Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 19:27:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Rob Roth Subject: Dylan's Summer Vacation Two, Chapter 56 DYLAN'S SUMMER VACATION TWO Chapter 56 by Donny Mumford Saturday morning is here, and it's not just any Saturday morning either, this Saturday is the first day of our vacation. We're already on vacation from college of course, and now we're on vacation from our grass cutting job. So it's sort of a vacation from our vacation. Seven days in Wildwood with Chubby and the moms, that's what I have staring me in the face, and I'm damn happy about it, too. Last night before bed I packed my personal stuff, so I'm ahead of the game already. As I do my morning ritual in the bathroom I can't help but feel some mixed emotions about the coming week. For the most part I'm thrilled about it, but at the same time I'm unhappy about not seeing Robby for a week, especially after our wonderfully loving date last night. It was a night filled with sex, but there were also laughs, a lot of fun, as well as sincere loving feelings to go along with the sex. I feel we reaffirmed our true love for each other and Robby appears to agree with that assessment. I say that with some confidence because he basically told me to do all the alley-catting around I want to, sow my wild oats as it were, and get it out of my system because he knows in his heart that we'll eventually be exclusively together. I'm confident of that too, except who the hell am I going to alley-cat around with in Wildwood? I won't know anyone there other than my family. Sowing any wild oats there is a long shot at best, but I appreciate Robby's sort of endorsement of the idea. He's so awesome in so many ways I can't count them all. Robby's easy to love, and love deeply too, the way I do. My cell phone goes off interrupting my thoughts. It's my brother. "Hi, Chubby, whassup?" Chubby says, "Well, I'm glad you're up to start with. Let's load the cars and get that out of the way as fast as we can. It's a six or seven hour drive to Wildwood so the sooner we're packed, the sooner we'll get there." I look at my watch, "It's eight o'clock, we can be on the road by nine and in Wildwood by three o'clock." Chubby chuckles, "Yeah, if we drive eighty miles an hour maybe." I'm like, "I'll meet you at your place in two minutes and we'll formulate our plan of attack." Chubby mutters, "Bring coffees." The moms, who will be driving their own car, won't be up until ten or eleven, and that's actually early for them after a late Friday night. Chubby and I will have their station wagon packed for them, but by the time they shower and get their make-up on, then pack their clothes, it'll probably be one o'clock by the time they're ready to leave. They drive conservatively and will definitely stop along the way for lunch, so the earliest I expect to see them is eight o'clock tonight. As soon as we get to Wildwood Chubby and I will get the keys from the real estate office and then open our rental unit so we can unload the stuff from the Jeep. Later we'll need to be around when the moms arrive to help them unload the station wagon. We'll also have takeout food waiting for them as our late dinner. I'm getting excited again as I climb the steps to Chubby's carrying two mugs of coffee. We take the coffees to the balcony and share a cigarette while Chubby looks over my shoulder and we peruse the list of things we need to bring with us. Locating where these items are stored is our first order of business. We make educated guesses as to whose condo or storage area we'll likely find the stuff we're looking for, and when done our coffees we're ready to get to work. This is the pain in the ass part of vacation, well, it's one if them. We know from past years not to take shortcuts in this endeavor. We'll take however long is necessary to locate and pack everything on the list. If we can't find a beach chair, for instance, we're going to persevere until we find it. Otherwise one of us won't have a chair to sit on when we're at the beach. Chubby begins searching in his condo's storage area and I do the same in mine, and soon we've got a pile of items for the beach that we can load into the station wagon. The mom's would be more than happy to help with this, but if we wait for them we blow the entire first day of our vacation. When we've located and piled up the beach chairs, beach towels, beach umbrella, frisbees, football, tennis ball for handball, boogie boards, swim fins and goggles, which we'll never use but always bring with us for some reason, we start humping the stuff to the station wagon. Next we round up linens including bath towels, dish towels, washcloths, sheets, and we bring our pillows, too. Who wants to sleep on the same pillow a hundred people have slept on? We load the Keurig coffee maker and our favorite mugs, plus disposable Styrofoam cups for take-out coffees and beverages. The owner of the duplex unit supplies pots and pans, dishes, utensils, and things like that, but we bring our own K-cups, detergents, dishwasher soap, bath soap, and of course our bathroom toiletries including shampoo and other personal items. Chubby says, "This is getting old, bro, what else do we need to get?" I take out the list and scan it, then say, "We need sun block, some food, plus over the counter medicines like antacids and Tylenol, disinfectant for cuts, band-aids, and that sort of stuff." We buy all these things here in Framingham because every store in Wildwood jacks up the cost on everything to rip off the tourist. They've got basically four months to make their money. The locals probably hate the vacation months, but I say, 'Move if you don't like it'. Chubby and I finally have collected all the items on the list, including food items like cold cuts and rolls, breakfast items and frozen foods, which we pack in a cooler along with frozen ice packets to keep everything cold. We often eat out on vacation, or buy take-out seafood, but we also eat-in a couple of night to save money. There's a few other miscellaneous items we stuff into the station wagon, and when I think we're done, Chubby says, "Oh man! I forgot the booze! Dammit! My mom's got a box of booze she wants to bring, plus two cases of beer." I'm getting frustrated, "Well, that's just great. Where the hell are we going to put it?" He's like, "Um, it has to go with the moms. Let's take some stuff out of the station wagon and put it in the Jeep, then we'll have room for the adult beverages." I'm getting grumpy now, but it's the same thing every year. We move stuff around and get the booze where it needs to be, and then I'm like, "Fuck it, that's all I'm doing. I packed my stuff last night." Chubby goes, "Oh good, you're all packed so you can help me get my stuff together." I blow out my cheeks letting the air out slowly, wanting to say something like, 'Did you ever think of packing before we're ready to fucking leave?' but instead I mutter, "Sure, let's get to it," and we trudge up to Chubby's condo with him trying to cheer me up. "Come on, Dylan, this is the last thing we need to do, then the fun begins, bro!" He pats my back and squeezes my shoulder and I can't help but grin at his cute smiling face. Ever chipper is my brother, Jeffrey. I say, "No problem, Chubby, let's get to it." In his messy bedroom Chubby can't decide what he wants to bring so we wind-up bringing three times the clothes he'll need, but I don't say anything. I just want to be done with it. Chubby stuffs way too many changes of clothing into a duffel bag, muttering, "They'll have an iron there so, ya know, if the clothes get a little wrinkled I'll iron the fuckers." I go, "Uh huh," and hump another satchel of his clothes down to the Jeep. There's barely enough room for my neatly packed stuff, but we squeeze it all in and then do a high-five with Chubby saying. "Piece of cake, bro!" This piece of cake took two hours to bake, you could say, but we're finally ready to leave, and only an hour behind schedule. Last thing we do is leave notes for the moms, and then we're finally actually in the car, with Chubby driving the first half of the trip. It's a little after ten o'clock in