In which Jason is worried and Kevin has news for Peter.
Kevin
Because my father was still at home I missed out on visits to both Dwayne and Mark again this week. I hoped that I’d be able to find some time with Mark before too long, because experimenting on stuff with him was not only fun, but useful too: if I ever did manage to get a proper boyfriend I’d be able to make him feel good. Of course the chances of actually finding someone who wouldn’t be massively turned off by my glasses didn’t seem good.
I wondered about Clive. Maybe if he really was gay… but even if he was, I was sure the glasses would put him off. After all, Jeremy was gay, and I knew it would be pointless to try anything with him, even if he did say he thought I looked okay with the glasses off. In any case, I couldn’t actually do anything with the glasses off, so if I ever did manage to persuade someone to go out with me it would have to be someone who didn’t mind my specs – and, as Chris had suggested, probably only another specs-wearer would fall into that category. So I supposed I would have to start looking at everyone I knew who wore glasses and hope that one of them turned out to be gay.
Of course Jason wore glasses, but despite what his brother had told me I didn’t think he was gay. Besides, although by now I liked him a lot, I didn’t really fancy him. As for the other chess players I knew who wore glasses… no, thanks. I supposed that for now I’d just have to settle for a session with Mark now and again.
But at least I could still look: even if Colin did like girls I could still look at him and fantasise, and it was no hardship looking at Jeremy during our Skype conversations, either. And perhaps one day he really would be desperate enough to go a bit further with me… yeah, right.
We had another chess match on Monday evening, but this one was played at our school and nothing of interest happened either before or after it. This time I drew, and Danny won using the Grob Attack for the second match in a row.
“Sooner or later you’re going to come up against someone who either knows it, or is good enough to give it the thrashing it deserves,” I said afterwards.
“Well, perhaps, but it hasn’t happened yet, has it? I mean, if you were trying to learn some openings as black you wouldn’t waste a lot of time on openings which you don’t think you’ll ever meet, would you? You’re probably right to say that sooner or later I’ll meet a decent player who will work out how to beat it even though he’s never seen it before, but until then I think I’ll keep using it. It’s fun seeing the look on the other person’s face when I do it, too. Most of them seem to think I’m either mad, or that I don’t know how to play chess at all.”
“Then maybe I should try learning a mad opening too,” I said. “If it works for you…”
“Ah, but are you a good enough player to get away with it? I really don’t think you are.”
“Hey, watch it! Any more cheek from you and I’ll teach you a serious lesson next time you come round!”
“I’d like to see you try!”
“You just wait! So – can you come round again tomorrow?”
“Sorry. We’re going out. But I’m going to try to keep next Tuesday free – and perhaps we can do something in the holidays, too… if you want to, of course.”
“Of course I want to! I really like you coming round, even if you are crap at wide screen chess.”
“Guess who’s going to lose next time we play?”
“You are, obviously!”
And so on and so forth. It was odd how much I had come to like Danny – after all, we really didn’t have a lot in common apart from chess. Different age, different religion, different circumstances – and yet when he talked about it being ‘almost as if we were brothers’ the previous week it had felt right. Sparring with him over a chessboard was a lot of fun.
Because Danny wasn’t available Chris and I both spent Tuesday evening indoors, although once I’d done my homework I spent quite a bit of the evening talking to Jeremy online. He looked a lot happier than he had the first time I had seen him: although Kenton was still sniping at him on their way to and from school he said it didn’t bother him quite as much as it had when he had felt completely isolated. He persuaded me to spend a fair bit of the conversation not wearing my glasses, which I wasn’t entirely happy about, for two reasons: first, it meant that I couldn’t see him properly – and he was definitely worth looking at – and second, it suggested that he thought I looked so gross with my specs on that he could hardly bear to look at me. He didn’t actually say so, of course, but what else was I supposed to think?
Still, apart from that I enjoyed our conversation, even if we didn’t talk about anything very important, and at least I got to look at him for most of the time we were connected.
