Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2018 11:59:34 +0100 (CET)
From: Proton <protonelectron@tutanota.com>
Subject: The Long and the Short of It

Title: The Long and the Short of It

Author: Proton

Summary: Paul loves the simplicity of dating Monica.  But when her 9yo son
Jesse is added into the mix, his perfect situation becomes complicated.
And as Jesse awakens a side of him that he never expected, that's not the
only surprise he finds.

Keywords: MF, Mb


Author's Note: This story is dedicated to Zachyboy, who always breathed
such life into each of his stories and characters.  And to everyone who
looked down at a boy one day and found him looking up with stars in his
eyes.  There's no instruction manual, but many of you have done your best
anyway.  It all pays off in the end.  This one turned out long.  Please
feel free to send me email at protonelectron@tutanota.com.  Donate what you
can to your favorite story archive site.  Best to you and all of your young
friends.


The Long and the Short of It

by Proton


When I started dating Monica, I thought it was an ideal situation.  She was
a single parent and didn't want to bring guys home.  So we had a lot of
fun.  A couple of times a week, she'd leave her kid with a sitter and we'd
have a couple drinks and head back to my place.  I'd get her home safe and
say goodbye on the sidewalk.  It was low maintenance and low commitment.
And the sex was guaranteed.  Nothing's perfect, but it all worked out
pretty well.

Of course, nothing lasts forever, either.  Especially my luck.

Monica's sitter started flaking on her.  First we just had to call things
off early so she could get home.  Then the sitter started no-showing at
random.  This was no good for my sex life.  It wasn't even one month later
before I got a call from Monica in tears, saying she didn't know what to
do.  Her sitter had been arrested, and I got the full story, that the
sitter had been a high school friend that Monica had hired because she'd
fallen on hard times.  Unfortunately, after a while the sitter had gone on
to fall on drugs.  Then hard drugs.  That certainly explained the
unreliability.  The fight and stabbing at a party explained the jail time.
Monica hadn't been there, so the details were foggy, and the drama didn't
interest me in the first place.  I did my best to calm Monica and tell her
how lucky she was that it hadn't happened around her kid.  I was pretty
sure his name was Jesse.

"Well, I guess that's an end to date nights for a week," I told her.  "What
about another sitter?"

Monica sobbed.  "She was watching Jesse for free," she said.  "She could
help herself to whatever food we had around and occasionally I'd give her a
twenty."

That made sense to me.  Free food means more money for drugs.  That
wouldn't cause the problem, but it could sure help enable it.  Monica
probably didn't even know--druggies get pretty good at hiding it.

"Okay, so... you can't afford a sitter.  What does that mean for us, then?"

As Monica gathered her emotions, I did my best to swallow a sigh.  I don't
know why I even asked her.  I knew what it meant.  I had a good thing
going, but I didn't like kids and she didn't want the guy of the week
hanging around.  On top of the problems with his sitter?  It was certainly
over.

"Paul," she said.  A small pause later, she said, "How would you like to
meet Jesse?"

A wave of shock rolled down from my head and washed along my body.  "Are
you sure?"  It was my turn to gather my feelings together.  "I thought you
wanted to keep things stable for him at home."

We'd been seeing each other for months, but I wasn't under any illusions.
We weren't exclusive, and I guessed there were other guys.

"I do.  I do, Paul.  But it's been practically all year, and I think maybe
there's something between us.  I'd like to see and find out."

I thought about this.  The sex was good, and I could put up with a kid on
occasion if the reward was worth it.  And with Monica, the rewards were
worth it.

"All right, sure.  What were you thinking?"

That's how I found myself at a McDonald's the next day, waiting in the
parking lot like a chump.  What definitely felt like longer than five
minutes later, Monica drove into the parking lot and parked a few spaces
over.  I got out and walked over.

"Paul!" she said.  She had that smile I loved and threw her arms around me.
We kissed.  It was a good kiss, but a little more enthusiastic on her end
than usual.  Then she broke away and said, "Let's save that for later.  I
want you to meet Jesse."

We stood next to the car as the back door opened and a boy climbed down
from a booster seat, holding the door handle with one hand as he jumped to
the ground with a tablet in the other hand.

"Hi, I'm Jesse," he said in an unenthusiastic monotone.  What a polite
little robot.

"Close the door, Jesse, and come on," Monica stated.  "Remember what I said
about your best behavior."  The kid rolled his eyes as he turned to shut
the door.  Not a robot, after all.  Real charmer.

We started for the restaurant once the door was shut all the way, and he
followed behind.  I tried to think of ways to make a good impression.  He
had Monica's Mediterranean complexion, but I had no idea how old he was.
Ten?  I had no idea what ten-year-olds were into anyway, so I guess that
didn't matter.  He didn't look like he was too into sports, which was a
thought I immediately regretted.  He wasn't overweight, just had a little
bit of a belly, and with his mom working long hours and no father in the
picture, I couldn't really blame him for not getting enough exercise.  It
was a rude thing to think in any case.

I told him to get whatever he wanted, and to my surprise he ordered a
Filet-o-Fish instead of a Happy Meal.  I got one of the signature burgers
which were a lot tastier than you might expect from McDonalds, and Monica
got a chicken club.

"We'll bring your order to your table when it's ready," the cashier
chirped, and between tableside service at McDonalds and sitting to eat with
a woman and her kid I felt disoriented, like maybe I'd woken up in a
parallel universe.  Not the weird kind where nothing makes sense, but the
classy kind where everything's the same except that water makes you drunk,
or pizza was made illegal after the war.

Small talk was less entertaining than those thoughts.

"So, Jesse.  Your mom's very proud of you."

"I know," he said, staring into his tablet.

"Uh, you're such a big boy.  How old are you now?"

"Nine," he said.

"Wow."  I concentrated.  "That's pretty big."  I had no idea if it was.
"Do you like video games?"

Jesse's eyes rolled before returning to his tablet.  "Every kid likes video
games."

"Well, we'll have to compare favorites some time."

That caught him by surprise, because he hesitated for a second.  Then his
eyes lifted over the tablet and met mine.  "*You* like video games?"

"Of course I do!" I said.  "Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty...."  I
exhausted my list of games.  I hadn't played very often in a long time, and
hoped those games were still around.

But it was enough.  His eyes widened in surprise.  "Wow," he said.  "I
guess you're kind of cool."

The food came.  The tablet went away while Jesse ate.  Monica beamed at me,
happy that Jesse and I had hit it off.  It was progress.

When we finished eating, Jesse's tablet reappeared in his hands as if by
magic.  Monica put her head on my shoulder and said "Thank you so much for
dinner.  What do you say, Jesse?"

"Thank you," he droned automatically.

"Jesse," she said again.  "What do you think about Paul coming over and
visiting for a bit tonight?"

"Sure," he said.  Then he glanced up.  "Do you have your games with you?"

I chuckled at his earnestness.  I did not, in fact, have my Xbox 360 in my
trunk in case I ran across a TV plugged in by the side of the road.  "Not
today," I said.  I looked at Monica.  "But maybe I can bring them with me
some other time?"

"Cool," said Jesse into the tablet, and he smiled.  Monica smiled, too.

I joined them in smiling and hoped Jesse fell asleep early.

***

At Monica's place, we watched some TV.  Nothing special, just some sitcoms.
Jesse sat between us.  I was annoyed at first, but he alternated between
leaning against Monica and leaning against me, and that was kind of funny.
We'd known each other for about an hour or two, and he seemed comfortable
enough around me. I tried to remember how long it had taken me to get used
to new people when I was a kid.  Not very long.  I guess back then I just
sort of took adults for granted.

He was leaning against me when he laughed alongside us at a joke from the
show and then looked up at me and said, "Was that funny?"  I smiled down at
him and said, "Yeah, Jesse, that was pretty funny."  He smiled and leaned
in closer as he went back to watching TV.

It dawned on me why people were so fond of kids.  Occasionally, they were
kind of nice.

***

Monica was moaning and straddling me on her bed, topless, grinding against
my cock.  She was wearing these great lilac-colored panties (or so she had
informed me--I wasn't picky), and I was still in my boxers, although
neither of us for very much longer.  I massaged her breasts and she leaned
down to kiss me.

When she started sliding down my boxers, I took the chance to ask "What
about Jesse?  He's just in the next room."

"Sleeps like the dead," she said, and then made a soft growl as she climbed
her way back on top of me.  I pulled her against me.

If it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me.

***

Two months later, we'd settled into a routine.  I'd visit Monica and Jesse
and we'd hang out until he went to sleep.  That's when the *real* fun
began.  Just as promised, Jesse could sleep through anything.  On weekends,
they'd come and visit me.  I was able to fulfill my promise to Jesse about
playing games together.  He wasn't exactly the perfect teammate while
playing co-op together, but he did seem to have a real knack for reading
the map and the terrain as he watched me play.

I knew the maps already, of course, but he could tell where ambushes were
being laid.  This was handy because for every three he announced that I
anticipated, he'd call out one that I hadn't.  I wasn't sure if it was
beginner's luck or if he was just looking at things more freshly than I was
as a veteran gamer.  Or maybe he just had more time to pay attention to the
little radar map in the top of the screen as I focused on the action and
scanning the terrain for enemies.  Either way, he was a pretty good ally.
Monica put up with us playing video games because she preferred him to be
playing with another person instead of by himself.  She'd watch a bit, but
would spend most of the time on her phone, catching up with news and
gossiping with girlfriends, I assumed.  We'd share time alone when Jesse
was sleeping, but it was nice to have a woman around even if you weren't
giving her your full attention.  And Jesse soaked up my attention as long
as I gave it.

It turned out that having a kid hanging around didn't mean you had to be
100% boring and strict after all.

***

Jesse's grades had always been average... sort of B's and C's with an A
here and there for variety.  But for his second report card since I'd
started spending time with them, he pulled three A's and all B's.  Monica
said it was because I was a good influence on him.  I hadn't done anything
special with him at all.  I just didn't ignore him--not that she did,
either.  But it was a massive improvement and cause for celebration.

We planned a trip to a local amusement park one weekend.  I lived closer,
so Monica drove over to my place after Jesse got off from school and they
were going to stay overnight for the first time.  We all watched TV on the
couch together.  Jesse did feel like an intruder to me anymore.  Sometimes
he'd snuggle happily in between us, or occasionally he'd even sit on one of
our laps.

We wanted to get up early.  It wasn't like Disneyland, where you had to
budget your time carefully, and it was a lot cheaper in any case.  But it
was still better to try and get in ahead of the crowds and the heat.

"Okay, honey, it's getting late," Monica said.  "Time for a bath."  I'd put
out towels for him ahead of time.

Jesse stretched in my lap and yawned.  "Do I have to?"

"Yes," I chimed in, "or else I'm going to throw you into the boysenberry
fields tomorrow and leave you there for fertilizer."

Jesse giggled and curled up into a ball.  "Is it really a farm?"

I smiled even though he couldn't see me.  "No, but it used to be.  But
there's lots of boysenberry stuff there and they still have the chicken
restaurant.  We'll eat there for dinner.  But no more stalling.  You rinse
off and I'll get the couch ready for you."

He uncurled a little.  "Can't I sleep with you and Mom?" he asked.

"No," I said.  "There's not enough room and I don't want you kicking one of
us out of bed.  Come on, get moving."

"Aw, all right," he moaned, and got up from my lap.  He padded out of the
room and down the hall.

"I can make us some Irish coffee," Monica said.

"That sounds great, love," I answered back.

She went to the kitchen and I started pulling the cushions off of the
couch.  The bed frame was in the air, half-unfolded, when I heard Jesse's
voice.

"Craig?"

I didn't look up.  "Yeah, Jess?"

"Craig, I don't know how to take a shower."

That caught me by surprise, and I dropped the frame harder than I meant to.
"You don't *what*?"

"I don't know how to adjust the water."

"Oh."  That sounded slightly more plausible.

I looked up from the fold-out bed, now deployed, and Jesse was standing
there naked.  I could see his side exposed from behind the couch, although
he didn't seem shy.  Just confused.  Monica came out of the kitchen with
two cups in her hand and froze.

"Jesse!" she exclaimed.  "What are you doing?"

He turned to face her and took a step back towards me.  "I need help with
the water."

I walked over to Jesse and said, "It's okay, I guess he doesn't know how to
work the knob on the shower.  I can show him."

Monica's face was hard to read by the light from the TV.  "You don't mind?"
I guessed she was embarrassed.

"It's no big deal.  I'll get him all squared away."

"Thanks, Paul," Jesse said, and turned and lifted his arms toward me.  I
picked him up and carried him to the bathroom.  Halfway there, I wondered
why he'd wanted picked up.  Maybe to give himself a little modesty?  I
wondered how I'd known to pick him up.  It had been an instinctual action.
I guessed having him look up to me was rubbing off on me.

His body was warm through my shirt, and his skin was soft in my arms.  His
arms were wrapped around me and he was sitting on my forearm, my hand
cupping the far side of his butt.  By the time I carried him into the
bathroom, I'd had time to reflect on how vulnerable he was, naked, pressed
against me.  But he was hugging me contentedly, not a care in the world, no
modesty, and no worries.

I felt the most peculiar swirl of emotions.  Part of me felt... shame?  On
his behalf.  That he was so naked and vulnerable.  But I was also proud
that he trusted me.  And I worried what it all meant.