the morning so our ETA is somewhere in the vicinity of four-thirty to five-thirty this afternoon. Not great, but we got a later start than we usually do. Chubby drives away from our place and all the aggravation slowly and magically melts away, and we're both soon in positive Wildwood states of mind. The driving can be annoying with people cutting us off, going too slow or too fast, and we've also got to keep an ever watchful lookout for highway patrol cops trying to catch us speeding. Chubby's and my philosophy about driving is that anyone driving slower than us is an asshole, and anyone driving faster is a moron and a danger to society. In other words, we drive the perfect speed that everyone should drive at. This, unfortunately, is never the case. Lots of cars on the road this Saturday morning and a lot of them are loaded to capacity like we are, some with bicycles attached precariously to the trunks of their cars and most are heading somewhere south for vacation. Chubby says, "It'd be smarter if we just went to the Cape I suppose," and I'm like, "Yeah, except the beaches suck on the Cape, it's way overcrowded, the traffic's a freakin' nightmare, and there's no boardwalk so nothing to do after dark except play Scrabble." He goes, "Oh, that's why we go to the Jersey shore, right!" Of course there are ocean vacation spots in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, or Maine for that matter, and some of them have boardwalks too, but they're like amateur-ville compared to Wildwood. I hear Ocean City, Maryland is rocking, but we've never tried it. I'm not sure it'd be any closer than the Jersey shore anyway. No, we're hooked on Wildwood, it's become our summer tradition and if you're smart you don't fuck with tradition. From the CD player The Killers are blasting out their awesome version of rock 'n roll as we roll along with Chubby driving down Route 9 to the Mass Pike, which is a toll road. Lots of tolls between here and Wildwood, but we have an `Easy Pass' so that helps a lot getting us through the toll booths. Chubby drives to exit 9 on the Mass Pike where we get off and begin the long ride down Route 84. We're going east on 84 which takes us through Hartford, Connecticut and then another hour into New York state where we connect with Route 495. We stop for a quick lunch at an exit off 495 that claims there's a Denny's restaurant one mile off the exit. It's a mile alright, but it's stop and go the whole way so it takes us ten minutes to go the mile. Chubby says, "I'm happy to be turning over the driving to you, Dylan, traffic sucks the big one." I say, "We'll both feel better after we eat." Inside the restaurant we get seated right away and then wait another ten minutes for a waitress. Chubby says, "We'd better get take-out because this is killing us time-wise. We should have hit a fast food place." As he talks I'm boy watching an awesome looking teenager with a pale red crew cut who looks lick-able. He's with a girl he keeps smiling at, the fool. He needs to change teams. Chubby goes, "Yo, bro, did you hear me?" I'm like, "Huh? Oh, um, what?" He chuckles, looking where I was looking, then says, "That girl's not so cute." I go, "What girl?" The waitress takes our order for cheeseburgers to go, French fries, and large takeout Cokes. Surprisingly, in five minutes our bag of food arrives, we pay the waitress and get the hell out of there. I'm driving now and the one-mile trip back to Route 495 goes quicker in this direction. I drive while eating and it's a little messy, but Chubby wipes my chin with a paper napkin, chuckling, as we fly down the highway. "Teamwork," he mutters. It's only a half hour drive on 495, and then we get on the New York Thruway, which takes us to the Tappan Zee Bridge. We reconnect with the thruway again on the other side of the bridge and now our next connection is the Garden State Parkway, the last major road we'll be on during this trip. It's a longer stretch of highway than any of the others, and the traffic gets heavier and heavier the further we go because it's the main highway leading to many South Jersey shore spots. Not just Wildwood, there's also Atlantic City, Cape May, Ocean City, Somers Point, Wildwood Crest, and many others. Wildwood's the biggest one of them all and has by far the best boardwalk. Ocean City's got a good boardwalk, but it's still only half the size of the one in Wildwood. Just when I'm about to scream with frustration from this never-ending road trip, there's exit 4B. I get off the parkway there and Chubby mumbles, "Thank God that's over with." Now we're on Route 47, also known as Rio Grand Avenue, and a couple of miles down this road we'll be in Wildwood. We've got the windows down smelling the bay first, and then as we turn onto Ocean Avenue we smell the salt air from the ocean; there's no mistaking the enticing smell in the air at the Jersey Shore. At quarter to five Saturday afternoon we enter Wildwood itself. "Hot shit! We made it," Chubby exclaims. I drive us right to the same rental office we used last year where the sales person wouldn't give us the key at first because of our age. Then, Chubby doubled-talked circles around the woman and we finally left with the keys. This time there's a note in our rental file authorizing us to have the keys. We show identification and we're right back out the door with the keys in our hot little hands. Ten minutes later I pull up at the duplex the moms rented. It's a different one than last year's, so we're anxious to see it. I park right in front the place, asking, "How many times this week do you suppose we'll find a parking spot in front of our place?" Chubby goes, "Once, and this is it." Parking's a bitch, generally speaking, because there's so many people packed in tight quarters, and often the renters bring more than one car, like us. Chubby and I grab stuff from the Jeep and carry it up the outside steps to the second floor. Dropping my two satchels on the landing, I unlock the door. Inside, scanning the place, I'm like, "It looks just like our place last year," which is a good thing, not a complaint. Chubby says, "All cookie-cutter duplexes are probably renovated by the same builder." There are four bedrooms, one for each of us, but Chubby and I set our stuff down in the same one. I take this as a good sign because there's a double bed in the room. Maybe some brotherly love is in the forecast, or at the very least I get to sleep with Chubby for a week. I can't resist asking, "Don't you want your own room, Chubby?" He asks, "Did you see the size of the fourth bedroom?" I shrug, and he mutters, "It's a closet, and it wouldn't be fair to either of us to get stuck with that room all week. Don't you want me sharing a room with you?" Squeezing his shoulder, I go, "Get serious! You know I do." He grins, saying, "Okay, then, we get to sleep together like you're always nagging me to do." I say, "I beg your pardon, I don't nag." Grinning at me, Chubby mumbles, "If you say so, bro. Let's checkout the deck." The deck's out the backdoor, and it's awesome with deck chairs and a round table with an umbrella to protect us from the sun. We can see the ocean three blocks up from us. Our unit's on the end of a row of duplexes with a street next to us, about eight feet from the steps we just came up. We can look right down the street to the beach with the sun shining blindingly off the white sand, and beyond that is the Atlantic Ocean. It's five o'clock but the sun is still blaring down on us hot and bright. The blacktop streets would seriously burn bare feet and the same for the walk through the sand to the ocean. You gotta wear sandals at the very least. Chubby says, "Jeez, it's hot!" and I go, "Near the ocean it doesn't feel nearly this hot, but here, yeah it's brutal. Let"s get back in the air-conditioning and start putting our stuff away. The moms' bedrooms both have attached baths. Our bathroom is at the end of the hall near the backdoor and there's also a powder room, or half-bath, off the living room. There's a laundry room next to our bathroom, a big kitchen, the big living room, and that's it. All the rooms are big except the fourth bedroom. There's two high-definition