When I went round to Silvio’s the following evening I found that he’d already dealt with his boots himself: he said he wanted to be able, to spend as long as possible being sucked. So I did my best to oblige, stopping frequently to tease him by stroking or kissing other parts of his body. I only realised I’d gone a bit far when he was getting dressed again after what he said was a particularly good orgasm.
“Kevin,” he asked me as he did up his belt, “are you gay?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, all that stuff you did tonight – and it’s not as if you’ve made any effort to get out of sucking me, either. I don’t think I could do that even if I had agreed to do whatever I was told.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say, firstly because I hardly knew him, and secondly because I’d always had the impression that Italians pride themselves on being seriously macho men – in which case they might easily not like gays very much. So I said nothing.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t care if you are, and I’m not going to tell anyone, because if I did you probably wouldn’t do that for me any more, and I really don’t want you to stop because it feels unbelievable.”
“Well… okay, I suppose I am,” I said. “But I’ve never had a boyfriend or anything, so I don’t really know what being gay is supposed to be like.”
“I expect it’s like being interested in girls: most of the time you can only think about them, and even if you get a girlfriend she probably won’t want to do very much. I reckon you’d have to be really lucky to be able to have sex before you’re at least sixteen.”
I don’t think I’d ever really thought about that. Ever since I’d realised I was gay I’d been under the impression that life was much harder for us than it was for hetero boys, but perhaps I’d been wrong: first it had been Chris telling me that getting off with a girl wasn’t easy, and now here was Silvio saying the same thing. Of course, knowing that it wasn’t easy for other people to find a partner didn’t make it any easier for me, but at least it suggested that I wasn’t quite as isolated as I’d thought. Perhaps all boys had trouble in this area, and not just gay ones…
Jason
I really didn’t understand how it had happened. Two months previously my sex life had been confined to having a quick wank in the bathroom now and again, but somehow everything had changed. It was nothing to do with puberty, that was for sure: my pathetic little prick hasn’t grown a millimetre since Christmas (I know, because I keep measuring it in case), and I’m starting to think that Luke will get pubes before I do. I fucking hate being a midget…
But ever since Kev Stratford started coming round things have got a lot more interesting. I suppose it really got started the night he made me and Luke toss each other off, because that’s when I found out that my kid brother is a randy little sod: until then I hadn’t thought that he even knew what his prick was for. And then we started playing video games for forfeits…
I must have been a right pillock to agree to that, because he spends way longer on his PS than I do, but I suppose everybody thinks he’s better at everything than his kid brother, and since the bet was that the loser had to toss the winner off, I went for it: having someone else do it felt way better than doing it yourself, even if the ‘someone else’ was my kid brother. Anyway, I lost, as I should have known I would, and I had to toss him off, except he wouldn’t let me just do it – no, I had to strip naked first ‘to make it more embarrassing’, he said.
So I stripped off and he took the piss out of me for a bit, commenting on how small my bits are, mainly… and for some reason that made me go hard. So when Luke had finished laughing he made me stand still while he measured it, and when he found out it was still only three inches he laughed some more. And this is where it gets weird, because I found that I really liked seeing him like that, laughing and having a good time, even though it was me he was laughing at.
I guess it’s not always easy being a kid brother. As it happens, me and the Microbe have always got on fairly well, but I suppose I’ve pushed him about sometimes, and told him what to do, and whenever we’ve had an argument I’ve always won because I’ve threatened to beat him up if he doesn’t just shut up. So… maybe I thought he deserved a chance to be on top for a change or something, but whatever it was, I sort of got a kick out of watching him. And then he stripped off as well and lay down on the bed, and I tossed him off. And he loved it, and actually I enjoyed doing it to him, too – at any rate, mine was still well stiff when I finished.
Of course, that just got him teasing me some more, and when I said I was going to the toilet to deal with it he said no, I had to do it right there in front of him. I could have just walked out – he’s hardly big enough to stop me, and the forfeit had only been to toss him off, but I sort of wanted to let him go on teasing me, and so I did it lying on the bed.
