“Not really. Anyway, the important thing is that you can call me any time, and Skype me in the evenings, and we can get together at weekends… if you want to, that is?”
“Well, yes, it would be nice. I don’t want to waste too much of your time, though.”
“It wouldn’t be a waste, I swear – in fact I’d like to have a chance to talk to another gay boy. It would mean that I could be honest and open, too, like we could talk about boys and stuff. I can’t really do that at the moment.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’d like that too.”
‘Great. Now – shall we go and get Detonated?”
Jeremy
As we walked towards the Detonator I thought about what Kevin had said. I wouldn’t have guessed that he was gay – he didn’t look gay, and he certainly didn’t act it. But then I didn’t think I did either, most of the time, so perhaps people usually can’t tell just by looking at you. Anyway, I liked the idea of spending time with him, both online and in person, and he was right when he said it would be nice to be able to speak openly about my feelings and stuff… except of course it wouldn’t be possible to be completely open. I’d never be able to tell him that I thought he looked really nice, or that I’d like to go out with him, because if I did he’d fall about laughing: who would want to be seen with a baby like me? It doesn’t matter that I’m fourteen – it would be embarrassing for a normal-looking boy like Kevin to be seen with an immature little kid who looks about ten. So I’d have to keep my feelings to myself, and that would be really difficult.
Still, just having a proper friend would be nice, because I didn’t think I’d had a real friend, one that I saw out of school, since I messed things up with Kenton. I‘d just have to be really careful not to mess things up again with Kevin.
The rest of the afternoon was fun: we went on the rides we’d missed in the morning and then went on some of them a second time, and the only thing I chickened out of was the Slammer, and the speed with which Kevin agreed that we didn’t have to try it suggested that he wasn’t too keen either.
At about four o’clock we ran into Chris and his two friends and after that we all stayed together, and by the time we left to get the taxi back I was feeling really good – I hadn’t had a day out like this in… well, probably ever. It wasn’t until I was sitting on the train on the way back home that I sort of fell back to Earth, knowing that I was looking at another week of school and another week of Kenton. Still, at least now I knew there was someone who cared and who I could talk to.
The following afternoon Kenton came round and called for me, and because I know better than to annoy him I went with him.
“So where did you go yesterday?” he asked me as we walked up the road towards his house.
“Thorpe Park,” I told him.
“Shit, I’ve always wanted to go there. Was it any good?”
“It was amazing! I had a really good time.”
“Bet a little poof like you was too scared to go on any of the big rides, though.”
“No, I wasn’t! I went on everything… well, except the Slammer. I did chicken out of that. But I went on everything else.”
“Oh… hang on, how could you afford to go to Thorpe Park? Have you been keeping back cash without telling me?”
“No, my uncle took me and he paid for everything. I thought I told you that.”
“Oh, yeah, you did mention something like that. It’s not fair, though – I wish I had someone to take me. My dad would never take me somewhere like that.”
“Maybe if I go again I could ask if you can come with me,” I said. “Then maybe I can show you that I’m not scared to go on stuff.”
“Yeah, like you’d really ask if I could come!”
“Why shouldn’t I? We used to be friends, and if I wasn’t gay we probably still would be. I know you hate queers, but that’s not the only thing there is about me. Besides, I didn’t ask to be gay. It’s not like you can choose it, you know.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“I don’t know exactly what happened to you this weekend,” he said, “but you’ve changed. I’ve never heard you stick up for yourself before. I mean, it doesn’t really change anything, because I still hate queers, and now you’ve actually admitted it I can’t see any reason to ease up on you. Still, it’s not too warm today, so I’ll give you a little reward for standing up for yourself: my parents are out, so today you can suck me off in my room instead of in the woods.”
Well, I supposed that was something, so I went back to his house with him, waited while he checked that his parents were still out and then went up to his room and got undressed without waiting for him to tell me to.
“If you really wanted to stick up for yourself you ought to try saying no to me sometimes,” he suggested.
“Yes, that’s a great idea,” I replied. “Then you’d just round up your mates and strip me off at school again, like you did last time. If it was just you, maybe I would fight back, but it’s not worth it to get beaten up by three or four of your mates.”
“You know I can beat you up and strip you on my own,” he pointed out. “I’ve been able to do that since I was about nine. But it’s more fun sharing it with my mates.”
“Not for me.”
“Tough. That’s what you get for being a queer. All right, lie on the bed and I’ll warm up your arse for you.”