TVs, one in the living room and a smaller one in the kitchen. The appliances and furniture are new, and so are the beds and mattresses. It's awesome renting a newly-renovated place. This is the first year for rentals in this place, but I'll bet eight or ten families have already used it. There's a clean, fresh-paint scent to the whole duplex. I like new things. I'm anxious to say hello to the boardwalk so as soon as we're done unloading the Jeep and putting stuff where it belongs, I say, "Okay, Chubby, let's hit the boardwalk." Chubby's all smiles as we walk outside and head down the street. Our duplex is three blocks down from the beach, like I said, and the boardwalk's also within walking distance, eight blocks to the left if we're facing the duplex. Eight blocks to the right if we stand in front of our place with our backs to it... ha ha. I'm excited! I go, "Chubby, I know I'm supposed to be cool and all, especially now that I'm almost twenty years old, but I'm just as excited about being here as I was when I was ten." We're walking down the street that will take us to the boardwalk, although we can't see it yet. Sharing a cigarette as we walk, Chubby's like, "Yeah, sure you're excited, but ya gotta act blasé as if you've been there and done that." I go, "Nah, I'm friggin' excited." He exhales smoke smirking at me, and then mutters, "Yeah, me too." I'm rocking my Oakley sunglasses feeling cool, although it's wicked hot. It's a little bit longer of a walk than I expected so we've got some perspiration on our faces when we finally dodge traffic crossing the street, and then jog through one of the many parking lots near the beach, and then the boardwalk's right beyond the parking lot. We trot up the ramp to the boardwalk proper and avoid the walkers to cross to the far railing and there it is, the mighty Atlantic. Leaning on the railing we both gawk at the spectacular view. The ocean stretches out in front of us until it meets the horizon way the fuck out there, and then seems to disappear; as far as the eye can see to the left and right of us is ocean. Between the ocean and the boardwalk is the beach that also goes to the left and right of us as far as we can see. Wildwood's beaches of powdery-white sand are among the most beautiful beaches along the Atlantic coastline, and access to them is free. Some areas of the beach are a thousand feet deep, while erosion has eaten away at the depths of others. It's quite a sight. Chubby and I have walked the beach, two or three miles up and back, many times over the years while gawking at the countless people sunbathing, making sand castles, or swimming in the ocean. Standing here now, feeling the cooler temperature because of the breezes from the ocean, we're quiet for a while taking in the spectacular sights. It's a beautiful summer day with a high sky and a big bright yellow sun hanging over the ocean, pouring sunlight and warmth down on the earth as seagulls glide effortlessly in the air squawking at the waves that are breaking on the shoreline. The dark water appears clear when the waves break on the beach, and then the water rushes quickly up the wet flat section of beach before running out of energy and ending their journey as foaming bubbles before being drawn back by the undertow to join the ocean even as the next wave is ready to do exactly the same thing in an endless cycle that's been going on for uncountable millions of years. Oceans are mesmerizing. The surface of the water is never still, alternately engorged and prolapsed, smoothing, ruffling, cresting as it comes to shore until the waves fragment on the rocks of the jetty, yet always waves forming and coming on, always changing, always the same, repeating endlessly until the end of time. Finally Chubby breaks the spell, and says, "Okay, Mac's Pizza time. That's our first order of business." We love Mac's pizza. It's thin crusted and the sauce is like no other pizza sauce I've ever had. We've been addicted to it for as long as I can remember. I go, "Absolutely, Chubby. Isn't it awesome being here again?" He nods his head, "That's the word for it, bro, awesome." During the day the boardwalk isn't ridiculously crowded like it'll be tonight, but there's still a lot of people walking the boards during the day. There are many Mac's Pizza shops on the boardwalk so we only need to wander down two blocks to find one of them. We walk from the ocean side of the boardwalk across to the other side that's lined with shops selling anything you can imagine. If it's not sold on the boardwalk, chances are you don't really need it anyway. As usual there's a line at Mac's and as we're waiting in it, I do some casual boy watching until a cute girl with a big chest taps Chubby's shoulder, and says, "Jeffrey?" like it's a question. Chubby turns his head, then points his index finger at the girl, and with a grin on his lips, he says, "You grew up good, Jeannette. How ya doing?" She wiggles her shoulders, her whole body seemingly in motion, then she points her noticeable breast at Chubby, and says, "You too! Are you married yet?" Chubby laughs, muttering, "Hardly. How 'bout you?" She says, "Actually I almost did get married. My boyfriend at the time got me drunk and pregnant at the senior prom, but fortunately I miscarried." Chubby goes, "Sounds like an awesome time," she laughs, slapping his arm, saying, "Oh you," and Chubby points to me, and says, "Meet my brother, Dylan. Dylan this is Jeannette Pierce, my tenth grade partner in cooking class." She nods her head at me, saying to Chubby, "He's as cute as you. Hi, Dylan." I mutter, "Whassup, Jeannette?" She says, "Call me Jen, okay?" Then to Chubby, "You never mentioned you had a brother," but before he can say anything to that, a girl the same size as Jen with similar facial features and identical breasts, says to Jen, "Eww, what do we have here, Jen?" Jen says to Chubby and me, "This is my twin sister, Julie. Julie these cute brothers are Jeffrey and Dylan," nodding at each of us as she says our name. I'm thinking, 'Oh shit, cute twin sisters and cute brothers, all the same age, so what's the natural outcome? A double fucking date.' Chubby says, "Hi there, girl," to Julie, "Nice to meet you." Then to both sisters, he asks, "Do you girls ever have back problems?" They look at each other quizzically, and then Jen goes, "Oh you, Jeffry!" He's smirking as Jen tells her sister, "Mister smartass is referring to our boobs," and both girls giggle and push out their oversized nobs. It's ghastly! I manage not to gag and then it's our turn at the counter. Jen asks, "Ya gonna buy us a slice too, Jeffrey?" He goes, "Of course, girls," and orders four slices. We each take our slice and make our way across to the railing side of the boardwalk again where benches line the railing, and we sit down on an unoccupied bench. As we eat, Chubby and Jen tell me and Julie about the mischief they got into during cooking classes. I skipped that class because I already knew how to cook. Chubby's in his element when he has the undivided attention of two cute girls. He's Mister Personality complementing the girls and making clever observations about the passing parade of walkers moving constantly by us. My eyes travel over the group looking for what interests me, because the girls do not. Then Chubby tells the girls a couple of off-color jokes that they eat up and laugh too hard at. It's soon apparent that both girls have potty mouths, too; this becomes obvious the more they talk. Some of the posse boys' girlfriends sprinkle an f-bomb in here and there too, as well as other profane language. Not being around girls a lot, this surprised me for some reason. I guess I thought cursing was a guy's thing, but I'm apparently wrong. Curse words sound cruder somehow coming from a girl's mouth, but maybe that's a sexist opinion. I'll be damned if I know. When were done with our pizzas we walk the boards with Jen all over Chubby and Julie wrapping her arms around my right arm, telling me, "I love shy boys like you, Danny." I say, "It's Dylan," and she says, "You're so different than your brother, is Jeffrey the oldest?" I say, "No, I am. I'm two days older than