And since then it’s happened several more times. Once or twice he’s wanked me off after I’ve done it to him, and that feels nice, but usually he makes me do it to myself. And it’s fun… but it still worries me a bit, and so I’d just about decided that I had to talk to someone about it, and the only person I could think of was Kevin. He was due to come round to mine that Thursday, so instead of him going home first and then coming round to mine later, I invited him to come straight home with us after school and stay for supper.
Of course, the problem with sharing a room is that it’s difficult to have a private conversation, but once Luke and I had changed out of our school uniforms I said I wanted to show Kev how the attic conversion was coming along, and that meant that I was able to get him up the new staircase and into the roof space while Luke stayed in our room. I led Kev up to the far end, the bit that’s going to be my room, or the Microbe’s - assuming it gets finished before we both die of old age, that is – and we sat down on a couple of the old kitchen chairs my dad keeps up there.
“Look,” I started. “I reckon we’re mates now… I mean, we are, aren’t we?”
“We are as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
“Good, because I’ve got a problem… well, it’s not really a problem, more… see I don’t want people to think I’m weird…fuck, this is difficult.”
“Just tell me what’s bothering you,” he said. “I won’t care, because I already think you’re weird.”
“Fuck off, Six-eyes,” I said, giving him the finger. Those glasses of his count as four eyes just on their own, I reckon. “Anyway, look…”
I finally managed to tell him about me and the Microbe and how I didn’t mind him taking the piss out of me, and how I kept challenging him to games even though I knew I’d probably lose.
“I mean, that has to be weird, doesn’t it?” I ended.
“Well… I suppose it is, a bit. But I know how you feel, sort of – after all, Chris has been taking the piss out of me since he caught me wanking, and I’ve got to the stage where I don’t actually mind any more. At least we talk to each other a lot more now than we used to. We’re probably tighter than we used to be, and that’s good. And I know you and Luke get on pretty well – at least, from what I’ve seen when I’ve been here – and if you like someone, maybe it’s not so weird to want them to be happy.
“Put it this way: would you act the same way if it wasn’t your brother? Say you and me played video games – would you want me taking the piss out of you when you lost?”
“Well, no… except maybe if it was you it wouldn’t bother me that much, ‘cos, like I said, we’re mates. But I still wouldn’t challenge you to a game I thought I was going to lose.”
“There you are, then: you’re not really weird, you just like your brother and want him to be happy. There’s nothing much wrong with that.”
“Well… maybe you’re right,” I said. I wasn’t completely convinced, especially since I knew I’d actually fantasised about Luke doing much worse stuff to me, but Kev was right to say that I didn’t think about anyone else like that. So perhaps I was subconsciously trying to make up for years of telling the Microbe what to do, and stuff.
We went back down to the bedroom, and after supper, once Kevin had cleaned Luke’s boots, we got the cards out. We were using the marked cards, and so of course Kevin lost, and that gave us another opportunity for us to watching him tossing himself off. And of course it also gave the Microbe a chance to draw some distinctly unflattering comparisons between Kev’s physique and mine.
“Bet you won’t be able to do that for years!” he commented as Kevin spurted onto himself.
“Well, you won’t be able to either,” I retorted.
“Bet I can do it before you!”
“I don’t think so.”
We let Kev get dressed and go home, and then Luke challenged me to a video game, and soon I was the one with no clothes on. He teased me some more, measured me again, pointed out that mine was about half the size of Kev’s and then pushed me onto the bed and started playing with it for me.