He took my belt, doubled it and used it to whip my bum six times. I’m not sure if he was holding back or if it was just easier indoors, but for some reason it didn’t seem to hurt as much as usual. Then he got undressed – and today he stripped off completely – and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Do a good job and maybe I’ll leave you alone until next weekend.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but it was worth trying, all the same – and in any case it was a lot better doing this indoors in the warm than out in the woods. So I took hold of his erection, kissed the tip the way he liked me to and then slid it slowly into my mouth. I was sure he was getting bigger: the little hairs were a bit longer and there were more of them, the balls seemed bigger and his erection must have been almost an inch and a half longer than mine, and a fair bit thicker, too. I just wished I could start to grow a bit.
I worked away at it fairly slowly, stroking his balls and generally trying to make this feel good, and he wriggled about, pushing my head down and occasionally insulting me, which suggested to me that he was enjoying it. And before too long – rather sooner than usually seemed to happen outdoors – he reached the special moment, and I felt a little of his stuff squirt into my mouth. I waited five seconds or so and then slipped it slowly out of my mouth. There was a box of tissues on his desk, so I grabbed one to spit into and then passed him the box so that he could wipe himself down.
“I’m sure your dick’s getting smaller,” he commented, grinning at me.
“I don’t think so. You’re definitely a lot bigger than me, but… well, you know mine looks bigger when it’s hard.”
“Not by much. And why isn’t it hard now? I thought queers liked sucking dicks.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I’ve only ever sucked yours, and I don’t really enjoy that much - although it’s a lot better doing it here than out in the woods.”
“It is, isn’t it? Okay, it’s a laugh making you run about in the woods naked, and probably we’ll do that a lot more when the weather gets properly warm, but for sucking it’s a lot nicer indoors. I’ll have to persuade my ‘rents to go out every weekend. Anyway, why don’t you like sucking me? Is it too big for you?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just hard to do something like this with someone who hates me, that’s all. I bet if some really ugly girl forced you to do stuff with her you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“Are you saying I’m ugly?”
“No! No, of course not. You look alright, you know that. I’m just saying that you’d hate it too if someone forced you to do sex stuff, that’s all.”
He stood up and got dressed. When we were out in the woods he sometimes pissed on me after I’d sucked him, but today he just told me to get dressed as well.
“Okay, Gaylord,” he said, once I was dressed. “You did a good job there, so I’ll leave you alone this week. But next weekend I’m definitely going to invite that kid with the glasses to come down and watch me teaching you a lesson. That’ll be well funny.”
“No, come on, Kenton, please?” I begged. “You said you’d keep it to yourself as long as I paid up.”
“Yes, but you didn’t, did you? You had to go trying to cadge money off total strangers, and I think that deserves a little extra punishment. Anyway, you can go now – I don’t want a pervert stinking up my room.”
I knew there was no point in arguing, so I left. But I really hoped that Kevin would stay away the following weekend – I thought I’d die of shame if he saw what happened to me in the woods…
Kevin
On Sunday we played North End and very nearly lost, just scraping a draw in injury time, and Mr Clifford wasn’t at all happy about it. The post-mortem wasn’t a lot of fun at all, and I just kept my head down in the corner until he’d finished letting off steam. It didn’t help that North End’s showers weren’t working, so I didn’t get any chance to admire the attributes of the team – instead everyone just got straight back into the normal clothes and went off to take showers at home. Our father was still with us – he was going back to work on Monday morning – so I didn’t even get to travel home in the same car as Colin.
Chris grabbed the shower first, which I thought was fair enough, and at least he had the decency to leave me some hot water. On the other hand, he didn’t have the decency to leave me to shower in peace: instead he leaned on the wall with a towel wrapped around his waist and watched me.
“The camera steams up too easily,” he explained, “and I wouldn’t want you to think you could get away with anything.”
“I don’t do it in the shower,” I told him.
“Really? You should try,” he said. “It feels nice. I tried it for the first time on Friday, and it’s good.”
I stared at him.
“You… you actually admit you play with yourself too?” I said.
“Obviously. Most people do, I think. But not all of us do it in public.”
“My bedroom isn’t in public,” I pointed out.
“It is when there’s a camera in there. Besides, you’re older than me. You should have grown out of it by now.”
“I don’t think anyone grows out of it. Would you stop doing something that feels really good?”
He shrugged. “By the time I’m your age I hope I’ll have a girlfriend to do it for me,” he said.
“You probably will, too: you’re the sort girls go for. And perhaps if I had a boyfriend I might not need to do it myself any longer either. But that’s hardly likely to happen, is it?”