Not because he was naked.  That didn't mean anything to me.  After all, he
was just a kid.  But I felt guilty somehow, like I was afraid to get caught
cheating on a test.  I wouldn't have been caught dead naked when I was
nine, and he was nearly ten.  I certainly hadn't done anything to earn that
kind of trust from him.

I put him down and he stood in front of me.  I could see his penis and
thought it must be cold in here, but he stood there like all was well in
the world.  I leaned over and pushed the switch on the old wall heater, and
then slid open the shower door and started adjusting the water.

Jesse oohed as the coils in the wall heater turned to a rusty color and
then slowly worked up to a warm, living orange glow.  He sighed and stuck
his butt out in a crouch, holding his arms in front of him at the heat, and
then turned around to warm his butt, then giggled as he stood and
straightened out.  The heat from the heater rose faster than he'd expected.

"Yeah, it's nice, but it gets hot fast," I said.  "Come on, see if the
water's okay."

Jesse walked over and tested the water hesitantly with his hand, then
jumped into the shower, turning around to wet himself all over.  "Thanks,
Paul!"

I slid the shower door closed and said, "No problem, Jess.  Use my body
wash and shampoo.  Towels are on the toilet seat."  Then I left and closed
the door behind me.

It made me feel strange, like I had been given trust I hadn't earned.  I
felt like I had to make sure I was worthy of it anyway.  I didn't know what
that meant.

I walked back into the living room, and Monica was waiting there with two
cups of coffee on the coffee table.

"Thank you for helping him.  I'm so sorry he came out like that," she said.

"No big deal," I said.  "Kids, right?"

Monica smiled and her posture relaxed a little.  She'd been worried.  I
thought we were beyond that point in our relationship, but she'd been so
worried about bringing me around Jesse in the beginning that it made sense.
Naked kids were a little scary, even if they tended to do that.  Was she
afraid it would scare me off?

She sounded a little hesitant.  "He's comfortable here.  It feels like home
to him.  Paul, he really looks up to you."

"Yeah, well, he's a cool kid.  You've really done a good job raising him."

"He always looks forward to you visiting.  I hope you know how much of a
good influence you've been."

I blinked.  "Me?  I haven't done anything?"

"You spend time with him.  You don't make fun of him.  You build him up.  I
think...."  Monica hesitated again.  "I think he hasn't had a male role
model in his life before.  I think that's making a difference.  It's
nothing special you're doing--"

"Thanks," I chuckled.

Monica came over to me.  "I didn't mean it like that," she said.  "You're
such a sweet guy.  Someone he can trust.  You hear all the time how boys
need strong male role models, but I hadn't realized how true that was.
You're good for him.  You're good for *me*, but I didn't realize he was
missing something, too.

I held Monica.  It wasn't complicated.  It was just human interaction.
Trust.  But it was more than that.  Compassion.  We started as just friends
with benefits, and that was great.  But over the months, we'd let each
other into our lives.  We were important to each other.  Even Jesse.

It'd happened without us even knowing it.

***

The visit to the amusement park was laid back.  Lots to do but no
particular rush.  Jesse marveled at the Mystery Lodge as the old
storyteller materialized around a small campfire and native American lore
took life around him.  At the end, he vanished into thin air, leaving his
walking stick to fall over next to the fire.  I thought it was charming, if
a simple trick.  Jesse was so enchanted that I didn't have the heart to
tell him about the Pepper's Ghost effect and break the spell.

We went on the log ride together--Monica preferred to wait for us, and he
sat between my legs on the bench seat.  He held my arms so tight at the end
as we were lifted up for the final drop, his "oh no, oh no!" barely audible
over the ratcheting clacks of the ride's conveyor system.  I heard the
"eeeeee!" over the rush of wind and water as we plummeted back down towards
ground level and had to spring for the photo, even if fifteen dollars was a
scam.

I hadn't been to the park since I was a kid, and it was comfortable and
familiar, but to Jesse, it was all new and exciting.  The dinosaur ride,
the magic shop, the arcade.  Even the themed restaurants were real to him.
I had a eerie kind of double-vision all day.  The park would've been a fun
variant of romantic with just Monica.  But having Jesse around made all the
pretend elements more real.

We kept the rapids raft ride until the end of the day, and of course Jesse
went right under the waterfall.  Luckily--and totally coincidentally, I'm
sure--they sold shirts and towels right outside of the ride exit.  I bought
two towels and a shirt and took Jesse into the bathroom to get him changed.
In the handicap-accessible stall, I put the towel around him as he stripped
down to nothing, and I rubbed him to get him started drying off.  I wrung
out his jeans the best I could, and his underwear, too, which I stuck in
his pants pocket.  I went over him quickly with the towel and helped him
get his jeans back on.  He was obviously freezing, because his balls were
nowhere to be seen, but I made sure to take care not to have any accidents
with the zipper.  I noticed that he was circumcised, with nothing but a
little round head visible due to the cold, and felt a sudden rush of
disapproval.  But Monica had never complained about my foreskin, so maybe
Jesse's dad had made the decision or she just hadn't known better when a
bunch of forms were shoved at her in the hospital.  I put it out of mind.
There was no polite way to bring it up and it was really none of my
business, no matter how protective I felt of Jesse.

On the way out of the park, he asked to be carried and I held him all the
way to the car because he dozed off.  Monica made him strip out of his
pants so he wouldn't get a rash, and he wore just the towel around him as I
drove them back to Monica's house.

It was a wonderful day, and before Monica pulled him out of the car, we
shared a long, passionate kiss.  I handed her his damp jeans once she had
him securely in her arms, and we wished each other good night.  Our own
private `amusement rides' would have to wait for another day.

As I drove home, I reflected on the unexpected contentment that was having
a boy fall asleep in my arms.

***

I knew I was getting soft.  Jesse was ten years old, but I felt guilty
about getting him violent video games for his birthday.  I bought him a Wii
U, and Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Mario World, and Just Dance.  Monica was
surprised when I insisted he open up his present last.  It was a good
instinct, though, because it was a big hit with all of the kids.  They all
played Mario Kart and Smash Bros. Against each other, arguing and screaming
and having a good time.  As the night went on, we switched to Just Dance,
and the adults that were arriving to pick up their kids were able to join
in, holding the gamepad and singing to the lyrics as the kids held old Wii
remotes and danced around like maniacs.  Little kids make the best dancers
because they have yet to fully develop a sense of shame.  It was ridiculous
fun and Jesse and his friends were as much into the dancing as the kart
racing.

After the last kids went home, Jesse came over to me and threw his arms
around me.  I knelt down and he hugged me again and I was startled to get a
kiss on the cheek.

"Thanks for an awesome birthday, Paul.  I love you," he said.  I hugged him
tight back.

It was the first time he told me that he loved me.  He was obviously
overtired from the party, but I wondered if the knot inside my chest was
love, too.

***

Monica was sick, and asked if I would mind watching Jesse for the weekend.
I had been expecting the both of them anyway, so it was not a big deal.  I
drove over to pick him up and he had packed up his Wii U to bring along.
That sounded like a good excuse to play Mario Kart together online, so I
double-checked that he had all the cables and then spent a moment saying
goodbye to Monica.  It wasn't quite as involved a goodbye as I wanted, but
it simply wouldn't do to get sick, too.

That Saturday was pretty routine.  Lots of lounging on the couch and making
fun of each other's racing skills.  I'd long since grown past ordering junk
instead of proper food to eat in my daily life, but I ordered pizza as a
special treat, and Jesse was very happy.  After dinner, I said that we were
going to change into pajamas, and when I came out of my room, I stretched
out on the couch.  I had set up Jesse's Wii U with my Netflix account, and
while I was selecting a movie, Jesse came out in Spiderman pajamas and
climbed on top of me on the couch.  I put my arms around him so he wouldn't
slide off of me or the couch as he fidgeted around and got comfortable.
The movie started--an old Jackie Chan film--and he scooted up so that his
cheek was resting against mine.  He seemed to be pressing himself against
me at every opportunity, and I patted his shoulders and occasionally rubbed
his back.

It was funny how comfortable we were together.  Only a year ago I disliked
kids, but Jesse had slowly wormed his way into my heart.  There was
something about the way that he looked up to me that made me want to be a
better man.  The worst part was that he didn't see me as some superhuman
that could do no wrong.  He just saw me as someone whom he could trust, no
matter what.  Some days that seemed superhuman anyway.

We lay together on the couch, and Jesse hugged and snuggled, and rubbed his
cheek against mine.  During an action scene I caught him from sliding, and
put my hand on his butt to keep him more or less in place.  He stretched
and wiggled a bit to find a comfortable spot to balance against me.

I was concentrating the movie when it hit me.  I had slowly been petting
his butt.  Not lewdly, but just affectionately like you might a toddler.
But it was what had drawn my attention that gave me pause.

I was laying on my back, slightly rotated to my right as I watched the TV.
Jesse was stretched out on top of me, balancing mostly on my side.

Under my hand where I held Jesse's butt, just above my hip, was a pressure.
Like a large ball bearing.  As he stretched and shifted, it remained the
same, and shifted with him.  It was something in his pocket, I had thought,
but it was soft at the same time it was hard.  And it gave off a faint
heat.

It slowly dawned on me what it must be.  But it didn't make any sense.  He
was ten and a half.  Not only was that too young to have an erection, but
he was flush against my side.  He'd have to be poking straight down and
into me, and that would have had to be extremely uncomfortable for him.  I
held him in my arms and said, "Hey, Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you all right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you comfortable?"

He stretched and sighed.  I felt that ball bearing push into my side.
"Yeah."

"Okay.  You can move if you're not."

"I am," he said, caressing his cheek against mine as he watched the movie.

I consciously moved my hand up from his butt and to his back, which I
rubbed languidly up and down.  I slid my hand under his pajama top and
rubbed his bare skin.  He purred.

I felt a tingly sensation across my body where he lay.  It shot over to the
center of my soles and to my penis as well, It twitched but didn't get
hard.  I was grateful for that at the least.  That would've been weird.

As Jesse shifted on top of me, the little hard ball shifted around between
us.  I tried to relax.  Spontaneous erections happened all the time, and I
could remember the occasional one as a kid.  At that age, I had had no idea
what caused them, but they still happened.  I would have been mortified if
they'd ever happened right now.  But Jesse was too young to realize he even
had one.  I put my other arm around him and held him close, and stroked his
back down to his bottom, and he relaxed even more and melted into me.  I
was glad he wasn't embarrassed or even aware of what was going on.

It was strange, but there was almost something primal about laying
together, just comfortable with body contact.  I knew from stroking his
body that he wasn't wearing underwear under his pajamas.  At least, nothing
I could feel.  I wondered again at the hardness I felt against my side, but
as he dozed off I remembered how vulnerable he was, and put those thoughts
out of my mind.  I started to drift to sleep, too.

If simple contentment could be captured in a single moment without external
complications, this was it.

***

I finally got a weekend alone with Monica because Jesse was staying with a
friend.  He was upset, but I promised him I'd take him by himself for a
weekend and we'd do guy things.  Then, once it was just Monica and me, we
stripped off all our clothes and had sex all weekend.  We only put clothes
back on so that we could drive over and pick Jesse up at the end.

>From then on, Jesse constantly asked when we would spend a weekend
together.  About a month and a half later, I decided it was time to take
him camping, because the timing worked out two different ways.  First of
all, spring had begun and the weather had warmed up, so the mountains would
likely be in bloom.  And secondly, if I had to listen to him ask me when we
were going to spend a weekend alone together for another week I was going
to have to abandon him in the wilderness anyway.

I picked Jesse from home and told him we were going to REI.  He asked what
that was, and when I said they sold camping supplies, he erupted into the
loud, high-pitched cheers and general out-of-control celebration that
always drove me insane before I'd spent two years with a kid.  It was
strange how your perspective could change like that.

I had a tent, but this was a good excuse to buy a new one, since mine was a
two-person backpacking tent.  More than big enough for Jesse and me, if we
lay next to each other, touching.  But not enough room for both of us and
our things, because we were going car camping, not backpacking.  I had no
intention of getting out of the tent to change because my clothes were in
the car.  Besides, a bigger tent would let Monica come along in the future.

We went up and down the aisles, looking at all the fancy equipment that
ranged from slightly overpriced all the way up to ludicrously overpriced.
But Jesse was fascinated by all of it.  I guess I had taken camping for
granted as a kid.  Jesse said he'd never gone.  So we went to the back and
I bought him some hiking boots, and those lightweight nylon hiking pants
that convert to shorts, and a couple quick-dry hiking shirts and a bucket
hat.  I'd have bought him a jacket, too, but I did want to eat at least
once before my next paycheck, so he'd have to make do with the windbreaker
I was sure I'd seen in his closet.

"Mom says I have to try things on to make sure they fit," he said as he
held the pants and examined the features listed on the tag.

"Yeah, well, that's a good idea, but I know your size so we'll just hold
them up to you and see if they look right.  They just come in small,
medium, and large, so if they don't fit, I'll just take them back and get
the next size.  You'll grow into some of this stuff anyway, if you like
camping."

He clutched the pants to his heart.  "We can go again and again?"  The look
in his eyes hit me.  I felt my heart float up towards my throat.  This kid
was a blast.