“I wonder if you can get drugs to stop someone having puberty?” he mused. “It’d be well funny to make you take them so you still look like this when you’re twenty. And by then I’d be twice as big as Kevin, so I’d be able to show you up every day. God, you’d be so ashamed…”
I thought that would be going too far – way too far – so perhaps my weirdness is limited after all. Although I did wonder how I’d feel if Luke did reach puberty before me. Part of me absolutely hated the idea – God knows I want to start growing right away, not after my brother – but there was just a little whisper in my brain that said that it might be interesting if that happened, provided I was only just behind him, of course. And if he was going to carry on wanking me off as well as he was right now, it would almost be a price worth paying. So the weirdness might have limits, but it’s definitely still there…
Kevin
Nothing out of the ordinary happened at football practice and nobody looked at me in a funny way, so it looked as if Silvio had kept his mouth shut. Dwayne collared me at one point to make sure that I would be coming round to his house on Sunday afternoon – of course he’d missed out for the previous two weeks – and I assured him that I would be there, and Lee took me to one side and told me to go to Freddie’s house the following morning for our next sex education lesson.
But after supper that evening I did get a bit of a surprise: my mobile rang, and it turned out to be Peter Kenton.
“I didn’t give you my number, did I?” I asked.
“No, I got it from Millefin – basically I told him that either he gave it to me, or me and my mates would strip him naked and drag him all round the school. He seemed to think that giving me your number was the better choice.”
“And would you have actually done it?”
“Probably not. It would have been well funny but we might have got suspended, or even excluded, and my dad would have gone into one if that had happened. Anyway, I wanted to ask if you can come down tomorrow afternoon. I’m taking Millefin for a walk in the woods, and I thought you might like to come and watch. Unless he’s given you your money back, of course. Has he?”
“No, not yet.”
“There you are, then. Check what time the trains are and text me what time you’re coming and I’ll meet you at the station. Try to get there for around three if you can.”
Once he’d hung up I opened Skype and tried to call Jeremy, but he was offline. I kept it open in case he was still having his supper, and while I was waiting I checked the trains and found that I could catch one that would get me to Jeremy’s local station at quarter to three. I decided that I wasn’t going to go unless I had a chance to discuss it with Jeremy first, though, and so I basically twiddled my thumbs until Jeremy came online half an hour later.
“Oh, God, no!” was his reaction when I told him about Kenton’s invitation. “Don’t, please? I really don’t want you to see… well, you know.”
“I think I should come,” I replied. “You know I’m not going to laugh at you, and actually you’d also know that I’m on your side, so it would be like having some moral support. And maybe I can persuade Kenton that putting you through all that is going too far.”
“That wouldn’t work. I don’t think anything will make him give it up.”
“You don’t know unless we try. And you said yourself that he could have made life a lot harder for you, but hasn’t, so maybe there’s a part of him that still likes you. We’d just have to find a way of bringing that part out.”
“I think it’s just that as long as he keeps it quiet he can go on taking my money,” he said.
“Well, anyway, I want to try, so I’m going to be there,” I told him. “It’s not like I haven’t been in the same situation, more or less, remember? And nothing is going to make me think badly of you, whatever he makes you do.”
He argued for a bit longer but eventually accepted that I’d made my mind up. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to find a way to make Kenton ease up on him, but I was determined to try.
On Saturday morning I went to Freddie’s place once again, but this time his sister was babysitting, and that meant that we had to be a lot more careful. Not that I’d got any new photos for them – while I was sure Mark could have found me some material depicting actual sex, I was pretty sure it would be illegal and I hadn’t wanted to ask him to do that. So I settled for explaining the mechanics of what went where, referring to the photos I had shown them the previous week.
It would be fair to say that neither of them showed a lot of enthusiasm for trying it out.
“That seems weird,” said Lee. “Why would anyone want to do that? I mean, I understand that you have to if you’re married and want to have a baby, but otherwise, why? It sounds disgusting!”
“I suppose it does, but it’s supposed to feel really, really good. Obviously I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t know for sure, but that’s what people say. I mean, it sounds a bit disgusting when you talk about touching another boy’s willy, but you both know that feels nice, so perhaps it’s a bit like that.”