Chubby, er, Jeffrey." That information doesn't compute for Julie so she frowns, asking, "Are you adopted?" I go, "No, we're half-brothers." Still frowning Julie continues holding my arm as we walk behind Chubby and Jen. Jen's bursting out laughing in an exaggerated manner every minute or two, slapping Chubby's arm. Julie's now sucking on her lips, deep in thought trying to figure out how Chubby and I can be half-brothers with only two days separating our ages. I don't help her out with the math. She gives up trying to figure it out and says, "Take me on the Sea Serpent roller coaster, Danny, or are you afraid?" I say, "I'm afraid," and Chubby turns around to say to me, with a wink, "Don't be too disappointed, Dylan, but Julie's hooking up with her boyfriend in about ten minutes. Sorry, bro." I go, "Oh, really?" as I look at Julie. She says, "I'm thinking of dumping him now that I met you two." My heart drops, but she adds, "Except I love the big lug and you're ascared to go on the roller coaster with me. I like daredevil, bad boys, but you're soooo cute," and she rubs my hair, saying, "You got a bad boy's haircut too, I really think it's hot, but I'm stuck with Damien I guess." I mimic her use of a non-word, "Yeah, and I'm ascared of fast rides." Jen says, "Us girls need to meet up with her boyfriend now, but I'll meet you at ten o'clock, Jeffrey, right at that Mac's pizza shop. Okay?" He goes, "Wait a fucking minute, Jeannette, I gotta have a conference with my brother first." Julie lets go of my arm as Chubby comes over and puts his arm across my shoulders, whispering, "Would I be a total shit if I abandoned you the first night we're here so I can get laid?" I go, "No way, Chubby, go for it dude, but you said you didn't have a chance of beating me to have sex first in Wildwood." He grins, pinching my cheek, mumbling, "I was being modest, Dylan. I love ya, bro." Then he calls over, "See you at ten, Jeanette," and waves, then stops and goes back to the girls to exchange cell phone numbers. And now we're free of the girls so Chubby and I can roam the boardwalk in peace. People-watching on the boardwalk, not just boy-watching, presents a unique form of entertainment in and of itself. I don't know how many people engage in this activity, but I'd assume there's got to be a large number of people doing it because it's a fascinating pastime and one that's almost impossible to ignore. Or, maybe it's just me, but the variety of my fellow humans passing by me in just the last two blocks is a testament to the individuality inherent in our species. The only thing I can think of that compares to the outlandish appearance of some of these people, from teenagers to senior citizens and all ages in between, is Halloween where people purposely dress in unusual or bizarre costumes. That's a tradition mostly for children, but what excuse do some of the older weirdos have for what they're wearing? What some people are wearing is even more remarkable considering it's summer and most people dress sparingly. Some too sparingly, but right there I see a man wearing an overcoat. He has a full beard and a shaved head and he's holding hands with a woman with six feet diameter hips stretching out the spandex leggings she has on. Even worse, she's showing the top of her ass crack as she waddles pigeon-toed down the boardwalk. Man, that's gross! Another thing I find disturbing is that there are more tattoo-covered humans every year... as a young kid I know I didn't see one-tenth the tattoos I see today. I'm not sure when it happened that tattoos and body piercing became the rage, but it's an undeniable trend and becomes more apparent when this many people gather in a confined area like the boardwalk. So-called body art, including piercing, must be a generational phenomenon as there are a couple of generations of adults without a single tattoo. Tattoos are another example of the philosophy, 'Come on... everybody's doing it', which I suppose is both peer pressure but also an example of the 'herd' mentality we humans exhibit all the time, both for good reasons and bad. I've got a discreet tattoo on my arm near my shoulder that I think is cool, although I didn't ask for it, but that's another story altogether. Generally speaking I don't think graffiti on humans or buildings is attractive, and much of it is hideous. Anyway, it's not necessary to walk very far on the boardwalk to pass just about every kind of person you'd ever imagine seeing, from the geeks to the beautiful, but in addition to people-watching there's much more that the boardwalk offers. It's an assortment of neon lights, delicious treats, arcades and carnival-style games and amusements. Basically the boardwalk is two miles of fun, food, friends, families, and mostly strangers, some of whom will blow your mind. It's thirty-eight blocks boasting more rides than Disneyland. Every kind of ride from kiddie rides to looping, world-class roller coasters. But the boardwalk is even more than rides and games, it also offers a dazzling number of shopping possibilities, from souvenir shops to the mind-boggling variety of eateries I mentioned earlier. The shops offer a delicious mixture of goodies from fresh roasted nuts to fudge straight from the kettle, and of course traditional fare like pizza, funnel cakes, ice cream, and cotton candy and a shore specialty... salt water taffy. There's also all kinds of barbecue, thick juicy hamburgers and cheese steaks, hotdogs, fresh seafood, fast foods, and fine dining, too. It's all here and much more, there are way too many different shops to mention including, yes... tattoo and body piercing shops galore, junk stores where nothing costs more than a dollar, and so on. On the boardwalk you enjoy the fresh ocean breezes and the salt air just walking, or morning bike riding, or relaxing on the world-famous Sightseer Tram Car that goes from one end of the boardwalk to the other. There's also jogging in the morning if you're a health nut. For me it's the neon-lit nights, when everything seems new and clean, and the oddest of fellow boardwalk walkers are muted by the darkness of the night sky and transformed some by the neon lights... that's when I like the boardwalk best. After Chubby and I have walked three or four blocks, he asks, "Are you pissed-off at me, Dylan?" I give him a look, "Pissed-off? Why would I be pissed-off at you, Chubby? Um, no I'm not pissed-off." He smiles, "Oh okay, you've been so quiet I thought you were mad I had a date tonight. You know, the first night we're here." I shake my head, "Not at all, Chubby, I'm just soaking up the ambience and enjoying the sideshow these people are unconsciously putting on. We oughta go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans some year and see if those folks are weirder than our Wildwood boardwalk people." He chuckles, "Every year you're fascinated by the vast majority of people on the boardwalk, especially the oddballs, while I try ignoring them. Mostly the people are just like everyday people you see around Framingham." I go, "That's just so wrong. Did you see that guy in the overcoat with a beard down to his knees? He was holding hands with that grey-haired lady with the mammoth ass." Chubby laughs out loud, "Are you making that up?" I go, "No, swear to God." Chubby's like, "I missed that couple, what are you going to do tonight by yourself?" I tell him, "I'll walk the boardwalk and see what's new, and then get to bed early and be ready for tomorrow all rested. Hey, maybe I'll even run into someone I know. It always shocks me how many people are here that I don't know." Chubby says, "Yeah, it was freaky running into Jeanette the first ten minutes on the boardwalk. I haven't seen her for over a year. I often thought about asking her out, but she was always going with someone." I don't want to talk about that, so I say, "Tomorrow I'm looking forward to taking a nice long walk on the beach," and Chubby says, "To look for hot guys, right?" I go, "Right, it's fun seeing so many different looking guys. Some guys are more beautiful than girls." Chubby says, "To you maybe, but now that you mention it, you're more beautiful than any girl I've ever seen." I