We went over and looked at all the tents, and his eyes grew wide at the
portaledge tents shown hanging from cliff walls.

"We won't have to do *that*, will we?" he asked.  I just laughed.

"No, we most certainly will never sleep in one of those."

"Why are *they*?" he asked, pointing at the models in the display photos.

I glanced at the picture and kept scanning for useful tents.  "Because some
people are too stupid to pick mountains that take less than a day to climb.
Come on, what we want is on the other end of the aisle."

The packages of the tents all showed happy families playing Frisbee
outdoors, and I had always rolled my eyes at that.  But now I found them
strangely alluring.  In any case, the basic 4-person tent would do fine.
It was plenty of room for the two of us until I could get him more
efficiently packed, and would work great when Monica came along.  Plus, it
had a little vestibule inside the door for shoes, which I appreciated.  I
patiently explained to Jesse about the ground tarp I had and how the rain
fly worked, and he ate it all up.

We went over to the accessories area and I got him a little headlamp that
had a red light in it, and he said it was just like a miner or an
astronaut.  He also got a compass and an emergency whistle.

In the food section, I looked at the freeze-dried meals.  The kind that
only need hot or cold water added to the package.  That way I could save
some time on meals.  I particularly wasn't too interested in a lot of work
for breakfast.  I'd still bring a cooler with drinks and some fresh food,
but this gave me some breathing room if I was too tired to bother with
cooking.  I wasn't sure how much trouble he'd be.  I decided to keep it to
breakfast.  That way, at least, we wouldn't have any cooking or cleaning to
do the morning we came back.

We picked up trail mix with M&Ms in it near the registers, and I tried not
to look at the total.  Jesse's eyes widened a bit more as the subtotal
increased.

Finally we got out of there and loaded everything in the trunk.

"That's a lot of stuff," he said.

"Yeah, and there's going to be even more stuff when we're actually
camping."

"There is?"

"Sure.  We'll need a cooler filled with beer--soda for you.  And other
food.  And sleeping bags and firewood and cooking utensils."

"Camping's expensive, isn't it?"

"Well, it can be.  Cheaper than a hotel.  Once you have all the stuff it's
not too bad, anyway."

"Oh," Jesse said.  He nodded thoughtfully.  "We'll have to do this a lot of
times to make sure I was worth all this, right?"

I closed the trunk and knelt down so I was at his eye level.  "You're worth
it all the time, even if we just find out that camping isn't for you," I
told him, and he smiled and leaned against me.  When I put my arm around
his shoulder, he turned into me and wrapped his arms around me.

"I wish you were my dad," he said.

I hesitated for a second, looking around the parking lot, but then I came
to my senses and put both my arms around him.  "Me too, buddy.  Me too."  I
don't know what else I could have said.

What scared me the most is that I was almost sure I meant it.

***

"What?!  I mean, I'm not his actual father or anything."  It didn't help.
I hadn't heard her wrong.

Monica sighed.  "Paul, I know.  And I wouldn't ask you if I didn't trust
you.  But you're the closest thing he has to a dad.  And I just can't do
it."

"Yeah, but isn't he a little young for all that?"

"He's almost eleven.  They're going to cover it at the end of the school
year, but I'd rather he had someone he could talk to at home."

"He does," I said.  Monica gave me the look.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, but I don't know what to tell him."

"Just tell him the basics.  He has to have questions about guy things.
You're a guy.  You know more about that kind of thing than I do."

I sighed and rubbed that spot between my eyebrows.  "What if he asks
something he's too young to know about?"

"If he asks *you*, you should just answer him.  Otherwise what if he asks
his friends at school?  How would any of them know?  It's better if he asks
you.  And there are things boys won't ask their mothers."

I blew out an exasperated breath.  "Are there?"

"Yes, all my friends with sons have said so.  Look, you don't have to go
into detail.  Just don't make fun of him if he asks something stupid.  I
want to make sure he knows he can come to us with questions when he's
older.  Now's the time to start."

I grudgingly saw the logic in that.  "Sure, but you spring this on me now?
We were supposed to go camping this weekend."

"Isn't that the best time?  You're already male bonding."

"Not exactly," I said.  Then I smirked.  "At least if he's embarrassed he's
still a captive audience."

Monica smiled and came over to hug me.  "Thanks, Paul.  I knew I could
count on you."

"All right, but I'm not going to make him talk about it if he doesn't want
to."

"That's fine.  Just tell him the basics and let him know he can ask
questions in the future."

My frown returned.  "The basics?"

"Don't try to tell me you don't know the basics.  I know better," she said,
and cupped my groin through my jeans.

"Fine, fine."

"Just talk to him about how his body will change and go from there."

"Yeah.  I guess I can do that."

I wasn't Jesse's father, but it looked like for a weekend, I was going to
be his dad anyway.

***

I took a half day from work so I could load up the car and pick up Jesse
from school that Friday.  He was very excited and was fidgeting in his seat
the entire drive up.

"What about my new clothes?" he asked.

"I packed them for you.  You don't need them tonight because we're just
setting up camp and eating dinner.  You'll wear them tomorrow when we
hike."

"Is hiking hard?"

"No, we can go as fast or slow as we want.  The trail isn't going
anywhere."

"Do you think there are bears?"

"I know there are, but they won't bother us.  They're only ever looking for
food.  We'll keep all our food in the car, so we won't have to worry about
that."

"Why can't we stop at McDonalds?"

"Because when we get to the campsite we're going to set up our tent and
then build a fire and cook hot dogs."

"And s'mores?"

"How do you know about s'mores?"

"I just do."

"Okay, yeah, I brought stuff for s'mores, too."  Jesse cheered.

"Can we make those before we put up the tent?"

"No.  First rule of camping: tent goes up first.  Plus, the last thing I
need is you smearing marshmallow all over the brand new tent so the bears
can come get us at night.  Besides, the fire has to burn down a bit before
we can cook hot dogs, and then it has to be embers before we can make
s'mores.  Unless you like burnt graham crackers."

"Ew," he said.  I had to keep my eyes on the curving mountain roads, but I
could see his crinkled nose in my mind.  "How come you know how to cook?"

"Because when you're an adult, if you don't cook, you starve.  Besides,
I've cooked for you before."

"Yeah, but I wasn't paying attention then."

Jesse spent some time looking out the window as we wound back and forth
through the foothills and up the mountainside.  We went around a bend in
the road and civilization disappeared.  It was just wilderness.

"Is this what it looked like before there were cities?"

"Pretty much," I said.  "We'll have better tents than cavemen, though."

A couple more twists in the road and the city was visible again between the
hills, stretching out endlessly into the distance.

"I guess we're not so far away, really," he said.

"Nope.  That's the nice thing about camping.  Even though it's nice and
quiet and relaxing, you get to go back after a few days.  Now let's talk
about my `no electronics' policy...."

We pulled up to the campground around five o'clock, and thanks to daylight
savings time we had at least a good two hours of daylight left.  I drove
around the loop one time, looking for the best campsite.  We were the only
ones there for some reason.  When we picked one that was next to the creek,
Jesse immediately jumped out of the car and tried to open the trunk.

"Just hold on," I said.  "Let's take a look around the site, make sure we
like it, and see where we'll put the tent."  I smiled at him.  "Just
relax."

"But I'm so excited!" he whined.

"We're here for two nights," I reassured him.

It was a good site.  I taught him how to kick all the rocks and branches
out of the tent area, and he helped me spread out the ground tarp.  The
tent was next, and having someone on the other end of the tent to hold the
tent poles was a gigantic help.

I had to tell him what to do, but he caught on right away, and hearing him
gasp in wonder and then start giggle as the tent popped up.  I had been
camping lots of times, so it was all pretty commonplace even if I hadn't
gone for a while.  But Jesse's excitement was contagious.

I did have to grab him, though, as he was winding up to dive into the tent.

"Hold it right there," I said as I caught his sleeve.

"But I wanted to see inside the tent!"

"Yeah, you can do it with your shoes off.  Let me show you."

I demonstrated crawling into the tent and then turning around to sit
backwards with my shoes in the vestibule outside the main chamber.

"See?  If you track dirt and rocks and stuff in here, you can never get it
all out.  But you can leave your shoes out here and they don't track dirt
in but they're still inside so they're not wet in the morning."  He
followed my lead and started untying his laces, but I kept my shoes on.

I let Jesse stay inside the tent while I unloaded the car.  Jug of water on
the site's picnic table.  Sleeping pads, sleeping bags, and duffel bags
with clothes were all passed to Jesse to go in the tent.

"Isn't my Iron Man bag great?  I got it to sleep over at Josh's house!"

"Awesome," I said.  It was an indoor bag, but the weather forecast
predicted a low of 65, so it would be fine inside the tent.

I unloaded the firewood and pulled the cooler out so it was easy to get to.

"Jesse, I need you," I called out as I used a stick to pull back the grill
over the fire pit and push aside the old ashes.  He came running out of the
tent.

"What's wrong?"

"I need tinder and kindling," I said.  His face went blank.  "Go find dry
pine needles and small twigs and sticks, okay?  Handfuls of each and I'll
show you how to make a fire.  Just stick close, okay?"

He ran off, and I used the time to straighten up the campground just a
little bit, pull out the foldable chairs, move the first three logs over
next to the fire pit, and so on.  After a couple of trips, I let Jesse know
he'd done a good job.

"Put all the pine needles down in a little pile, just a couple inches tall.
Make sure it's fluffed up.  Now lay the twigs against each other on top
like you're making a tepee, okay?  Then I'll help you start the fire."

I took my barbecue lighter from one of the chairs and handed it to Jesse.
"Hold down the button with your thumb and pull the trigger."  A couple of
clicks later, a small orange flame jumped from the long stem.

"Great!" I said.  "Now light the pine needles on fire.  When they start, go
around the entire edge with the lighter, okay?"

He did a pretty good job, and then I put my hands on his shoulders and held
him as the fire slowly spread up to the kindling.  "Looks good," I said.
"Time for the firewood."

I carefully laid the logs around the fire and they caught after a bit.  I
explained the details to Jesse and took a picture of him standing next to
the nascent fire.  Then we pulled up chairs and sat watching the fire.

"When can we cook the hot dogs?" he asked.

"Soon as the entire logs have burned a little and the fire gets under
control," I said.  "The flames from the fire will burn the food, but when
the fire gets lower, the heat evens out and then we can cook."

Before long, I was trying to convince a ten-year-old that he needed to hold
his hot dog skewer high over the fire and not barely touching the low
flames.  We went through a couple of "test" hot dogs for sure.  But as
usual, after he'd ruined a couple and then tried it my way, he figured out
what he needed to do.

It was a simple dinner, but cold cans of Dr. Pepper and little
single-serving-sized cups of grocery store potato salad rounded it out.

As the light faded, I went back to the truck and got the propane lantern
and set it up on the nearby picnic table, turning it on low.  When I got
back to my chair, Jesse was watching me and piped up.  "What's that for?"

"It's a lantern.  It's for light."

"But we have the fire and head lamps."

I tried not to chuckle too hard.  "Yeah, but it gets dark in the woods.
Real dark.  You've never seen it, but just wait."

Slowly we stuffed ourselves on hot dogs.  I let Jesse eat as much as he
wanted, since we would be hiking the next day.  It got dark, and it got
dark fast.  I got up to go back to the trunk, and Jesse was suddenly beside
me.

"Paul?" His voice was very small.

"What's up, Jess?"

"It's too dark."

"That's normal.  We're not in the city anymore."

"I'm... I'm scared."  His voice was very small.

I chuckled as softly as I could manage.  "Come with me."  I grabbed my
jacket from the trunk and went back over to my chair.  I pulled it across
to the other side of the fire, where there was a clear view of the sky and
sat down in it, back towards the fire.

"Come here."  I motioned to Jesse.  He walked around the chair and stood in
front of me.

"What?" he asked.

"No, turn around."  He turned and I pulled him into my lap.  He wiggled up
and scooted against me.  I pulled my jacket over us and said, "Now close
your eyes."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously.

"Just do it," I insisted.  "We're both going to close our eyes for two
minutes.  Your eyes will adjust.  No peeking.  I'm right here with you."

We sat there together, eyes closed.  The fire crackled and crickets
chirped.  The smoke hung lightly in the air, but enough to fill our noses.
Occasionally, the wind blew through the pines and rustled, but under the
jacket we were warm.  I felt Jesse breathing, and pressing back against me.
I held him against me and after a minute I could feel his heart beating
through his chest, too.  In the space between his quick inhale and exhale,
the staccato thump of his heart slowed and became more discernible.  I
could feel more than consciously make out that each beat was really two,
following each other in perfect harmony, his heart's atriums pumping blood
into his ventricles a split second before the valves closed and his
ventricles rocketed the blood onward through the rest of his body in an
endless circuit.

I leaned my head forward and his ear brushed my lips.  "Open your eyes and
look up."  I felt his head tip back and his body tensed.

"Paul!  There's so many stars!"

I squeezed my arms around him and felt his warmth.  "They're always there,
day or night.  Keep looking at the stars.  What do you see running across
the sky?"

He was silent for a moment, his head slowly scanning back and forth.
"Stars, and I see the Big Dipper, and there's a cloud all along the sky."