“Yes, but I don’t know any girls – actually I don’t even like girls,” said Lee. “And I’d never let a girl see me undressed.”
“You might find that you feel differently about it once you reach puberty.”
“I don’t think so. I think I’d much rather just go on doing things with Freddie.”
Of course that was the perfect opening for me to tell them about some other things he could do with Freddie, but something held me back: I wasn’t sure if I ought to be encouraging them to do things that were out-and-out gay in case they did start getting interested in girls in a year or to, in which case they might wish they hadn’t done too much with each other.
But on the other hand, they might be going to grow up gay, or at least bisexual, in which case maybe I should tell them about stuff they could do with each other… I couldn’t make up my mind, so I decided to play safe and say nothing unless they actually asked me about it.
We spent most of the rest of the morning playing chess – which was, after all, one of the excuses for me being there. But as I was getting ready to leave Freddie grabbed me and asked if they could come to my house again the following week.
“And can you find some more photos?” he added. “I enjoyed looking at those.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised.
After lunch I caught the bus to the station and then took the train I’d looked up the previous evening. I’d texted Kenton to tell him when I’d be arriving, and when the train reached his station I found him waiting in the ticket office.
“Where’s Blondie?” I asked.
“We’ll pick him up on the way. So why did you decide to come? The train fare must have been more than the £2 you’re aiming to get back.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to do and I thought it might be interesting to see what happens,” I said. “Even if I still don’t really understand why you’re so mad at him.”
“Maybe he’ll decide to explain it to you later. Just accept that he deserves a lot worse than he’s going to get from me.”
We walked on as far as Jeremy’s house. Kenton rang the bell, and Jeremy himself answered the door. And he really didn’t seem happy to see me…
Peter
The expression on Millefin’s face when he sees Specs standing beside me is well funny – he looks like someone has just told him his balls are diseased and they’ll have to be cut off. Not that he’d notice the difference, because his balls are pathetically small and I don’t think he knows what they’re for anyway. But he certainly doesn’t look happy.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
“I had nothing else to do,” says Specs, “and I thought I’d come and see what happens to you when you don’t pay up on time. Of course, if you’ve got my two quid I’ll just take it and go back home.”
Obviously Millefin hasn’t got it.
“Come on, then,” I say, “let’s go for a little walk in the woods.”
He’s lucky it’s a nice day – it’s actually warm for the middle of March. In a way that’s a pity, because I like seeing him shivering, but on the other hand it means that I won’t get cold later on when I take some of my own kit off. And I can always make him jump in the pond if he looks too comfortable.
So I head off back up the road to the place where you can climb over the fence, and they both follow me without saying anything. Getting over the fence is easy – even a little poof like Millefin can do it – and once we’re across we head on through the field until we meet the track, and once that’s taken us into the wood I lead them off to the right, to where we used to play when it was hot, because there’s this little lake there that you can swim in. And of course that’s where it happened… anyway, I take them down to the little clearing that’s about twenty yards from the water. There are trees all round, so nobody can see you unless they creep up on you, and I didn’t think anyone was likely to do that.
“Did you bring a towel?” I ask, and Millefin shakes his head.
“Well, I could just make you go in anyway and then drip dry,” I say, “but I was thinking ahead, so I’ve brought one. Well, don’t just stand there: get your clothes off!”
Normally he doesn’t argue – he just gets on with it. But today he’s much more reluctant: he’s obviously not happy with an extra spectator. Or Specs-tator, which I don’t say because Millefin’s got no sense of humour. So he’s standing there dithering, and so I go and cut a nice piece of springy stick from one of the trees. I swish it a couple of times, and he gets the message and starts to strip.
I wonder if Specs is going to say anything. I know Millefin’s been whinging to him, so maybe he’s hoping Specs is going to stick up for him. But he doesn’t – instead he just stands there watching. I don’t suppose he’s seen an older boy being ordered to strip by a younger one before.
Eventually Millefin gets down to his underpants.