say, "There ya go, a perfect example," and Chubby laughs squeezing the back of my neck. We walk the boardwalk without going on any of the rides or doing any of the many other things offered there, we'll save all that for the next six days. It's just a nice relaxing experience becoming familiar again with what's available for later consumption. Around seven o'clock we go back to the duplex and then down to the beach to see what our section of beach is like. There's a handy wood walkway extending from the blacktop to about forty feet out on the beach, and then it's just sand after that, and two hundred yards to the ocean. We take off our shoes and socks and test the heat of the sand. It's warm, but that's because it's after seven o'clock now so it's cooled down from the sun-baked heat of earlier today. Walking down near the water to the lifeguard stand, Chubby climbs up on it just for the hell of it. Okay, so this is a protected section of beach. Lifeguards are on duty from ten o'clock in the morning until around five-thirty in the evening when they go off duty, and everyone's on their own, safety-wise. Not all beaches have lifeguards and there's good and bad aspects to the ones with and the ones without a lifeguard. The good part is obvious, when a lifeguard is present they'll save your ass if you're drowning, but the bad part is they enforce all the rules of the beach, too. Stuff like no alcoholic beverages, no ball playing, no frisbees, no surf fishing, no fires, no profanities, no spitting, and no flotation devices except in posted areas... in other words, no nothing, except swimming and sunbathing. Funny there's no rule about nudity, but I wouldn't suggest anyone try it. So, if you want to do any of those banned activities you need to pick a section of beach without lifeguards, and then keep you eyes open for the beach patrol, although you don't see them very often. Lifeguards work in pairs and, like all positions involving some level of authority, some of lifeguards and beach patrol guys are pompous assholes, so that's something to consider. Chubby and I rarely spend a lot of time on a lifeguard protected beach, and we probably won't this week either. We wander down the beach on a exploratory walk and discover there's no life guard stand on any of the next three block of beaches, so the block in the middle of the three beaches is ideal for when we want to play some ball or use our boogie boards. We aren't reckless swimmers so we're in little to no danger of drowning. The moms will want to set- up their chairs and umbrella on the beach directly down from the duplex, and we'll sit with them for part of the day, but we're not big on vegetating in a chair all day so most of the time we're off doing something. The moms are good with that, or at least their used to it. We're off the beach now, heading for a take-out seafood joint. The one we passed on our way to the boardwalk and that's where we'll buy our take-out dinner for tonight. We order two dozen fried shrimp with cocktail sauce, a large container of french fries, a pint of cole slaw, calamari for the moms, two dozen small steamed clams for Chubby and me, plus four servings of New England clam chowder. The mom's won't be able to eat all their food, but the leftovers will be their lunch tomorrow. Chubby and me will eat everything we bought for ourselves and later supplement it with goodies on the boardwalk tonight. As we're carrying the two bags of take-out food back to the house, we see the moms pull up and park next to a fire hydrant. Just temporary until we unload the station wagon. They see us and wave at us like they haven't seen us for a year. Lots of hugs and kisses when we get to them. Chubby goes, "We should have left a key for you and texted where we hid it." Tris says, "Oh honey, this worked out perfectly. We just this minute got here." I check my watch and see it's eight-thirty. The moms take the food up and us boys grab stuff from the station wagon and take it upstairs, then the four of us need only two more trips each to unload the car completely. We give the moms our parking spot, and while the moms put stuff away, Chubby and me drive around looking for a parking spot and get lucky the second time around the block. A guy is pulling out of a spot one block down from our place just as we're driving down the street. Chubby backs the Jeep into the parking spot perfectly and we get out to jog back to the duplex, ready to eat. The moms lay out the food on the round table outside on the deck. They put out serving spoons, napkins and the canned iced tea that was part of the supplies we brought with us. Seafood tastes especially good when you're at the shore smelling the salt air and feeling a little ocean breeze. It's comfortably warm at about eighty degrees now that the sun's gone down, and the subtle lighting on the deck, plus the candles the moms lighted make it seem special. Good food goes nicely with our excited conversation and laughter as we eat, making for a pleasant and delicious first meal in Wildwood. Always nice getting off to a good start on a vacation. We're done eating and showered by nine-thirty, which is when Chubby and I say goodnight to the moms. They're a little beat-up from the long drive so they're staying in tonight having cocktails, cigarettes, and conversation on the deck, then getting to sleep early. When we get to Mac's, Chubby's early for his date with Jen, so I keep him company until I see her swinging her ass down the boardwalk, her big tits bouncing with each step. That's my signal to squeeze Chubby's shoulder wishing him good luck and then saunter away on the railing side of the boardwalk. Is it possible Jen isn't wearing a bra to support those watermelon-size jugs of hers? Whatever. I have no plan, except I like this idea of taking in everything the first night by myself. I've no expectation of sex this week, although I wouldn't be unhappy to bump into something tasty. I'm not interested in a one-night stand with someone who isn't special. So that qualifier makes it even more unlikely I'll hook-up with someone, but I'm firm about it. If I'm going to hook-up with a stranger, he needs to be a cute, sexy buddy-sex partner in my age group. I shrug to myself, like... good for you, Dylan. The first fifteen minutes of wandering up the boardwalk turns up not a single boy of interest. Either too young or too old, but my rant earlier about so-called body art consisting of piercings and tattoos is totally validated tonight. It's in my face everywhere I look and believe me, most of it... hell, all of it, is unattractive and it boggles my mind to imagine what it's going to look like on these people twenty or thirty years from now. Oh well, to each their own I guess. There's no law against it, although I heard a rumor about a no-smoking law for the boardwalk. It's not clear to me if that goes for the beaches, too. The infantilization of American society continues on at a steady pace. On the other hand, no one appears to be paying any attention to this latest infringement on our liberties because many people around me are smoking. Perhaps they decided on this no-smoking law to shut up the nonsmokers, but have no intention of enforcing it. No smoking in restaurants makes sense even to me, although why not allow a restaurant to be a 'smoker's restaurant' if they choose, and nonsmokers would know not to go there? And bars should be allowed to choose to be smoking establishments or non-smoking ones. Thinking about no-smoking laws gives me the urge to have a smoke and I take one out of the box, but don't light it because I think I see something interesting coming down the boardwalk. Okay, yes, here come a couple of hotties who appear to be about eighteen years old or so, but they also appear to be boyfriends. I don't know, it's something in the way they touch each other when laughing. They do a lot of laughing, too. They're too far over to get a good look at them as they walk pass me so I reverse my direction casually and follow them for a bit, then decide to pass them. On the outside of the boardwalk I hustle a block ahead of them, then turn around and walk towards them in line this time. This is