"That's not a cloud," I said.  "Those are stars, so many and so far away
you can't make them out.  That stripe across the sky is the galaxy we live
in, the Milky Way."

He gasped.  "How?"

"Well, we're right in the middle of it and it's flat, sort of like a
pancake.  So it's this big band across the sky.  Actually, we're about
two-thirds from the center.  This is what it looked like before there were
cities.  The night sky was filled with stars."

"How far away are they?"

"Well, pretty far."  I tried to think of an explanation.  Tried to judge my
own understanding.  "It takes light eight minutes to travel from the sun to
us on Earth.  The closest star to us is four light years away.  The *next*
closest star to us.  Some of the stars out there are billions of years
away."

"Paul, how big is the universe?"

"It doesn't have a size.  It goes on forever."

I felt Jesse shiver.  "How can anything be that big?"

I held him a little closer.  "People are just better at looking at things
close up, that's all.  Sometimes the whole picture is hard to see."

Jesse's hand reached up and slid backwards around my neck.  He held on to
me and his heart rate had increased.  I hadn't intended to cause some kind
of existential crisis for him, but I remember being about his age when I
realized that I would die some day.  It hadn't been a fun thought.  Maybe
it was something that everyone went through eventually.

He let go of my neck and twisted around and put his arms around me.  "I
don't like it.  It's scary."  He buried his face in my neck.

I patted his back as I held him against my body.  "Yeah, humans are pretty
tiny in the universe.  We're almost nothing at all.  But you know what?"

"What?"

"That's why humans stick together.  That's why we have families and
friends, and we help each other out.  I mean, I'm not your dad and you're
not my son, but...."  But what?  I heard my voice fade off into the
darkness.  It seemed to swallow up the rest of the words.  Suddenly, I felt
stupid.  I glanced up at the stars.  The universe weighed down upon my
chest and for a moment I couldn't breathe.

Jesse squeezed harder.  "I wish I was.  I mean I wish you were.  You know?"

"Yeah, I know.  I wish we were, too."  I felt him shudder again, and I
realized he was sobbing.  I moved an arm up and stroked his hair.  "Hey,
it's okay.  You're okay."

His voice was a whine.  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cry.  I'm not a little
kid.  I can be stronger."

My mind wheeled.  I'd never said anything of the sort to him.  I
desperately wondered what could make him feel better.  "You've grown up,
just you and your Mom, all your life.  You're super strong.  And I'm proud
of you just the way you are.  I can't imagine a braver boy."

He whimpered softly for a minute or two, and I just held him and patted his
back like I was burping a baby, and gently repeated that it was all okay;
he was okay.

"It's okay, Jess.  That's the magic thing about it.  We can still love each
other just as much.  And it's not weak to need someone else.  We're all we
have against the entire universe.  But that's what makes it so special.
Humans are tiny, but we love so big."

I stroked his hair a big longer and he calmed down.  For a moment, I
thought he might've fallen asleep.  Suddenly he lifted his head and I
stifled a gasp at the cold sensation the air made against the wet tears on
my shoulder.

"Paul," he said.  "I have to pee."

I laughed.  "Okay," I said, pushing him up to his feet.  "Me, too.  Let's
go pee."

We got up and walked over to the tree line.  I took his arm in my hand and
walked three steps in.  "Okay, here we go."

"But the bathrooms are the other way."

"Do you have to poop?"

"No, but--"

"Then we don't need those.  We'll just go here."

"But everyone will see us."

My laugh echoed back from the trees.  "Everyone who?  The squirrels?"

Jesse giggled.  "The squirrels should be sleeping."

"That's right.  So come on, whip it out and go."

I unzipped my fly and pulled out my dick.  Jesse giggled some more.  "Are
you really peeing?"

"I'm about to, and this is your chance, too.  Come on.  It's a guy thing."

As I listened to the soft, unmistakable sound of pee hitting the ground, I
saw Jesse out of the corner of my eye.  He undid his fly and zipper and I
saw him push his pants down under his hips and thrust his pelvis out.  I
heard another stream join mine and as our streams slowly dwindled down to
drops, I milked my foreskin forward before giving it a gentle shake.  I saw
Jesse twiddle his penis up and down with a finger.  Or at least, that was
the sense I got.  Even with our eyes adjusted to the starlight, the trees
made it too dark to see in any detail.

We put ourselves away and did our clothes back up.  Jesse giggled again.
"That was funny."

I put my arm around him.  "You've never pissed outside before?"

"No," he said.

I shook my head.  "Well, I guess that's one good thing about this weekend.
Hey, did you pee on your hands?"

"No!" he objected.

"Good, because it's time for s'mores."

Jesse made a happy whooping sound and I smiled in the dark as I watched him
run back towards the fire.

I grabbed the chair and carried it back over to the original side it was
on, next to Jesse's chair, and then went back to the car to get the
supplies.  I won't bore you with the details.  Graham crackers, Hershey
bar, marshmallows.  You know how to make s'mores.  This was another thing
that Jesse had never done, and after he learned not to turn marshmallows
into giant torches, the hard part was to keep him from eating whatever we
weren't actively preparing.

Jesse's mouth and hands were filthy by the time we were done.  I pointed
him to the table.  "Start washing your hands.  Try not to get marshmallow
all over the jug.  I'll find the dish soap in the trunk."

I was looking around in the trunk when I heard a loud bang and Jesse
screamed.  I pulled my head out of the hatch and hit my head.  I pushed
through the sparkling lights in my head and ran towards the table.

"Help!  It's cold!" Jesse called.  He was hugging the water jug and trying
to set it upright again using just his forearms.  I grabbed it and set it
down away from the edge.

"What's wrong with your hands?  Are you okay?" I asked, and grabbed his
forearms.  He was wet, and his hands were still sticky with food.

"The water fell over while I was trying to use it and it got all over me."

"Why didn't you use your hands?"

"You said not to get the jug all dirty."  He held out his hands palms up,
as if to demonstrate.

I sighed.  "All right, don't worry about it.  Go stand by the fire so you
don't freeze.  We're going to bed anyway."

"Why?  It's not even nine yet."

"Because it's dark out and there's nothing else to do.  Plus we're going
hiking tomorrow, so we want to sleep good and get up early."

Jesse shuffled over to the fire, which was mostly just embers, and I went
back to the car, found the soap and sponge, and washed the camp forks that
we'd used for dinner and marshmallows.  Everything else had been paper,
because I'm not a chump.  I got everything back in the trunk and went back
over to the fire, which was low.

"I'm cold," Jesse said.

"Not as cold as you're gonna be when you take those off outside the tent.
Guess you're sleeping naked tonight?"

"I can't sleep naked!"

"Well you're not bringing wet clothes into the tent.  We'll put them out on
the table tomorrow to dry during the day.  It's better for your sleeping
bag, anyway.  The less clothes you wear, the warmer it is."

"If I sleep naked, you have to, too."

"Hate to break it to you, but I do it all the time."

"Even when you spend the night with Mom and me?"

"Yeah."

"Gross."

I laughed.  "You won't think so in a few more years.  Go ahead and take
your clothes off.  I'll turn off the lamp to give you a little privacy
while I dowse the fire."

I dealt with the fire and let my eyes adjust for half a minute.  By
starlight I could just make out everything.  I joined Jesse and took his
clothes.

"It's cold," he said with a shiver.

"Yeah, it gets cold quick out here, especially without the fire.  Okay, sit
down backwards so your butt's inside the tent, but leave your feet out."
Once he was sitting, I took his shirt, which was mostly dry, and swept it
down his legs and then used it to brush the bottoms of his feet.  "Okay,
put that one in.  Now the other one.  You're all clear."

I spread his clothes along one half of the picnic table and bench.  They'd
be wet in the morning from dew, but they'd be dry by the time we came back
and ready to be packed inside the car.  Then I came back to the tent,
leaving my shoes in the vestibule, and closing both zippers.

It was darker in the tent, but my eyes had adjusted, so I could still make
things out in a vague shape sort of way.  Jesse was laying on his back with
his knees up.  When I put my hand out to touch his knee so I could get a
bearing on where I should kneel down, I discovered he was inside his
sleeping bag.

"All set, Jess?"

I heard him nod more than I saw it, and he made an mm-hm sound.
"Remember," he said, "you have to sleep naked, too."

"I remember.  I was only going to sleep in my underwear before, anyway."  I
patted around the other side of my sleeping bag to get an idea of how much
room I had, and then started undressing.

"Is it going to get warmer?" Jesse asked.  "I'm still cold."

"Not outside.  It should inside the tent.  Our breath and body heat will
warm it up."

"I hope it happens soon."

"It will."  I finished undressing and slipped into my sleeping bag.
"Looking forward to tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he said.  "Where are we hiking to?"

"After breakfast we're going to hike to a lake.  There's a waterfall and
we'll eat lunch there."

Jesse shifted around.  "Is it hard to get there?"

"No, we'll be walking for an hour or two.  But it's a nice walk and we'll
get to see some good views of the valleys.  Plus we won't be in a hurry and
we can stop and rest any time.  The mountain isn't going anywhere."

Jesse giggled.  I loved hearing him laugh.

"So go to sleep.  The sun will wake you up out here, so the better you
sleep, the easier tomorrow will be."  Tomorrow was going to be a big day.
And I wasn't looking forward to all of it.

But life doesn't wait around for us to be ready.

***

I awakened to my shoulder being shaken.  Well, maybe "awake" is slightly
overselling it.  But my brain slowly realized that it was still dark.  I
opened my eyes but it wasn't much help.

"What is it?" I asked.  My face stung slightly.  It was cold.  It was
night.

"Paul, I can't sleep.  I'm too freezing," Jesse whined.  I sat up, and my
sleeping bag dropped to my stomach.  It *was* cold.  Very cold, actually.

"Wasn't supposed to drop below 65," I muttered.  I sighed.  "Get in with
me."

Jesse slipped out of his bag and in with mine.  I gasped and managed to
swallow a yelp as his skin contacted mine.  He *was* cold.  His voice,
however, was warm.

"Oh, it's so nice in here!  How come your bag is so much warmer than mine?"

"Mine's rated for 30 degrees.  Yours is just for sleepovers, not really
camping.  Should've been okay."

My bag was oversized, with plenty of room for another person besides me.
I'd hoped for Monica.  Jesse pulled the bag up and snuggled in against me,
making himself at home.  His body slid down mine and then pressed against
me, smooth, unbelievably soft, but cold.  He warmed up almost instantly,
though.  His shivering stopped in about a minute.

Jesse twisted to face me and wrapped himself around me.  I put my arms
around him and he snuggled his cheek against mine.  "This feels so good,"
he said.  I rubbed my hands vigorously along his back, hoping to warm him a
bit through friction.

He squeezed me tighter.  "Don't stop," he said with a groggy voice.  I
tried to get his butt and his thighs along with his back.  Just to get him
warm a little more quickly, so he would be able to get off of me.  Then I
felt it again.  That little, round, hard object poking just above my hip.

"Hey, Jesse?" I whispered.  I got no response.  I raised my voice to a
normal level.  "Jesse."  Nothing.

I didn't mind him being against me.  It was surprisingly nice.  I felt very
protective of him.  But I didn't want him to wake up with a sore penis
because he happened to get a spontaneous erection--probably from my body
heat, I reasoned--and had it smashed against me in a weird position all
night.  I whispered his name again, but he had apparently fallen straight
asleep again.

I sighed.  But I was in charge of him, and sometimes parents had to do what
needed to be done.  Even temporary ones.

With my right hand, I reached down along his back to cradle his butt.  I
cupped my hand on the bottom of his cheeks so that I could lean him back
from me a bit so I could adjust him with my left hand.

I slid my left hand from his shoulder blade down his right side to his hip,
pushing it away and supporting his weight with my other hand.  Then I slid
my left hand from his hip to his groin.  It was a simple plan.  Find his
erection and point it up instead of straight out, and then lower him back
on top of me.  He'd be comfortable until it went away on its own.

There was just one complication.  My hand slid down and didn't find his
erect penis.  Just a hard, round knob.

I froze in surprise.  But my curiosity got the better of me.  My fingers
searched around gently.  Everything was warm and soft. I felt his delicate,
silky scrotum, and the soft pubic mound above his penis.  His glans was
coarse and hot, and I slid a fingertip around, probing gently.  I could
feel the slit where he pees, and I could feel the familiar round shape of a
glans, but that was all there was.  My first thought was how he could be so
small.  My second was what the hell could have happened with his
circumcision?  But I squeezed his glans between my thumb and forefinger.
It was hard, in addition to radiating heat.  So at least that much worked.

I realized what I was doing when I suddenly felt wetness.  It wasn't even
as much as a single drop, but I realized that I was stimulating Jesse's
penis in his sleep.  I jerked my hand away.  I didn't mean to molest him.
At the same time, I was glad I learned about this before we had our birds
and the bees talk.  My right hand was still on his butt, and I pushed him
back against me.  He groaned and threw his arm around me as he buried his
face into my neck.  I froze, feeling his chest rise and fall between us in
time with his hot breath on my neck.  He was still asleep.

I shook my head in the dark and pulled his leg over mine so he wouldn't
slip once I was asleep.  I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind so I
could fall back asleep.  Our breathing slowly synchronized and I enjoyed
the feeling of him against my body.