“Why are you wearing boxers?” I ask. “Those are meant for bigger boys than you. You really ought to be wearing frilly pink knickers or something. Maybe we’ll have to buy some for you. That would be well funny when you have to change for Games or PE.”
I wouldn’t actually do that, of course. Yes, it would be funny as hell, but some teacher would be sure to notice and start asking questions, and even if Millefin didn’t want to grass me up they’d probably get it out of him in the end. But the expression on his face is worth it on its own. Maybe we’ll have to get a couple of pairs he can wear at weekends.
Finally he takes them off.
“Now turn to face us so we can see what a big boy you are!” I tell him.
Of course he’s nothing like ‘big’ – it would be pretty average on a ten-year-old. It’s thin and pale, and although he can get it up to a massive three and a half inches – just about - when it goes hard, right now it’s small and floppy. Specs is staring at him – perhaps he’s never seen a fourteen-year-old with one that small before, and Millefin is staring at the ground and trying not to cry. This is definitely better with an audience…
“Put your shoes back on,” I tell him. “We’re going for a walk.”
We’ve done this a couple of times before, leaving his clothes behind here and walking further into the wood. It makes him nervous for some reason.
“How come he gets to wear shoes?” asks Specs.
“There’s too many brambles and things,” I tell him. “We did try doing it without the first time, but he got thorns in his feet, so now I let him keep his shoes on. I might make him take them off once we get out into the field, though.”
That makes Millefin look up, because I’ve never made him go away from the trees before, but he has the sense not to say anything. So once his shoes are done up we head away from the pond, and this time I take him right out into the field. Actually it’s not so much a field as a piece of open ground between two arms of the wood, and it’s also at the bottom of a slope, which means that we’re probably not going to be seen by anyone unless there are other kids playing in the woods somewhere.
Once we’re out in the open Millefin starts holding his hands over his balls, but I’m not having that, and so I get a piece of string out of my pocket and use it to tie his hands together behind his back. Now he tries to walk sort of stopped over, but I’m not going to allow that either, and so I flick at his bum with my stick and tell him to stand up straight. He gets the message and starts to walk normally, but he’s definitely not happy.
We reach the far side of the open space, but instead of going into the wood I take us up the edge of the trees until we reach the top of the slope. Here we’re in full view of the railway line.
“Next train should be along in about fifteen minutes,” I point out. “Let’s try to find a nice tree to tie him to, so everyone on the train gets a good look.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” says Specs. “If the driver sees him he’ll probably report it. I don’t think we really want the cops coming after us, do we?”
“Perhaps not,” I agree, though I’m not sure that I’d have actually done it in the first place: it would be a bit risky, especially now that everyone has a mobile phone. If someone on the train took a photo they might be able to identify him, and then we’d all be in the shit.
So instead I take them back into the wood, following the path that marks where the old railway used to be. It was closed long before we were born and the rails were taken up, but you can still follow the course the line used to take. Millefin’s a bit happier to be back under the trees, although we have met other people on this track from time to time, so it’s nothing like as safe as our place next to the little lake. It’d be funny if we met some kids, but I’m listening carefully because it would be bad if we met any grown-ups.
Before the track reaches the south end of the wood I take us down the embankment and into the thickest part of the wood, and you can see Millefin relax a bit. But I’m pretty sure that won’t last once we get onto the main event of the afternoon, and so I lead them both by the shortest route back to the clearing. I take a quick look around the edges to make sure nobody’s hiding there and then undo my jeans.
“Oh, no,” says Millefin, and now he looks like he’s about to burst into tears, “not today, please!”
“’Fraid so,” I say, and I shove my jeans and boxers down to my ankles. I’m usually hard when we get to this stage, but today it’s even harder than usual – I suppose I really like the idea of making him do this in front of an audience. And again Specs doesn’t say anything or try to stop me, though he is staring at my dick. I hope he’s comparing it with Millefin’s…
Kevin
I knew this was coming, of course, but even so I wasn’t really ready for it, and I didn’t have any idea what to do. Should I try to interfere or not? In the end I decided not to, mainly because I knew that if I did Kenton would simply take it out of Jeremy sometime later when I wasn’t around, but also because if I was going to have any realistic chance of talking him into easing up on Jeremy I had to avoid antagonising him.