kinda fun and as I get closer their faces become clear. They're both cute, although in different ways. Hmmm, I don't usually like a big pompadour in the front of a boy's hairdo, but the prettier of the two lads has dark blond hair with gel in it, cut short on the sides but left long on top so he can comb it into that big pompadour. It's looks kinda cool on him, very distinctive. He has a wispy dark-blond mustache and a little tuft of chin hair that also looks cool, mostly because his facial features are so fucking cute. Two earrings and a sleeveless T-shirt that looks silky. Baggy, low-hanging shorts and red Converse high top sneakers complete his choice of clothing for tonight. Okay, so he needs a little help dressing, but other than that he's awesome. I'm walking right towards the two, but they're so interested in each other they don't notice. I've still got the unlit cigarette as I purposely bump right into pompadour boy, and he's like, "Yo, dude, watch where the fuck you're going!" Cute voice to go with everything else. He's wearing some kind of cologne that's alright, although I prefer a natural scent. I put my hand on his shoulder, saying, "Gee, I'm sorry. Guess I wasn't watching where I was going." Holding up my cigarette, I ask, "Um, do you have a light, by any chance?" He pushes my hand off his shoulder, muttering, "I don't smoke, can you get the fuck out of my face?" The other kid, who's attractive in his own right, beautiful green eyes with a slightly dark complexion and an accent that makes me think he might be from India. He's very good looking. He says to his friend, "Terry, don't be rude," then to me he holds out his fist, saying, "Yo, I'm Jumper, you been down here all summer? We just bounced here today." I tap his fist, saying, "Dylan, nice ta meet ya. No, why'd you think I've been down here all summer?" He rubs my cheek with the back of one finger, smiling, and saying, "It's this awesome tan, man." I go, "Oh, heh, heh, I'm working outdoors this summer." Terry's impatient, "Lets go, Jumper, fuck this shit," and Jumper nods his head at Terry, with a cute grin on his sexy lips, "Terry thinks I flirt too much with cute guys like you. You know, when we, um, bump into one, but fuck man, I'm sociable, ya know." Terry goes, "Jumper!" The sociable one, makes a cute face at me, mumbling, "Hey, I'll see ya around, Dylan," and we do another fist bump, as I go, "Yeah, see ya around, Jumper." Terry rolls his eyes and grabs Jumper's arm to get him moving. Huh, Terry's cute, but stuck-up and up real close that goofy fucking pompadour looks like shit. Cheap earrings, too. Putting my cigarette back in the box I stumble into a big musclebound guy wearing, what else, a muscle shirt. He shoves me away from him right into a woman, but neither the body builder nor the lady say anything to me. They both glare at me like I'm a dog turd they just stepped in though. What the hell's going on here? This isn't the boardwalk I'm familiar with. Walking over to the railing away from the moving crowds I look out over the water hoping to get my cool back. Damn, that was awkward, but Jumper has possibilities. Maybe I'll get lucky and run into him when he doesn't have pompadoured Terry with him. Looking at the bright side of things, I did pick out two gay boys, so it's just a matter of bumping into one who's not stuck-up. It kinda hurt my feelings, actually. Jumper's reaction is more what I'm used to, not the reaction I got from Stuck-Up. I need to shake it off. They all can't be winners. The next half hour of walking and gawking at people on the boardwalk turns up a couple of cute guys, but they're in groups and there's no way to graciously segregate the cutie from the rest. Seems like a shortage of hotties on the boardwalk tonight. I'm going to get out here tomorrow morning and see if things look better in the daylight, cute boy-wise. There's some kind of weird thing going on at the next ramp. There's a ramp leading up to the boardwalk every block, but the blocks are long. There's only thirty-eight blocks in the two miles of boardwalk. I drift over as casually as I can maneuver around all the people in my way, some traveling to my left and an equal number moving to my right. Hmmm, now I can see what the commotion is all about. It looks like a small convention of social misfits. Goth guys with a group of the emo crowd, and bikers mixed in. Lots of black clothing, that's for sure. Some goths are wearing black and white face paint, too. Holy shit, what a crew! Weird, but fascinating. Emo is short for emotional, of course, and there's a cute kid in black with a white round pin attached to his t-shirt that reads, 'I run with scissors'. Ha! The emos regard themselves as a cool, younger sub-set of goths. I get closer and join the crowd that's gawking at this group. There's about twenty-five older teens and twenty-something freaks attracting attention. Another emo kid is wearing a black t-shirt that reads, 'Emotionally Disturbed' and another has no shirt on at all, but there's black letters on his chest that reads, 'Forever Crying', what a group. Many of the goths are wearing black leather bracelets or collars with the metal studs, and one has a bracelet with spikes. Yipes, he must stick himself a lot. You can't help but stare. There's a t-shirt that reads, 'End Discrimination/Hate Everyone'. What a bizarre bunch, and oh my god, there's a kid on a leash. Too bad Sonny's not here so he could see a real live slave/master thingie. The slave is shaved totally clean as far as I can tell. No, he has eyebrows, but his head's shaved shiny bald and I don't see any other hair on him. The poor bastard is wearing the shortest, tightest little shorts imaginable. They almost look like black leather jockey shorts. His black top is too small; it's very tight on him and barely reaches below his pecs. Both the slave and his master look young, about my age although the master could be twenty-two or three I guess. He's dressed normally... well, he's sort of preppy looking actually. In this group he stands out like a sore thumb. Those two don't appear to be mingling much, and there's something intriguing about the so-called slave, something about him that I can't put my finger on. Then the master pulls on the slave's leash and the two of them walk under the neon lights of the arcade they're next to and a chill goes down my spine. It's Willie at the end of the leash. All his nice dark hair is gone, really altering his appearance. He's also thinner than I remember him ever being. Oh fuck, this is horrible! I edge around the outskirts of this unusual group to get closer to Willie and his preppy master, then lose them in the crowd. Making my way to the front of the arcade, I see Willie and Preppy being talked to by a boardwalk policeman. Boardwalk police ride up and down the boardwalk on mountain bikes. Willie's looking down as Preppy's talking animatedly to the policeman. Then they turn around and go back the way they came, and walk down the ramp off the boardwalk as the cop watches them while he talks into a walkie-talkie. Two more cops show up on bikes and the three of them now head toward the goth/emo convention. I jog down the ramp to look for Willie and Preppy; if he was an intimidating guy, older looking and bigger and badder, I wouldn't probably be brazen enough to do this, but I said to myself back home if I could help Willie, I would. Don't know what I can do, but I'll at least try to talk to him. When I'm off the ramp I look around but don't see them so I jog to the end of the block and look both ways. There they are to my right. Oh man, I might be acting stupid, but I jog to catch up with them and when I'm close I call out, "Ah, Willie?" They both stop and turn around, with Willie smiling, "Oh, hi Dylan, I wondered if this might be the week you were in Wildwood." Preppy says, "Is this 'the' Dylan?" Willie goes, "Yes, master," and Preppy holds out his hand for me to shake, saying, "It's great to meet you, Dylan, I've heard how infatuated Willie was with you in the past, um, two or three years, right?" I shake hands, mumbling, "Yeah, I guess." He says, "I'm Devon Seacrest, great to meet ya. You did a hell of