Tomorrow was suddenly more complicated, but that would have to wait until
it arrived.

***

When I woke up, the world was bathed in cold, gray light.  I stretched and
realized that Jesse was still pressed against me.  I watched as he gasped
and then stretched, too.  I could feel his hardness against me.

Jesse wrapped his arms around me again.  "You're warm," he said.

I hugged him back.  "So are you."  My hand ran down his back.  It seemed
natural.  "Well, time to get up."

"It'll be cold outside," he said.

"Yeah, but once the sun comes up a bit and hits the tent, it'll become an
oven."  It was nice to have him against me, though.  Cozy.  "Okay, just a
minute or two and we'll have to get dressed.  Fun day ahead."

Jesse lay with his leg across my body, snuggling with me.  I stroked his
back and was wondering how long I should let him stay like this when I felt
his penis pulse a couple times.

"I have to pee," he said.

"All right, let's get dressed and we can go over to the toilets."

"Can we pee in the trees again?"

"Sure, but we still have to get dressed first, in case anyone came in late
and we have neighbors.  Come on, let's go."

He crawled out of my sleeping bag and climbed up over my shoulder before
sitting on his bag.  I saw his penis close up but very briefly.  I got the
impression of a round little head but nothing else.  I sat up and reached
for my duffel bag.

"Double socks today."

"Why?" he asked.

"Protects your feet while hiking.  Makes it harder to get blisters.  Just
put on your hiking boots now.  We'll let your sneakers dry all day.

I slid out of the sleeping bag and pulled clothes out of my bag.  I glanced
over at Jesse as we were dressing and noticed he took an opportunity to
casually look at me naked.  I had a semi because I needed to pee, too.  It
reminded me of Scout camp-outs as a kid.  Just a sort of casual
comfortableness with friends.  But everybody looks.  We both got dressed.
I unzipped the tent and carefully placed my feet into the shoes that were
in the vestibule.  "See?" I told him.  "This keeps the tent clear and your
feet clean."

"I know, you told me."

"Just reminding you.  Once you've worn them, the shoes stay outside."

I slid out of the tent and stood up.  I turned around and watched Jesse
crawl out from beneath the rainfly and held out a hand to help him stand
up.  Then we headed back towards the trees.  This time it was pretty bright
and we could see each other.  As I pulled my penis out of the fly in my
boxers and held it in my hand, I tugged my foreskin forward to make sure I
would pee straight.  Jesse pushed the front of his hiking pants and
underwear down just past his balls and thrust his hips forward.  I had
started peeing before he did again.  He seemed to aim by angling his hips.
It was cute.  Very kiddish.  We each dealt with the last drops in our own
way.  I milked my foreskin forward before putting myself away, and he
drum-tapped his little head with his finger before he tugged his clothes
back up to his waist.

I let Jesse make a fire while I gathered all the breakfast stuff from the
trunk of the car.  I had to grab a stick and even out the flames a bit, but
he did a pretty good job.  He went around, climbing onto the bench and
jumping down again, or dancing around the campsite like a mini tornado,
spinning and capering about.  He came back over as I started laying down
bacon in the pan.

"Cold cereal tomorrow," I told him, thinking of the freeze-dried granola
and blueberries I bought, "But today we get bacon and eggs."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because today we're hiking so we need lots of extra energy.  Tomorrow we
just want it to be easy to clean up."

"Oh," he said, and danced around the campfire a bit more.  As the bacon
finished, I pulled them onto a plate and when the pan was empty I started
cracking eggs into the pan, which crackled and spit as they floated in
boiling bacon grease.

I was trying to decide whether or not there was enough oil to cook them
sunny-side up, which I usually never bothered with at home, when Jesse
danced back over.

"Eww," he said, "the eggs look disgusting."

I glanced at the eggs and then shot him a funny look.  "What?"

"They have all that stuff over them."

"Boy," I said, "that's bacon grease.  These eggs are *fortified* with
bacon."

"Gross," he said.

I sighed.  "I guess you're going to learn what it's like to be happy you
were wrong."

Jesse loved scrambled eggs and loved bacon, and to the astonishment of no
one present, loved eggs cooked in bacon grease.  My only regret was that I
hadn't packed any bread, although I didn't really want to try to toast
bread over a fire anyway.  The right way to do it is with a toast rack you
put next to the fire and I didn't have one of those, either.  So I managed
to survive without wiping up the egg yolk and grease with a nice piece of
toast.  We really were roughing it, after all.

I sat down in a camp chair and Jesse came over and sat in my lap and
stretched contentedly.  "How did you learn to cook eggs like that?"

"Scout trick," I said.  "Used to camp growing up."

He craned his head back.  "All by yourself?"

I smiled.  "No, together with other Boy Scouts.  And our Scout leader.  But
we used to do everything ourselves.  The leader was just there to teach us
a bit and make sure we were okay."

"Did they make you leave your iPad in the car, too?" he asked, glaring
sullenly at my car.

Now I laughed.  "iPads are like seven years old, dude.  We didn't have
*any* portable electronics when I was a kid.  Well... maybe Game Boys.  And
Walkmans.  And yes, we had to leave those behind."

"How did you survive?"

"It was tough.  I remember one trip, Ricky Forrester brought a Sega Game
Gear and a TV tuner.  But the antenna couldn't pick up any TV stations and
the light from the screen gave it away to our Scoutmaster.  So that was one
thing we didn't try to hide in our packs again."

We lay there for a bit until I thought I should check that the pans were
cool enough to clean and that the fire was fully quenched.  Jesse had fun
stirring up the puddled ashes in the fire pit while I took care of washing
up this time.  I slipped our lunches--still a surprise from Jesse--into my
backpack.  Checked our water bottles, visually confirmed I had the water
filter, and got everything ready.  Poured the last of our orange juice into
cups and got the trash bag ready to dump on the way to the trailhead.

I locked the trunk and put the keys under the car inside the bumper so they
couldn't fall out of my pocket on the trail, and zipped up the tent.

"All right, time to go," I said.  Jesse tossed his stick away and came up.
I handed him a cup of orange juice and held mine in the air.  He tilted his
head with a blank expression for a second before a smile dawned on his face
and he lifted his cup and clinked it with mine.

"To an awesome day of hiking!" I said, and gulped down my orange juice in
one go.  Jesse imitated me, and I could see a smile around the edge of the
cup as I watched his Adam's apple go up and down over and over until the
cup was drained.

"Okay, water for the rest of the hike," I said.  "Maybe a surprise at
lunch."

"What are we having for lunch?"

"That's a surprise, too."

"Aww.  Just give me a hint?"

"The hint is that it's awesome.  Look around for any trash, and put it in
the trash bag.  We're going to go."

We passed the pit toilets and I threw our trash bag into the dumpster
beside the building.  We followed the paved road up to the trailhead and I
paused to read the various notices and warnings posted.  Fire condition
yellow, which was no real surprise other than it wasn't red thanks to the
winter's unexpected, heavy rains.  We followed the path up and around for a
quarter of a mile when the concrete ended and Jesse stopped short.

"What happened to the trail?" he asked.

I looked back at him.  "What do you mean?"

"It disappears right here!"

I looked at his feet.  He was standing on the last of the concrete path.  I
laughed and looked up at him.  The concern on his face was real, and I felt
a little bad for laughing.  Just a little.

"Buddy, the trail is just *beginning*.  Come on, follow me."  I held my
hand out to him.  I lowered it as he strode forward, but to my surprise he
grabbed it and kept walking.  We walked along hand-in-hand for a minute or
two, giving it up as the trail narrowed and his comfort grew.  The trail
wasn't actually difficult.  It was clear, if a bit rustic from disuse.  We
walked along, chatted, and nibbled on the trail mix as we climbed the
mountainside.  After about an hour, we reached a rather scenic vista, and
we stopped to rest for a bit and make a dent in our water bottles.  The
trail was wider and we sat against a big tree that almost offered adequate
shade as we looked out to the chain of mountains and peaks that held
forests and streams.

"It's really pretty," Jesse said when he had settled near me.  "I mean,
it's really cool," he corrected himself.

I smiled.  "It's all very pretty," I said.  "A few hundred years ago,
everything looked like this.  Now we have to visit it on camping trips.
But it's still here.  Just waiting for us to experience it."

"Was it scary back then?" he asked.

"I don't know.  I guess so.  A little.  But you were used to it.  Some
people lived in towns but a lot also lived in the wilderness.  I guess it
just depends on what you're used to.  If you're used to eating at
restaurants, the wild would be scary.  But maybe if you're used to hunting,
the city would make you nervous, too."

Jesse slowly nodded his head as his gaze remained fixed on the landscape
folding out before us like an unruly road map.  The kind I remembered my
father using on road trips--when I learned to drive, my parents bought me a
Thomas Guide.  Spiral-bound, it never needed to be carefully folded like
some origami monster that haunted the past.

My phone was in my pack in a pocket, turned off.  But I'd used Google Maps
to download the area in case I needed it.  Suddenly I felt too old, and
Jesse felt too young.  That was happening with alarming frequency the older
I got.

After we'd sat around for about ten minutes, I reached over and tousled
Jesse's hair.  "All right, buddy, time to get going again."

"Are we heading back?"

"Not yet!  I know someplace special, and we want to be there by lunchtime."

Jesse slid his school-style backpack back on while I sat in front of my
backpacking pack and shrugged the harnesses back on before pushing myself
up to my feet.  I beckoned Jesse to follow me and headed up the trail
before turning off onto a smaller branch in the path.

Jesse followed behind and I heard him ask "Where are we going?"  His voice
was less confident than before, and the ruggedness of this lesser-used
trail must have made him uneasy.

"Great place we used to go to years ago.  You'll see.  Don't worry, there's
a trail the entire way."

We hiked for over half an hour.  We dropped down a ridge and near a creek.
I had Jesse hike down by the creek, which was a bit slower but the
temperature immediately dropped at least 10 degrees, which was welcome.  We
reached a steep slope and had to veer off from the creek to find a rocky
place we could scrabble up.  Jesse was afraid but it was a pretty gentle
angle.  Enough that we had to sort of crawl up, but not enough to be
dangerous.  Just inconvenient.

We got up to the top and white noise filled the air.  We kept going away
from the creek before twisting back up and took the trail up in a gentle
left hook that turned back on itself just before our destination.  The
roaring got louder all the way, until the final reveal stopped Jesse in his
tracks.

The dirt turned to rock and resulted in a clearing in the trees.  A
waterfall, 15 feet tall but still grand, draped itself over a cliff wall,
feeding a small pond that let out into the creek we'd been hiking along.
The water spread out and enjoyed itself before it had to return to its day
job of being a creek.  The waterfall was flanked by moss or lichen that
thrived on the cliff in the constant spray and moisture.  We came up to the
rocks and it was just as I'd remembered it.  Sandy bottom surrounded by
boulders, and crystal clear.  A perfect place to eat lunch and splash
around before heading back.  It'd have been a perfect place to camp, if
there were enough room far enough back from the water, but I had never been
one for clearing out my own campsites.  That was just a bit too hardcore
for me.

My nostalgia was interrupted by Jesse.  "Wow, how did you know about this
place?"

"We used to hike up here as a kid.  It dried up mostly with all the
droughts, but after all the rain I thought I'd take a chance.  That's why
the trail was so rough."

We took off the packs and Jesse asked if he could play in the water.  I
looked at my watch and it was just past noon.

"Yeah, but take off your clothes first."

"You mean I can swim in my underwear?"

I looked around reflexively.  "You could, but then you'd have to wear or
carry back wet underwear.  When I was a kid and it was just boys around we
used to skinny dip."

"Really?" he asked.

"Yup.  No one comes up here, and if they do, well, people skinny dip in the
woods all the time.  It'll probably just be us all day."

"Will you do it, too?"

"Sure!  But it's about time for lunch, too.  Tell you what.  Let's just
wait until we eat.  You can take the legs off your pants if you want to put
your feet in before that.

So Jesse sat down and began the process of unlacing his hiking boots and
converting his hiking pants to shorts.  I had to help undo the double knot
I'd tied on his shoes before we hit the trailhead, and then he pulled off
shoes and socks and was trying to zipper off the pants legs by his knees.
I got my shoes and socks off and took off my pants, and then I started
unpacking the MREs I'd picked up the week before.  He hadn't made it to the
water yet.

I pulled two thick, sealed plastic bags out of my pack.  I called out,
"Catch," and tossed Jesse one.  He did catch it.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Lunch.  It's an MRE.  Soldiers eat them when they're out in the field.
They have everything you need right inside the bag, except water and cups.
Which we brought!"

I carried my MRE to one of the larger rocks that was flat, and set it down.
Jesse followed with his and placed his next to mine.

"There wasn't much of a selection, so these are the two we get to pick
from."  I read the labels on the packets.  "Okay, this one's beef stew and
this one's cheese tortellini."

"I want the beef stew one," he said.

"All right, they have little heaters inside them that will heat up the food
so it's hot, and we can eat some of the snacks while we wait.  I'll help
you set up the heater; we'll do ours together, okay?"  Jesse nodded, and I
handed him his MRE.  "All right, first, grab a hold of the top of the bag
and peel it apart.  Pull real hard...."