Of course I should be honest here and admit that this was interesting: Kenton had a really big one for his age, and it looked extremely hard, too. I found myself thinking that I wouldn’t mind swapping places with Jeremy… And of course, although I’d done this myself several times and even been on the receiving end a couple of times, this was the first time I’d had an opportunity to watch other people in action.
“How big is that?” I asked him.
“Just under five inches,” he replied proudly.
“Not bad,” I said, thinking that this made it bigger than anyone I had seen so far, except maybe Dwayne, who was about the same size.
Jeremy begged in a rather half-hearted way not to have to do it – obviously he knew Kenton wasn’t going to let him off – and then shuffled forwards on his knees and started to suck it.
I could have taught Jeremy a few things to try, although I don’t think he was actually trying to do anything other than get it over with, in which case the techniques I’d learned with Mark might not have been called for. But it didn’t take them long to finish even without extras: pretty soon Kenton tensed up and shoved his hips forward, pulling Jeremy’s head towards him at the same time, and the expression on his face suggested that Jeremy was doing an excellent job.
Afterwards he pushed Jeremy away and pulled up his boxers and jeans.
“Fancy a go?” he asked me.
“No thanks,” I said. “Getting sucked off by a boy seems a bit gay to me.”
“Suit yourself,” said Kenton, not rising to the bait: I’d expected him either to defend what he’d just done or to out Jeremy, but he did neither, just telling Jeremy to get dressed.
“You can go,” he added, once Jeremy was dressed. “You didn’t whinge once today – well, not really – and that was a good suck, too, so I’ll let you off getting whipped. Doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it every week, of course…”
“Okay, thanks,” mumbled Jeremy, and he jogged away without looking at me.
“I’ll walk back to the station with you,” said Kenton.
“Okay,” I said, and followed him as he took me back to the track but then followed it away from the road instead of following it back towards his house.
“So you see what a laugh it is having a slave?” he said.
“Well, yes, I suppose it must be good being able to push him about, especially with him being older than you. Except…”
“What? Okay, what’s he told you? Has he been whinging again?”
“No, not really. I mean, it’s obvious he doesn’t like doing any of that stuff, but he didn’t really complain the last time we spoke. I think what he really hates is… well, after seeing what I just saw I’d expect him to hate you, but he doesn’t. What he hates is the fact that you’re not friends any more.”
“That’s his fault.”
“Yes, I know, and so does he. That’s probably why he doesn’t try too hard to get out of doing what you tell him – he sort of thinks he deserves it for messing being friends with you”
“And he’s right, and all.”
“Is he? Does he really deserve losing all his allowance, and getting made to suck you all the time? That seems a bit much to me.”
“That’s because you don’t know what he did.”
“I do, actually. He told me. And I can see it was a shock to you, but it didn’t exactly cripple you for life, or turn you into a raving queer, did it? And it’s not like it’s his fault he’s gay, either. Nobody asks to be gay – it’s like I didn’t ask to be born with crappy eyesight, but it still happened. Besides, so what if he is gay? It’s not that unusual – it’s supposed to be one in ten, or one in twenty, depending who you believe, so what’s the big issue?”
“But it’s wrong! It’s disgusting!”
“Yes, I suppose it is for you, but if a boy admired my physique – which is about as likely as me becoming Pope, but still – I’d be flattered. And I think most people feel like that. There’s a boy in my brother’s football team who’s gay, but nobody has a problem with it, and everyone seems to like him. So why is it different for you?”
“Yes, but he touched me!”
“So what? I’ve just watched him touching you for about three minutes non-stop. It hasn’t turned you into a queer, has it?”