a job with Willie here, he buckled right under the first night I had him. He and I had a hot thing going on as kids. That's before I went to Stanford University on the west coast. Didn't get home very often, but you kept Willie in line while I was gone. Heh heh, sorry to steal him back from you, but we've had it going on for a long time and Willie willingly became my sex slave boy when I returned. Didn't ya, Willie?" Willie looks down and says, "Yes, master." I look at him, then at Devon, as I try to sort out what I'm hearing from Devon. He's only known Willie when Willie was being submissive, so he just assumes I was dominant to Willie when we went out together. Boy, does he have that wrong. I mutter, "How ya doing, Willie? Everything okay?" Willie quietly says, "Oh yes, I'm doing great." Devon squeezes my shoulder, saying, "I admire that, Dylan. You're checking up on your ex-boy to see that he's being treated okay. Hey, I was going to lock him down in our motel room for a few hours while I go to Atlantic City. I'm going to hook-up with a couple of guys I went to university with. Would you be interested in a little antediluvian experience with your ex-boy here?" I go, "What kind of experience?" He says, "You know, some ancient history with Willie? He'll only be able to give you oral sex though, suck your cock and rim ya. I've hot his pussy locked up 'cause it's only for my usage, but you know how that goes. We get possessive of our slave-boys." I mutter, "Uh huh. Um, what exactly are you proposing?" He says, "You can spend a couple hours with Willie in our motel room while I run to Atlantic City. It wouldn't do to bring him with me 'cause my college buds have no idea I'm into BDSM, heh heh. You know how it is." Willie doesn't speak unless spoken to so I go along with the misconception Devon has of me. "Sure, Devon, I appreciate you sharing your boy with me for that antebellum thing you mentioned." He laughs a good natured laugh, "Antebellum, that's a good one. Come on, the motel's on the next block." Devon says to Willie, "Heel, boy," and I walk along side by side with Devon as Willie follows behind on his leash keeping in step with Devon. As we walk Devon tells me a disjointed tale of a guy he was dominating in California. He goes, "Sometimes luck's on your side. We were drinking and I was going to kiss my boy to reward him for being a good little fellow. He wasn't as cute as my boy here," and he tugs on Willie's leash making him stumble and almost fall, as Devon goes on. "Anyway, I had gum in my mouth so I turned my head to take it out, then turn back to kiss him and he's fucking throwing up all over himself. Ha ha ha, if I hadn't taken that second to spit the gum out he'd have been throwing up all over me. Oh man, talk about timing being everything. I whipped his ass good, of course, then made him sleep tied up in his vomit. It wasn't too cool untying that kid in my morning, let me tell ya... hahaha. Jesus, the things these submissive types pull." I'm looking at him like he's from outer space, and maybe he is. He goes, "Okay, Dylan, here's the motel. I'll let you boys in," as he unlocks the door to a first floor room. We walk in with Devon telling Willie, "Undress now, boy, quickly," and while Willie does that, Devon says to me, "If you get done with him before I get back, use these handcuffs to lock him up to this pipe over here. I'll keep the motel room key so I can let myself in when I get back, and the handcuff key so I know where it is. Ya know, I feel better that Willie will have some company for awhile. You leave them alone too long and they're like a puppy dogs when you get back, jumping around excited-like to see their master. Heh heh, god, ya gotta love 'em. Enjoy yourself, Dylan," then to Willie, "Do what he says, be a good boy," then to me, "If there's something you feel he needs punishment for I'd appreciate you leaving me a note. I'd rather you don't punish him yourself, but you understand how that works already, so I really didn't need to mention it." He holds out his hand again and we shake, as he says, "Great meeting you, I can see you're the strong silent type. I tend to babble a little bit myself. Hey, let's get together with our boys sometime, that's always fun. That's if you have another boy. Do you?" I go, "I'm in between boys at the moment." He says, "Ha, I know how that goes. I gotta run. If you're still here when I get back we can compare notes. See ya, Dylan," and he's out the door without saying goodbye to his boy, er, to Willie. I guess protocol prohibits treating sex-slaves as equals. As the door closes I look at Willie, who's bare ass naked with his long snake of a cock hanging flaccidly between his legs. There's a cord wrapped around his buttocks with a small lock hanging under his balls holding the ends of the cord together. Looking him in his eyes, he drops his eyes smiling and quietly asking, "What?" I go, "That cord, what's it for?" He says, "It locks in my butt plug. Remember when I put a butt plug in you a few times?" and he turns around to show me. The lips of the butt plug are digging into his ass crack and there are dark, red, raised-welts crisscrossing his buttocks. Frowning at that, I'm curious about the plug, so I reach over and pull the nipple in the center of the round lip that's keep the butt plug from going totally up his ass, and the plug pulls out a mere half inch, but the cord won't allow it to come out more than that. Willie sucks air in between his lips, mumbling, "That felt good, Dylan, thank you." I ask, "Can you sit down with that thing up your ass?" He says, "Oh yeah, I'm used to wearing it, but my ass is sore from being whipped this morning." This is so sick, but I want to take things slow and not get rash and start yelling. Hell, it might scare him. He adds, "I'm not allowed to sit down very often anyway." This is pathetic. I nod my head at a overstuffed armchair, saying, "Have a sit there, it's soft and shouldn't hurt your, um, sore ass." He smiles, muttering, "Thank you, sir," then grimaces when gently sitting down. I hate to admit it, but my dick moves a little because there's some sick thrill about seeing someone being as submissive and dominated as Willie is. I can partially see where the dominant types are coming from, but it isn't for me... you need to be heartless bastard to treat a person like Devon's been treating Willie. It's probably illegal too, except for the consenting adults complication. This is the kind of thing Ryan warned me about and it's not pretty seeing it in reality. Probably an excellent lesson for me to learn, but what am I going to do about Willie? I sit in the only other chair in the room, a desk chair, and then glance around. It's a very neat room that doesn't even appear to be occupied. I mean there's no clothes or personal effects anywhere. I ask, "Did you and, um, Devon, just get here?" Willie quietly says, "Oh, no sir, we've been here three nights so far." I mutter, "Don't call me, sir. It's creeping me out, Willie." He wets his lips, nodding his head that he understands, and then I begin questioning him. He tells me he fell right back under Devon's spell, especially because he felt I'd gone as far as I was ever going to go, submissively speaking. Plus, he was having deeply felt guilty feelings about mistreating me and he figured he just wasn't cut out to be dominant. He says he loves me, but since he treated me badly he figured I was through with him. He claims he promised himself to stop pestering me because I was too good for him anyway. I countered by listing all the generous and nice things he's done for me, and then all the good times we had together. Tears begin rolling down his cheeks, but no sobbing as he says our good times together were the best times of his life, plus I rescued him in his darkest hour when his father disowned him and cut him off from credit cards and money. He said I saved his life when he tried to commit suicide, which was the stupidest thing he's ever done. The tears kept coming, but still no sobbing and he never raises his voice. We talked for almost an hour, then I went out and got us Cokes from a vending machine and we talked some more as we