Jesse was fascinated by all the items inside.  The food pouches were all
labeled and there were accessory packs with matches and gum and things.  He
scored with a fudge brownie desert, which I convinced him to save for
later.  I ended up with "desert powder" which promised to become vanilla
pudding given 4 ounces of water.  I was skeptical.

I showed him how to tear open the heater bag and add a trickle of water
before sliding in the heater pack and the entrée pouch.  He argued
that the instructions said to leave the heater in the pouch and I argued
back that it gets hot immediately and I'd burned my hands before trying to
get the food in after the heater activated.

We waited about 10 minutes for the food to heat.  He had forgotten all
about the water, and sat cross-legged and eating his jelly pretzels and I
was quite happy with squeezing the peanut butter out of its pouch and onto
my crackers.  I traded him my grape drink powder for his raspberry powder,
and I mixed that for him in his canteen cup.  The main food we pulled out
from the heaters after about 10 minutes and ate them straight out of the
package with our MRE spoons.  He was very happy with his beef stew just as
it was, and it smelled like it was as good as came out of any can.  My
pasta in tomato sauce looked good enough, but was strangely bland, and I
decided to pay much better attention to the MRE menus next time I bought
some.  I was very happy for the packet of Tabasco sauce, which I used
liberally.  Luckily, Jesse had asked to taste mine before I thought of the
Tabasco.

I already had a spoonful so I held it out to him and he leaned forward and
ate from my spoon.  I had expected him to take the spoon from my hand.  He
offered me a taste of his beef stew right after, so I leaned forward and
let him feed it to me.  It was silly, like something you'd do for a
toddler, but it was kind of nice.

I felt pretty full after that, so I suggested he save his brownie for the
hike back.  I told him he could have my pudding.  He was fascinated by the
idea that the powder could turn into pudding.  Apparently he was familiar
with Kool-Aid, but not instant pudding.  We shook the bag for a minute and
then I stirred it to make sure the powder was mixed in evenly.  I was able
to get a bite and was impressed that it was pretty good pudding, but Jesse
ate the rest.  I showed him how we could pack all the used wrappers back
into the plastic bags they came in and how we still had the heavy-duty
outer plastic pouch that we could easily use to gather water or keep things
dry.  That impressed him, too.  Since we were just day hiking, we put the
trash into the pouches so that we could carry it out without worrying about
any of the mess smearing around inside our bags.  The accessory pack still
had little snack-sized bags of M&Ms in them, so I added them to our trail
mix.

"Paul, can I go in the water now?" Jesse asked.

"Sure.  Take off your clothes first so I can get you with sunscreen."

Jesse stripped down without a care in the world and came back to stand in
front of me when I had pulled the sunscreen out of my pack.  I shook the
can a bit and then told him "arms out" as I sprayed the sunscreen evenly
across his body, first the front, then the back.  Then I had him turn
around and sprayed some into my palm and spread it on his face.

He wrinkled his nose and tried to turn his head.  "It burns my eyes and
nose," he said as I grabbed his arm to keep him from twisting away.

"That's just the chemical to make it dry right away.  It doesn't last."  I
had to spray some more to get all of his face.  He didn't seem to burn
normally, but between the water and the white rocks and the thin mountain
air on the trip, it was better safe than sorry.

Jesse whooped as he scrabbled to the edge of a rock and jumped knee-deep
into the pond.  "It's cold!"  He then leaped forward and all the way into
the water, laughing.  "Come in, too!" he yelled.

I started pulling off my shirt and said "I'm right behind you!"  I lost the
rest of my clothes and did my best to apply sunscreen to myself.  I never
did trust myself to get all of my back, although I usually managed to
anyway.  I just closed my eyes, held my breath, and sprayed my face.  Then
after waiting a few seconds to let it dry, I opened my eyes, locked the
spray cap, and put the sunscreen back in my pack.

I sat down on the edge of the rock that served as a shore, and put my feet
in.  The pond was very cool, but not as cold as I had been worried about
for this early in the year, and I laughed and jumped further in, too.

Jesse squealed and swam over and jumped on me.  I grabbed him and tickled
him, and he yelled and tried to swim away.  So we played tag a bit, and
sometimes I picked him up and threw him, although I had to be careful not
to throw him too high or far because the pond never got more than 4 or 5
feet deep.

He spit water at me, but I told him that he shouldn't because the water was
in theory not safe to drink and he shouldn't swallow it.  We splashed
around and played for a bit before he started to come over and climb on me
and press his body against mind for warmth.  It was kind of nice, but he
started shivering slightly and when his teeth started chattering I ordered
him out of the pond.

"Throw me first?"

"Okay, but then we're getting out."

"Okay, just throw me five more times first."

I laughed.  "You get two."

We climbed back onto the rocks and I realized our towels were in our bags.
I didn't want to get everything wet, so I improvised.  "Lie down on the
rocks and you'll dry off."

He lay back with his arms crossed, shivering slightly.  I did the same.  I
looked over at him laying on his back and laughed.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"You look like a lizard,' I said.

"A lizard?!"

"Yeah, that's how they get warm.  They sun themselves on rocks."

He giggled and rolled over and pushed himself up with his hands and
scrambled over to me on all fours.  He dove on top of me and I grunted.

"I'm a lizard and I'm attacking you!" he said, and mimed biting my cheek
and my neck.  I was stunned for seconds before I laughed and started
tickling.  He screamed and tried to twist away but I had him in a big hug
and he was just writhing against me and laughing.

"Stop!" he cried. "I can't take it anymore!"  I put my hands flat on him
and held them still so that he wouldn't fall, and he calmed down and lay
there.  After a bit he hugged me, and I felt that hard little ball against
my stomach.  My own penis twitched and I panicked and rolled him off of me.

He made himself comfortable next to me using my arm as a pillow for his
head.

"This place is the coolest, Paul."

"Was it worth the hike?"

"Yeah, it totally was.  Can we come back again?"

"Sure!  Sometimes it dries up in the summer, though, so I can't guarantee
that we can swim."

"That's okay.  I just like doing things with you."

I felt my heart melt.  "I like having you around, too.  You are a good
kid."

"I'm glad you're my friend," he said, and we lay there staring up at the
cloudless sky.  The heat from the rocks kept us warm underneath, and our
bodies slowly dried in the sun.

I gathered my thoughts for a bit about growing up, and then took a deep
breath.  It was time.

"You're going to be eleven soon."

"I know," he said.  "In April."

"Right.  And that's a big age.  You're getting older.  And some time soon
you're going to start growing into a man."

"Like when I'm eighteen I'm not a boy anymore, I'm an adult, right?"

I reflected on that.  "Yes, but I was referring to something else."
Another deep breath.  "Your body's going to change.  Not just to get bigger
but in other ways, too.  You're going to get a little hairier and your
voice is going to get deeper.  And--and your body is going to change so
that you're able to make a baby some day.  Do you know what I'm talking
about?"

"No," he said.

"Well..."  I tried to choose my words carefully.  "Well, there are a lot of
changes that all sort of happen at once, one after the other, and they can
be kind of scary if you're not expecting them.  So I thought I'd talk to
you about it so you know what to expect."

You've all had The Talk.  Some of you have given The Talk.  I have a friend
who swears he was never given a Talk, but just sort of got the basics when
he started asking questions after he was told he was going to be a brother
and just asked questions occasionally as he got older until when his health
class happened, he wasn't surprised by any new information.  After I turned
12, I noticed I had an extra book in my bookshelf in my room one day, with
some very interesting colored drawings and text that strained belief.  As a
supposedly bona fide adult, I hadn't planned on having kids any time soon
and hadn't planned on any kinds of Talks at all, and hadn't been prepared
to talk about sex to someone else's kid.  But he felt a little like my kid,
too.  And so I started with puberty.  How his body would change.  How his
penis would get bigger, although part of me wondered if it would.

"Will mine get really big like yours?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said.  "Everyone's a different size, so you can never really be
sure until after you're grown.  But all kinds of shapes and sizes are
normal, just like the rest of your body."

We talked about growth spurts and how that caused teenagers to be more
clumsy, because their brain was trying to get used to everything being
longer.  We talked about mustaches and shaving and pubic hair.  He wanted
to know why adults had pubic hair.  I still wish I knew.  I said that
sometimes boys play with themselves and that while everyone jokes about it
and no one wants to admit it, everyone does it at some point and it was
okay to not admit it, but it wasn't something to be ashamed of, just
something to do in private.

"Do you ever play with yourself?" he asked.

"Yeah, sometimes.  It just feels good."

"Sometimes I do it but it starts to feel funny and it makes me have to
pee."

That led into the bit about how babies were made.  I tried to explain
masturbation and wet dreams as a way the body kept sperm fresh.  I was
pretty sure that was true, and I hoped it'd give him an excuse not to feel
bad about it.  We talked about hormones, and acne, and then we started
talking about girls.

Jesse asked about vaginas and boobs and sex, and I noticed that his penis
didn't seem to grow but turned from its usual pale, pink color to a much
deeper red.

I tried to describe erections, but he didn't seem to understand.

"When you're older, your penis will get bigger.  Then sometimes when you're
aroused... uh, playing with yourself or ready to have sex, it'll grow even
bigger and get hard and stick out so you can put it inside a vagina."

Then I linked penetration and ejaculation to making babies.  He thought it
was gross.  I told him it was a little gross, but it felt so good that when
his body changed, he'd want to do it anyway.

I moved on to mood swings and stuff, and all in all he seemed to take it
pretty well.  I asked him if he had any questions about any of it and he
said no.  I told him he could always ask me anything, no matter what, and I
wouldn't make fun of him or repeat his questions to anyone.

"Sometimes boys get embarrassed that they don't know about sex, and they
make stuff up.  So you'll hear stuff at school from other kids and not all
of it will be true.  If you have a question, you can always run it by me.
If you're old enough to ask, you're old enough to know, so just... just
don't be afraid to ask me if you hear something that doesn't make sense.
You can ask your mom or you can ask me."

"I'd rather ask you," he said.  "Mom's a girl so she might not know
everything about boys."

"Maybe.  But she does know all about girls, more than I do.  She won't be
mad at you if you do ask her things."

"Oh.  How do you know?"

"Because she asked me to talk to you about everything this weekend."

"She did?"

"Yeah.  And I was nervous but she said to answer any of your questions."

"Oh.  So... she knows what I asked?"

"Uh, no... she just... asked me to go over the basics with you.  I won't
tell her what you asked.  I'll just tell her we had a talk and it went
well.  No details.  How's that?"

Jesse looked relieved.  "Thanks.  It's just kind of embarrassing to have my
mom know about all that."

I smiled.  "You think that now, but everyone goes through the same basic
things.  Don't worry, I'm sure she understands."

We went swimming again, before we headed back.  This time I remembered to
get the towels and we dried off and got dressed.  The hike back was
uneventful.  We took breaks at the same places to rest and get some water.
Jesse shared a big piece of his brownie with me and nibbled at the rest as
he walked.  We finished the trail mix, and when we got back the sun was
low.

Jesse was more accustomed to the night this time and the odd dimness of the
campsite under the trees despite the clear sky didn't seem to bother him.
I hoped the same for the nighttime sky, although he had calmed down really
quickly once I was holding him.

It occurred to me that he was very comfortable with me considering we had
only known each other about a year.  I only got to know him in the first
place because his mother didn't have anyone to watch him while we had our
fun.  But he was a cool little kid.  He meant a lot to me, too.  It had
snuck up on me.

I pulled out the cast iron pan from the car and grilled steaks and onions
for dinner.  Simple enough, but more `real' after the MRE lunch.  We talked
about the hike after we ate and before long we had washed up the
plates--I'd threatened Jesse that I'd make him strip naked to wash dishes
if he spilled water again--and we sat in front of the fire, tossing in an
occasional pine cone to hear them pop.

All the while, the sky turned from a rich, warm gold to fiery red which
faded as the stars made themselves known.

***

About two months later, Monica and Jesse came over early because it was a
three day weekend, and we decided to stay up watching Netflix.  After
dinner, we all got into whatever passed for sleepwear.  T-shirts and
underwear for Monica and me.  Jesse had boxers and an old t-shirt this time
around, having recently decided he was too old for pajamas.

Monica stayed for the first movie, but when we picked a horror movie next,
she said she was going to bed early and not to stay up past midnight.
Also, it was my responsibility to deal with Jesse if he had nightmares.
Jesse protested that he was eleven and didn't have nightmares from fake
movies.

The movie started with the usual tropes with the isolated cabin and
foolhardy teenagers.  Jesse laughed at them up until the first on-screen
murder.  Then he was pressed against my side.  It got kind of annoying
after a bit, so I paused the movie, made him get up, and lay down on the
couch.  He happily lay on top of me and I unpaused the movie.

Before too long, a couple took a romantic moonlight stroll by the lake even
though their friends were dropping like flies.  They started undressing and
Jesse started giggling.

"You can see her boobs!" he said.

"Yeah, well, they're going to do it."

"Outside?"

"Guess they thought that'd be more private than in the cabin with friends."

Suddenly the girl pulled down her panties and we got a full frontal view.
I was shocked.

"She's naked!  I saw her thing!"

I paused the movie again.  I thought this was the second movie.  It was the
third.  You know how that goes.  If the original's a hit, the second tries
to follow up but if that doesn't make as much money, any other sequels are
more about softcore porn than actual horror.  I'd picked the wrong one.