“You never know,” said Chris. “I know the glasses are a massive turn-off, but otherwise there’s nothing wrong with you, and you’ve got a nice personality – pretty much all the boys in the team like you, including the ones you’ve been working for. You’ll just have to hope you find a nice gay boy who’s even more blind than you are.”
“Like that’s gonna happen,” I said.
“You never know. Or I could set you up with Clive, if you like. A lot of us think he isn’t really gay at all, but we’d find out pretty quick if you tried it on with him.”
“Er, no! If he isn’t he’ll probably be disgusted, and even if he is he won’t want to go out with Binocular Man, will he?”
“I suppose not. We could ask, though. In fact, next time you mess up I’ll make sure it’s Clive who gets to join in next. And for all we know he’s the one you actually fancy, so that might work out for both of you.”
“Just leave it, okay?” I said. “I’m not going to tell you who it is, and I don’t want anyone else knowing about it, either.”
“Okay. But seriously, Kev, I wouldn’t mind if you had a boyfriend. It wouldn’t gross me out or anything. It might even be sort of cool.”
“Really?” I said sceptically.
“Yes, really. You know we all like Clive, and I don’t suppose there’s anyone in the team who would have a problem with it if they knew you were gay… except maybe Dwayne, because they’re not supposed to like gays in Jamaica. But he was born here, so he’s probably more English than Jamaican, and he likes Clive anyway. So if you do get lucky nobody’s going to hate you for it.
“Okay, I’ll go and let you have a shower in peace, and if you want to try it in the shower I won’t count it, even if the camera doesn’t get too steamed up.”
“No; it’s okay,” I said. “You can stay if you want, or you can go and get dressed and then come back if you prefer. It’s not often that we have a proper sensible conversation… so have you actually asked any girls out yet?”
“Not yet. I probably won’t for a bit longer, either… look, I’ll go and get my clothes, then I can get changed while we’re talking. Back in a minute.”
He went out and returned half a minute later. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, of course, so I couldn’t see very much, but I assumed he’d collected a set of clothes.
“So why don’t you want to ask a girl out yet?” I asked.
“I’m not really ready. I sort of like the idea of having a girlfriend, but most of the girls I know are just weird. Not that I know very many, of course, what with going to an all-boys school. It must be a lot easier for gay boys to get together.”
“No, it damned well isn’t! If you tried to get off with a girl who didn’t fancy you she’d just say so and walk away. If I tried to get off with a boy who doesn’t fancy boys at all I’d probably get punched in the mouth – or, if I was really unlucky, he’d threaten to spread it all round the school unless I paid him protection money for the rest of my time at school.”
“Do you really think it would be that bad if people at school knew? I don’t think it’s a big issue these days… okay, I know that’s easy for me to say because I’m never going to be in that position, but even so, I reckon most of the kids in your class wouldn’t care either way. Yes, there would probably be a few idiots, but who cares what they think?”
That was interesting, and of course I found myself wondering if Jeremy’s school wouldn’t be exactly the same: maybe nobody would care much about it if Kenton did open his mouth.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I still don’t think I’ll be rushing to out myself, but maybe I shouldn’t be so scared about it. Maybe everyone will react like you and Mark. Perhaps I should try telling someone – Jason, maybe – just to see what happens. Or maybe I’ll wait until you get a girlfriend.”
“You’re two years older than me,” Chris pointed out. “So you ought to try to find someone before I do.”
“Well, maybe, but really I’m happy enough as I am for now. But if I do decide to try opening up at school I’ll tell you about it first – that way you can come and visit me in hospital if I choose the wrong person to tell.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” said Chris. “Anyway, I’m going to go and find out what’s for lunch. I’ll leave you in peace, and I’ll point the camera away too, so you can try doing it in the shower and see what you think. This is a free one, so there’s no penalty. Have fun!”
I could just about make out him turning the camera away and then I heard the door close, and at that point I thought, why not? And in due course I discovered that Chris was right: this felt really nice…
*********************************
So now Kevin knows about Jeremy and Jeremy knows about Kevin. Does this mean that they'll spend most of the next chapter in bed together? Sadly not. Life is, as I have observed before, never that easy.
Do you need a short term loan that will allow you to consolidate all your debts into just one monthly payment? Then gothmog@nyms.net is not the address for you, because I'm stony broke. But you could use it to tell me how you think the story is going.
Copyright 2013: all rights reserved. Please do not reprint, repost or otherwise reproduce this or any part of it anywhere without my written permission.
David Clarke