“No, but that’s not the point! I don’t want some poof perving over me!”
“He’s not ‘some poof’. You were his best friend. And since I got involved in this I’ve found myself wondering how come you still haven’t really taken him to pieces. Back there, when I said getting sucked was gay, it was the perfect opening for you to say something like, ‘He’s the gay one’, but you still didn’t. And it would be as easy as anything for you to get your mates to come round here at the weekend and join in, but you haven’t, and he says you haven’t even told your mates he’s gay. Seems to me like you’re protecting him.”
“Course I am – that’s what he pays me for, isn’t it?”
“Oh, come on – he knows that he couldn’t do anything about it if you got your mates involved. The one thing he’s frightened of is having it spread all over the school that he’s gay, and that’s why he’s paying you to keep it quiet – except I really don’t think you’d do that even if he stopped paying you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I think there’s a part of you that still likes him. I think if you really hated him the way you make out you’d treat him far worse – you’d torture him, and you’d bring your mates round to join in, and you’d probably out him at school as well, even if it did mean that he stopped paying you.”
“Yeah? Then how do you explain me asking you to come, then?”
“I think you wanted to find out how it felt doing it in front of someone else, and you picked me because I don’t go to your school and so couldn’t drop Jeremy in it even if I turned out to really hate queers.”
He didn’t say anything. By now we’d skirted round the edge of the trees, but this time heading north, and we’d just picked up the course of the old railway again. He led me along it into the trees once more.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, stopping. “Am I right?”
He shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “Yes, I suppose you’re right about some of it, but not everything. And there’s no way I’m going to give it up. If you’d ever been sucked you wouldn’t, either, because it’s an amazing feeling. And being able to make him run about in the woods naked is fun, too. I love being able to control a boy who’s so much older than me.”
“Okay, I get that. But you’re still careful not to let anyone else see him, aren’t you? I could see the way you were listening out while we were following the track earlier.”
“Yes, but only because if we got caught they’d make us stop doing it, and I’d probably get into trouble.”
“Okay. But do you still like him? Even a little bit?”
“Well… yeah, I suppose so – but I hate him being a poof. It’s sort of taken us being friends and pissed all over it, and I can’t forgive him for that.”
“It’s not his fault, Kenton – being gay, I mean. And he feels a lot worse about it than you do.”
“Why doesn’t he stop being queer, then?”
“You can’t stop being queer. Like I said, it’s like asking me why I don’t make my eyes better so I don’t need glasses. If I could, I would, trust me. And probably if he could stop being gay he would, too. I think it’s going to be hard enough for him growing up gay without his best friend beating him up for it too.”
“We’re not best friends any more.”
“But you were, and you could be again. Look, maybe he won’t mind going on sucking you, or even playing with you out here naked sometimes, but… come on, nicking all his money? Isn’t that going a bit too far?”
He opened his mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything. Instead he started walking again, and before too long he left the course of the old railway to follow a much narrower path which emerged into the turning circle at the end of a cul-de-sac.
“Look, just think about it,” I said, as we reached the far end of the cul-de-sac that turned out to be right next to the entrance to the station. “You liked him before. Nothing’s actually changed, you just found out about something that he can’t do anything about. I know I only just met him, but he seems okay to me…”
“For a pervert,” he said. “All right, you say he can’t change what he is, but I really can’t forgive him for fucking things up like he did.”
“Try,” I said. “Because even if he did mess with your head, it was months ago and he doesn’t deserve to go on suffering like he is. Anyway, it’s none of my business, I suppose, even if you did invite me here, so you’ll have to sort it out yourself. But think about it, and try to imagine how he feels.”
I turned and walked into the station car park, and after a moment he headed off in the opposite direction. I didn’t know whether I’d helped or not, but I’d thought it had to be tried.
****************************
Will Peter take a blind bit of notice of Kevin's comments, or is he having far too much fun? All will be revealed – but not just yet.
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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