"I didn't realize this was in this movie.  Maybe we should watch another."

Jesse hugged me tighter.  "No!  I mean, we've already seen half of this
one.  Let's just finish it."

"I donno, I don't know how explicit this one gets.  The second one doesn't
show this much."

"It's okay.  I'm not a little kid.  I've seen girls naked before."

"Who?"

"My mom when I was little.  And I know all about sex.  You told me and we
learned it in school.  I won't giggle again.  Please?"

I felt that telltale sign by my hip again.  I thought back to everything.
I'd seen just as bad when I was little.  And it was probably just some
topless or dark scenes.  Nothing visibly going into anything else.  I
patted his back.

"Okay, but don't tell your mom about this."

"I won't," he said, as I hit the play button on the remote.

"Thank you!" he said.

On screen, the girl laid back as she spread her legs.  Only her knees were
visible.  Her would-be boyfriend went down on her, and I had to explain to
Jesse what was happening.  He thought it was gross.  But he was still just
as hard and he started to move his hips almost imperceptibly.  I put my
hand on his back so he wouldn't fall, and as the action heated up on the
screen he started speeding up a little.

I got hard despite myself.  Not because of him, but because of his
excitement.  I could remember being eleven myself and seeing my first movie
sex scene.  I tried to lay still but I started rubbing his back a bit.
Jesse started breathing more heavily.  He hunched up his back a little and
my hand slid to his butt.  His eyes were transfixed on the screen as I gave
his butt a little squeeze.  He made a little moan and squeezed his eyes
shut, just for a second.

I sat up for a second.  "I think... I think it's a little cool in here.
Let's put a blanket over us."

Jesse sat up and I couldn't tell if he was confused or afraid.  I took the
blanket from the arm of the couch and pulled it over us.  "That's better.
Why don't I rewind so we can see what we missed?"

I hit the "back 30 seconds" button three times.  The girl started
undressing again.  My t-shirt had ridden up and Jesse hunched up a little
higher again against my side and pulled my hand back to his butt, then
started gyrating again.  I rubbed his butt a few times, then started
rubbing the small of his back, pushing his boxers down a bit.  He was
between sizes and these were big on him.

Jesse lifted up off me for a second and then I felt his boxers disappear.
He'd pulled them down to his thighs and then he lay down on top of me
again.  I went back to rubbing his butt but with my right hand I caressed
his cheek and rubbed his neck.

"Do they like that?" he asked as the protagonist went down on the girl
again.

"Yeah, only reason to do it," I said.  "It feels good."

"Isn't it gross?"

"Not really," I said.  "Just takes getting used to.  But you're so focused
on making the other person feel good that it's still fun even when you're
getting used to it," I said.

That seemed like less cynical advice than `people will do anything if
they're horny enough.'

When they started actually having sex (or pretending to--it was a movie,
after all), Jesse really started thrusting into me hard.  I kept rubbing
his butt, and allowed myself to go further and along his thighs a bit.  It
was an odd feeling.  I wasn't gay but I remembered a couple youthful
expressions of curiosity.  And Jesse was just soft and smooth everywhere.
It felt strangely innocent in an odd way, even as he was busily humping me.
A few times as I moved from his thighs to his butt, I felt a velvety
softness that I assumed was his sack, which aside from the texture was also
noticeable for its heat.

Jesse sighed a couple of times as the on-screen characters were orgasming
and then I heard a gasp and he slammed against me a couple of times and
then went completely rigid.  I felt his penis swell twice and then jerk and
then Jesse arched his back again and his penis started throbbing violently
and I felt a tiny heat that spread slightly as the throbbing subsided and
Jesse melted.

I looked at him and his eyes were rolled back in his half-closed lids.  I
rubbed his back and when he shifted his weight, his skin slipped rather
than shifted.  That meant he was wet.  I instinctually wrapped an arm
around him so he wouldn't slip off me or the couch.

Jesse reacted as well, but with panic.  He tried to push off of me and said
"I'm sorry, I didn't meant it.  It was an accident.  Please don't be mad at
me.  I won't do it again.  I'll clean it up.  Just let me go, please.  I
want to go to sleep."

It caught me by surprise.  He had been pretty aggressively humping me.  He
slid his boxers down so we were skin to skin.  I was rubbing his butt.
What did he think we were doing?

I wrapped both my arms around his back and pulled him against me.  "Hey," I
said.  "Hey.  It's all right.  Just relax.  I'm not mad.  We just got a
little carried away.  It's okay.  It happens sometimes."

"Please, I'm not-- I didn't-- I don't know why I did that.  I didn't mean
it to happen I just couldn't stop."  His voice cracked and he sobbed
quietly.

"I know, I know," I whispered in his ear.  "It's hard when you're your age.
The movie got you going.  You haven't learned to deal with it yet.  I got
an erection from it, too.  It's okay, it's normal."

"Please don't tell Mom, I'll do anything!"

"Hey, remember?  I said we should keep this movie to ourselves.  This will
be our secret, too.  Just relax.  You didn't do anything wrong.  I'm not
mad.  Just a little wet."

I moved my right hand down between us and felt the wet spot between us.
The backs of my fingers slid against his glans.  The wetness was thin but
slippery between my thumb and forefinger.  Not pee, as if I had any doubt.

"Looks like you're growing up," I said.  "I couldn't do that until I was
twelve."

"Really?" he said.  "I don't like it."

"Yeah, it's messy, but trust me, you'll make a lot more of it in a year.
It gets everywhere."

"I'm sorry it got on you.  You're not mad at me?"

"No, I know it's hard to control.  That's why masturbating--remember when
we went camping I talked about playing with yourself?--that's why it's so
good for you.  So you know how to pace yourself once you're having sex.  Or
even just when you're by yourself."

Jesse didn't say anything, but put his head back on my shoulder, his
forehead against my neck.  I rubbed his back with my clean hand and pulled
his boxers back up, wiping my hand on them.  "Want to keep watching the
movie?" he asked.

"Yeah," he said, with a sniffle that broke my heart.  He was awake when the
two lovers were killed, but fell asleep right after that.  Maybe 5 minutes,
I'd say.  I turned off the movie.  I was hard as a rock from the general
principle of the whole thing, but I knew that--unlike Jesse--I would have a
giant mess to clean up.  Especially, I imagined, after that whole show.  I
pondered why he was so upset about it all.  It seemed like such an
overreaction.  But if he had just started ejaculating, all of those
feelings were probably just overwhelming.  They were for me at first.

I sighed, and made sure the blanket was over Jesse and me.  He was heavy
and bony but soft and warm at the same time, and his breath against my neck
along with the rising and falling of his body and the tiny thump of his
heartbeat was reassuring somehow.  I closed my eyes and put my arms around
him, and focused on his body.  I don't remember falling asleep, just how
pleasant I felt.

Monica was up early the next morning to catch some kind of clothing sale,
so it was just me and Jesse for a couple hours.  I woke up when I heard her
phone make a camera shutter sound.  She mentioned how cute we looked
together on the couch before she left.  I shook his shoulder gently to wake
him up.

"Time to get up, Jesse."  He groaned and stretched.  "Did you sleep good?"

"Yeah," he said.  He yawned again and put his head back on my shoulder.

"Oh, no you don't.  Come on.  We have to get in in the shower."

"Okay," he said, ignoring me.  I sat up and he clung to me, pretending to
be asleep.  I struggled to my feet--he was getting heavy--and carried him
into the bathroom, where I leaned forward slightly to turn on the water.
Then, once the water was just right, I repositioned him on my shoulder and
stepped into the shower stall with him

Jesse screamed.

"What are you doing?!" bubbled to the top of his protests.

"Taking a shower, like I told you.  What did you think we were doing?"

"I'm still in my clothes!  Let me out!"  By this time he was still
squealing, but in between laughter.

I grabbed him so he couldn't escape and slid the shower door closed again.
"No, no, you're not tracking water everywhere.  Just take off your clothes
in here."

"Why did you bring me in in my clothes?" he asked, with fists resting on
his hips.

"Because they're a little dirty from last night."  His ears reddened.  "So
we're going to put them in the laundry anyway so your mom doesn't find out.

"Oh," he said, and looked down at the floor.

I pulled him to me and hugged him.  "Our little secret, okay?"

"Yeah."  He hugged me back.  "Thanks."

Then I grabbed the bar of soap and started rubbing it on his chest.  He
shrieked and said, "No, no, let me take it off first!" and struggled with
the wet t-shirt that was clinging to him for dear life.  He got stuck with
it over his head and cried for help, which I provided after a moment of
hesitation, but his boxers he just shoved down while marching in place to
help them fall, and then kicked them to the corner of the shower.

I put some shampoo in his hair and then I started undressing, too.  I
noticed that he watched me.  I decided to bring up the subject of puberty
again.

"Safe zone in the shower," I said.  "Anything you ask doesn't get mentioned
outside unless you bring it up."

"Why do you look so different than I do?" he asked.

I looked down at my penis, a respectable three inches, and at his, which
still looked to me like a round button.  I started thinking of growth
spurts and circumcision, and how to bring that up in a neutral fashion.
"Well, when you're a teenager, you start to get bigger... and--"

"No, I mean why do you have all that hair?"

I blinked and looked back down again.  I laughed despite myself.  I thought
we'd covered that on the camping trip, but I hadn't known then, either.
"Oh, that.  I don't know why, exactly.  I think I heard it was from even
before we were cavemen and hadn't invented clothes yet.  I don't think
anyone really knows.  But that's what happens when you become an adult.
You'll get hair there, too."

"I don't have any at all," he said, and thrust his hips out and smoothed
out his skin with his hands, first stretching his pubic mound, and then
moving his hands to stretch his scrotum up to look at the underside.

"Not really, no, but you will.  Probably another year or two."

He reached out and put his fingertips in my pubes.  I flinched, and
immediately felt embarrassed about it.  The move had surprised me.  And it
had tickled, too.  Jesse jerked his hand back.

"Sorry," he said.

"No, it's okay.  I just wasn't expecting it.  Uh, go ahead.  If you want."

He gingerly reached back out and put his hand on my abdomen, then slid it
down to my pubes and pet them a few times.

"They're scratchy.  That's weird," he said.

"Yeah.  When yours first come in they'll be soft, but after they grow out
they get coarse like that.  Another one of those mysteries."

I felt my penis start to harden involuntarily.  *Really* involuntarily.  It
rose to about horizontal with the floor.

"Why does your thing look like that?" he asked.

"How do you mean?" I replied.

"It's so long and it's weird at the end."  He grabbed it and I gasped.  My
penis jerked and hardened the rest of the way and I felt my foreskin slide
back.  His hand remained midway on the shaft, floating on the layers of
skin.

"Whoa, that's weird!" he said.  His eyes were locked on the tip of my dick
where the glans now poked through.  After a pause, he slowly let go and my
penis jumped on its own.

"Well, that's a couple different things," I said.

"Now it looks kinda like mine," he said, and thrust his hips out again.
The little round head was turning red.

"Yes," I said.  "My foreskin covers mine and when I pull it back to wash
under it, it looks like yours," I said.  I pulled the skin the rest of the
way back and let the shower run over it before pushing it forward again.
It stayed most of the way over my glans, despite my erection.

"Why doesn't mine look like that?" he said.

I tried to take a deep breath, but it ended up being a sigh.  "It did, but
a little bit after you were born, you must have had an operation to take it
off."

"Was I sick?"

"No, just sometimes parents do that because they think it's cleaner or
something.  I don't really know why they did it to you."

"Didn't it hurt?"

I thought deeply, then lied.  "Maybe a little, but they numbed it and you
were too little to remember it.  Every boy looks like me when they're born,
and a little over half of boys stay that way, and the rest look like you.

Jesse's brow wrinkled as he tried to absorb this information.  "Why is
yours so long like that?  Mine's really little."

"Well, boys are born small, and then when your body starts to change, it
grows real big all of a sudden.  Just like how you'll get hair."

"But why's it stick out?  Mine doesn't."  He grabbed my dick again and
pulled it down.  He found that his hand slid with my skin and gave a couple
tentative, unskilled strokes.  "That's weird," he said, as he watched the
tip of my foreskin open and close to accommodate my glans.  I held my
breath because the sensation was much more stimulating than I expected.  I
had only expected a couple questions about last night, not all of this.

"It gets hard when it's rubbed in case I want to have sex and put it inside
a woman," I said.  "The skin moves to help it move in and out."

"Does that mean I can't do it if I don't have skin?"

"No..." I started.  "Everything gets slippery, too.  Maybe it's not the
exact same but it'll work just as well."

"Oh," he said.  He was idly rubbing a finger along his penis with his left
hand.  "Why doesn't mine stick out like yours?"

"Well, normally if you touch it, it gets hard and longer.  I'm not sure why
yours doesn't.  I haven't really seen it up close before.  But I'm sure
it's normal."

He let go of my dick and moved his hand away from his own to show me.  "It
feels kind of tingly, he said.  "And kinda tight."

I knelt down and put my hands on his hips and leaned in.  I couldn't tell
if his penis was any bigger, but it was a deep red, almost cartoonishly so.
I ran my thumb over it and Jesse gasped.  It was definitely hard.  An
anatomy lesson ran through my head as I wondered what was going on.  But I
looked up into his face and his eyes were watching me.  I didn't see
nervousness.  I saw anticipation and... trust.  It made an impression on
me.

"I think it's normal, just an erection.  It's hard just like mine gets.
It's just not as big.  Don't worry.  You'll get used to it.  And you'll get
bigger soon."

"Yours is really big again," he said, and I looked down at my dick,
foreskin halfway back, and bobbing uncertainly between us.  "Does yours
make a mess like mine does?"

"You mean when you play with yourself?  That's called masturbating, by the
way.  Yeah, mine does that too.  A bigger mess, actually.  Remember back
when we went camping and we talked about sperm?"

"Yeah," he said.  He covered himself with his hand but not out of modesty.
Instead, he was rubbing his palm in the tiniest circle.  "How do you do
it?"

"The same way you do," I said.

"No, I mean show me."

I opened my mouth but I was too stunned to answer.

"Please?  I won't tell anyone.  The shower's a safe zone, right?"  I stared
down at him and his cheeks reddened and he broke my gaze.  "I just want to
know if I'm normal."

I debated for a moment, but he seemed so sincere that I found myself
wrapping my fingers around my dick despite myself.  Hadn't Monica said that
he was old enough to get an answer to anything that he was old enough to
ask?  I shook the thought out of my head as soon as I thought it.  She
obviously didn't mean this.  But I remembered being curious as a kid and
not having anyone to turn to except scouting friends.  Maybe a little
honesty now could keep him from whatever passed for today's equivalent of a
constant search for nudie magazines.

I wasn't sure that made any sense.  I stopped trying to overthink things
and let my hand start its automatic routine, forged through years of
practice.

My hand sped up as the skin flipped back and forth over my glans, slowly
building up to the unavoidable climax.  Jesse's eyes were glued to my dick
and he brought his hand up to grab it.

He hesitated and looked back up at me.  I nodded and took my hand away.
Jesse put a hand around my dick and started to jerk it back and forth.  His
movements were unpracticed, suffering from both inexperience and different
anatomy.  I took his wrist and helped him through the motions a bit, using
my other hand to help adjust the strength of his grip. He needed much less
pressure than he was using, but he adapted quickly.  I let go and he
actually managed to bring me up to an embarrassingly strong orgasm.  It
triggered all at once, before I was prepared, and I gasped as the world
exploded in fireworks a second before white semen appeared in a small
fountain which was followed by a burst that went over his head.  Three more
nearly as high followed before the last was no more than a gush that poured
over the tip of my foreskin like wax pouring from the edge of a lit candle,
and down over his hand.  I grabbed his wrist again and sunk to my knees,
panting.

I reached out for balance and caught his hips.  Then I wrapped my arms
around him and pulled him against me, still struggling to catch my breath.
Jesse hugged me back.

When I'd managed to regain my senses a bit and loosened my embrace, Jesse
leaned back and put his hands on my cheeks.  "That was cool," he said.
"Now it's my turn."

I didn't manage to hide a look of incredulity on my face.  "It's only
fair," he said.  "Besides, I did you.  You have to be fair."

He took a step back and I looked back down at his penis.  It was bright
red, just as I remembered.  I reached out and stroked his abdomen, my hand
gliding over his wet skin and between his legs.  He pushed his penis into
my palm as I passed along it, and I held it there against his slow thrusts.
He held on to my shoulders for leverage and I let him rub against the butt
of my hand as I gently rubbed his balls with my fingers.  I tried to
remember them back during our camping trip.  They must not have been very
impressive back then if I couldn't remember them, but now they hung just a
little from his body.  They must've started changing first, I thought, if
he can already shoot.  I wondered just what that would look like.  He
didn't have any hair or show any other sign of puberty yet.  I wondered how
many of his friends might also be secretly undergoing changes.

I was suddenly glad I did have the talk with him over the camping trip.

"That feels good," he said, snapping me back to reality.

"Ever do that before?"

"No, I always just rub right here," he said, tapping my wrist, but meaning
his glans.

"Guess you learned something new," I said.  I took my hand away.

"Don't stop yet!" he said.

"Hold on.  Just get warm, I only need a second."  I stepped aside from the
shower spray and he stood in it.  I took the hair conditioner bottle and
put a dollop in my palm.  "Okay, ready?"

I stepped back into the shower and turned Jesse toward the wall, reaching
around him to cup his penis again.  I pulled him against me with my left
arm and said "Okay, you know what to do."

He started humping my hand, now slippery from the conditioner, and he made
an "ohhhh" noise before wrapping his arms around my left arm and pushing
hard.  My own dick was nestled in the small of his back, not quite in his
cleft, and I felt it grow tumescent but not fully hard so soon after my own
orgasm.  He rubbed against it during his own thrusting and it was pleasant
enough, but didn't distract me from making sure Jesse felt good.  I
continued running my hands around his small balls and in the creases of his
legs, which made him stand on his tiptoes.

He sped up a bit, and although I was hoping for something bigger, my only
warning of his orgasm was when he gripped my arm with surprising strength.
Then I felt his penis--even though it was just the glans--swell and start
pulsing rapidly.

He grabbed my right wrist and pushed it against him, arching his shoulders
in a languid shudder, and then blew out his breath and said, "Okay, that's
enough."

He pulled my right arm up to his chest where my left arm was, and held them
there as his weight sagged.  I felt his chest rise and fall and through
that pattern noticed his heart was racing, pounding against my chest
through his back.

I just held him.

"Thanks," he said.

"Thanks to you, too," I answered.

"No," he said.  "I mean for everything."

He turned around and avoided looking me in the eyes.  But he hugged me and
I hugged him back.  I had a feeling that I'd be processing this experience
for a little while.

While we held each other in the warmth of the shower and each other, time
stretched and yawned.

***

The usual routine slowly evolved into Monica and me spending more and more
time together.  At her place during the week and mine during the weekend.
It started to make less and less sense.  I truly loved her, the sex was
great, and we loved spending time together but were still content to have
our own space apart.  Not so much distance as just different hobbies.  I'd
play video games--with Jesse if they were multiplayer or
age-appropriate--and she had her own hobbies.  It didn't seem like it could
get much better.  Not on its own.  So I made a decision.

Jesse and I were at the park, throwing around a football.  I'd taught him
how to throw a spiral, and it was great to watch his throws get stronger
and lengthier and more consistent every weekend.

I threw the ball toward him, then when he followed the football with his
eyes I leaned forward and charged at him.

He caught the ball with a whoop and looked back toward me for approval.  He
screamed happily when he saw me barreling down on top of him.  I tackled
him--pulling my weight once I got to him--and took him to the ground.  He
howled with laughter as I rolled to my back and then my side, swinging him
along with me in my arms, then tickling him.

"Stop, stop!" he yelled.  "I'm not ticklish!"

"Oh, really?" I said, digging in with my fingers.  He gave a strangled
little squeal that decayed into giggles.  I hugged him close and flattened
my hand and patted him on the chest, my signal that I was done tickling.
He settled in against me.

"I love you, you know," I said.

"I know," he said.

"I love your mom, too."

"Yeah," he said.

"So... I was thinking."  I could feel his heart beat, still rapid from
being tickled.  My heart rate matched his, but from anxiety.  "I think I'm
going to ask your mom to marry me."

Jesse twisted around in my arms.  "What?"

"I haven't asked her yet.  But I want to.  I wanted to ask what you thought
about that first."

I watched Jesse's eyes flick back and forth sideways.  "Would that make you
my dad?"

"Kind of--I mean, you wouldn't have to call me that, we'd still be like we
are today, and--"

"I want you to be my dad."  He said it so earnestly, so simply, that it
caught me off guard.

"I--really?"

"You make me happy.  You spend time with me.  My dad never did that.  I
never even had a dad.  I wish it was you."

I pulled him to me in a hug and kissed him on the forehead.  Jesse hugged
me back for five seconds, and then started to squirm.  "Come on, it's your
turn to catch."

I let go of him and stood back up.  He hopped back on his feet with the
football and started running backwards with his arm up behind his head.
"Better run, this one's going long!"

As I jogged backwards, I knew I was ready for the long haul.

***

It was the happiest moment of my life, but I'll spare you most of the
details.  I took Monica and Jesse out to a fancy Italian restaurant.
Pretended it was a family tradition.  The desert was a set up--*will you
marry me?* spelled out in chocolate sauce.  I had the ring.  Monica
accepted.  We all cried, even Jesse.  I moved in with her, and a year and a
half later, we got our own place.

Before that, Jesse started getting hair coming in.  He showed me proudly,
and I stroked it with a finger, complimenting him.  That lead to more
stroking, and this time when he came, it was cloudy and thicker.

We were pretty comfortable with each other.  We could have a hand down our
pants during hot movie scenes when Monica wasn't around, and the occasional
shower was repeated, but those kinds of showers weren't a regular thing.
Jesse liked to hump me for another couple of years.

About a month after he turned 13, Jesse's voice started cracking.  Every
time it happened, he'd turn red despite his complexion, and I'd just smile
and keep my mouth shut.  I remembered the mix of pride and embarrassment
when my voice started to change.  But it was the cutest thing.  A couple
weeks later, he cornered me while his mom was out.

"I have something to show you," he said.

I was in bed reading a book, it being a lazy Saturday.

"What's that?" I asked.  Jesse pushed down his boxers.  I put the book down
and sat upright.  "Whoa."

His penis was sticking straight out.  I'd noticed he was taller and
thinner, but this was a different kind of growth spurt.  He walked close to
me.  Not just the deep red glans, but two inches of shaft behind it,
sticking out.  I reached out to feel it.  It was hot and hard.

"Wow, I guess you're growing."

"I just noticed this week," he said.  "Do you think I'll be as big as you?"

I scooted to the side of the bed and he stood between my legs.  "No way to
know," he said.  "But I told you you'd get bigger.  You're going to grow a
lot more, too."

I put a hand on his waist and guided him closer to me as I shifted on the
edge of the bed.  I put my hips out so our penises were touching and then I
reached down and pushed my foreskin forward, pushing it over his penis.  He
gasped.

"It's hot," he said.  "Wet."  I felt his penis jump a little.

"You're growing up.  You'll be an adult before we know it.  But I'm always
here if you have any questions."

"I know," he said, and threw his arms around me.  I hugged him, his penis
slipping out of my foreskin but pressing against me as I stiffened up.  I
reached down and grasped his erection.  Gingerly, I tried to slide his skin
along his shaft.  I stroked him and felt a bit of precum gather at the tip.
A minute later, we both came pretty hard.

He grew out of it, as all boys do.  I wasn't interested in him that way as
an adult, anyway, and being a father gives you a different perspective on
things, Everyone builds their family in different ways.  Jesse had never
had a dad, and needed one.  I hadn't known I wanted a son, but he was
special to me.  So after the wedding, he started to call me "Dad," and the
sex play tapered off pretty quickly.

I hadn't even imagined messing around with him when I started dating.
Looking back at it, it was something strange but special.  I can only
really speak to our situation, but I can't say I regret anything.  It was
something he wanted and to be honest, I found it sort of fun.  Almost
innocent in a way, like my own limited childhood exploration.  And it gave
him the confidence to be proud of his body, especially once he could
finally be measured in inches.

But I also think back to when I would stand behind him and tie his tie for
the wedding, or later on, when he finally learned to tie his own.  Other
milestones rushed by in a blur.  I pretended not to notice when he went on
his first "date" at 14, and I taught him how to drive.  In real life, there
was more yelling than I'm proud of but what I prefer to remember is how
excited he was when he passed his driving test and got his provisional
license.

There was camping, too, although sharing a sleeping bag together turned out
to be more mundane than usual.  For the first couple of years he slept
between Monica and me, so my original plans of just sharing with her were
spoiled.  But it was worth it for how nice it was to wake up and all three
of us cuddle together.  Sex with Monica didn't happen during camping
weekends, but was frequent most other times.  It still is.

Jesse continued to do well in school and earned a small grant with an essay
about camping, of all things, and is in community college today.  He's
narrowing down the three or four things he wants to be when he grows up.
Luckily, he has another year before he runs out of general education
requirements and has to really commit to a major.  He kept up with sports
and long ago burned through the last bits of baby fat that followed him
through middle school.  We still aren't shy about changing in front of each
other when it comes to the occasional swim at the public pool, so I can say
that while he isn't huge--I've seen an occasional semi and would probably
guess he's a good four and a half or five inches fully hard--he's
self-confident and I know that this will make up for practically any other
shortcoming.

And now that he's grown, that's not my concern.  In theory, that's his
burden, although he doesn't seem to worry about it.  Other than a few stray
comments about how he's glad he eventually grew, and a couple muttered
comments about how his future sons would be circumcised over his dead body,
you'd never know that he was anything than happy with how he grew up, and
he seems pleased with how he turned out.

If he ever starts dating seriously, some day I might be not just a father,
but also a father-in-law.  And eventually, a grandfather.  I still don't
know how to feel about that.  I'm certainly not old enough for any of that.
And I never imagined, back when I started dating Monica, that my life would
change so drastically.  But life is like that--you never quite know what
you're going to get.  You just have to do your best with what you're given.
I have a wonderful wife and an incredible son.  And together, as the new
year approaches, we're a happy family.

I'll drink to that.