drank them. Finally I calmly say, "This is simply wrong. It isn't what you deserve or need, Willie. It's way too extreme and not healthy for your mind or body. What can I do to help you extricate yourself from this situation?" He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders keeping his tear-streaked face down, as if he's embarrassed I'm seeing him crying, or maybe he's finally embarrassed I'm seeing him like this. I walk over and hug his shoulders, soothingly saying, "You remember the bad spots we got ourselves into, and out of in the past, don't you? You know, the time of that misunderstanding in the gay club and we wound-up in those fucking hammock contraptions with the fuck holes in the middle for guys to gang bang us? Jesus, that was a mess, but we got ourselves out of that without any problems, didn't we?" Willie's hugging me around the waist, his face buried in my stomach as I stand in front of his chair. I rub his bald head shocked at how smooth the skin is, smooth and soft. Rubbing his shoulders while quietly reminding him of times we got lost or were at the wrong places at the wrong times, yet always managed to come away unharmed. "We can do the same with this, Willie. I'll help you." With his face still buried in my stomach, he asks, "Will you be my friend again?" He'll have me crying if he keeps this humble stuff up. I say, "Of course I will, I've been your friend all along, Willie." Then I lift his face with a hand under his chin, and lean down to kiss the lips that are so familiar to me, and they're still very sexy, "Mmmm," from Willie. I ask again, "What can I do to help you get out of this arrangement with Devon?" Willie says, "I don't know." I ask him, "Do you want to get out of this arrangement?" He says, "I don't know." What can I do to get him thinking clearer? He looks so helpless. "Willie, when was the last time you were the top during sex?" He screws his mouth up, thinking, then goes, "With you." I'm like, "Uh huh, was it good, Willie?" He nods his head, "Yeah, it was always good with you... way better than good." "How would you like to do it with me right now?" Willie looks up at me, "You'd let me?" I say, "If you promise to work with me getting your head straightened out. I miss your awesome hair too; I liked to run my fingers through it. Yeah, let it grow out so I can give you a haircut." Willie's eyes get big, "Can you be my boyfriend again?" I shrug, "Sort of, but not like before. It'd be like it was at the end of our first year together. Remember?" He bites his bottom lip, "You mean when that other guy and me were like, both your boyfriends?" I go, "Something like that." I'm thinking, if I give him a reason to change the direction he's heading in, maybe he will. The way he's going is a one-way ticket to oblivion. Willie gulps, looks me in the eyes, and slowly raises his hands to hold my head. He lifts up off the chair, stretches his neck to reach my lips, and gives me a damn nice kiss, then moans holding the side of his face against mine. I rub his back realizing how clean he is. For some reason his cleanliness surprises me, like a so-called slave should be grungy. Maybe it's that story Devon told me about that kid throwing-up on himself, and then Devon making him sleep covered in vomit. The sick bastard. I'm waiting patiently for something from Willie that indicates to me he wants to change. Finally he mutters, "Please help me, Dylan, I'm scared of Devon. He has a terrible temper." He must be like the Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde dude because the Devon I met seems like an okay guy, if a bit deranged. Glancing at my wristwatch, one of the ones Willie bought for me, I see it's been an hour and a half since Devon left, so we've probably got at least an hour before his return and maybe longer. What I need to do is get Willie committed to breaking ties with Devon. We need to do something that Willie will be unable to undo, like getting rid of his butt plug. I say, "Let's get that butt plug out of your ass." Willie clutches me, muttering, "I'm afraid. Let me try breaking off with Devon in stages." That won't work, so I firmly say, "No, we're getting that plug out now. What's the cord made of, is it just leather?" He shrugs, "I don't know. What will I do tonight if I don't stay here?" "You can stay in our spare bedroom at the duplex, and I'll drive you home tomorrow morning." He groans, "Oh God, I'm not ready to do this, Dylan. It's too abrupt." Bullshit, abrupt is the only way to do it. I say, "Do you want to be my boyfriend, or not?" He says, "Okay, okay, cut the cord of the butt plug, and then I gotta get out of here before he comes back." I start looking around the room, but there's nothing here to cut the cord. In the bureau there's neatly folded clothes and a sinister looking whip-like thing with about eight or ten strands of stiff material at the end. I finger the strings and realize they're leather strips encrusted with dried blood. Eww, disgusting! In the bathroom I find a toiletry kit with a fingernail clipper in it. Using the clipper I try cutting the cord that secures the butt plug in Willie's ass. It takes maybe thirty seconds of repeatedly closing the cheap clipper, but then the cord is finally finally cut and dangles off the butt plug in back. The other cord is the piece with the small lock. It gets hung-up on Willie's nuts, so I lift it away from his nuts and now two halves of the cord are dangling from the plug. Gently I pull the plug out, and then go, "Ewww, oh man," as shit comes out with it. Grabbing Willie's arm, I pull him into the bathroom and plop him on the toilet, then leave, closing the door behind me. Tossing the butt plug in the waste basket, I sit at the desk and write Devon a note with the pen and guest stationery I find in the desk's drawer. The gist of the note explains that I never in the past, or ever will be in the future, a dominant sex partner to Willie or anyone else. Willie's simply decided to get his act together and get himself mentally prepared for college in the fall, so he's bowing out of his slave role with you. No hard feelings yet, but if you, Devon, harass Willie there will be hard feelings. No threat, just stating a fact that you do not want to fuck around with me in this matter. What I can't pull off myself in the way of retaliation for you harassing Willie, friends of mine can and will physically abuse you if you too do not gracefully bow out of this master/slave relationship and move on to someone else. Willie's done with his role-playing. If he changes his mind again he'll call you. Don't you call Willie. Then I close with saying it was nice meeting him. That last part is the only part that's not true. Willie opens the door saying, "Oh my God, I feel so much better, but I need to take a quick shower. I crapped on myself." I wave my hand, like, yeah, go ahead, and then I try to find some clothes for Willie to wear. Nothing but clothes that look like they're the size a ten year old would wear, and Devon's preppy clothes. I don't want to steal anything of Devon's so maybe there's something in the motel lobby I can buy. Leaving the door open I check out the lobby and sure enough they sell t-shirts advertising the motel, and cheap looking swim trunks for guests who forgot to pack their own. I buy one of each and go back to the room. The shower isn't running so Willie must be done with that, and sure enough out he comes looking sheepish, with a towel around his waist. He says, "Oh man, I've been thinking how right you are, Dylan. Jesus, what was I thinking? I've been such an asshole. It's like I was hypnotized or brainwashed." I go, "Yeah, I know what you mean, here... put these on and lets get the fuck out of here." We leave a minute later with me telling Willie about the note I left for Devon. "That's perfect, Dylan. He won't try anything physical, he's not that tough actually. He whips me only after tying me up." I mutter, "You don't say." Willie says, "Yeah, it's his voice and the way he does everything that captivates me, plus I thought I deserved to be treated like that. You know, because of how I treated you," and he begins weeping again. What a pain in the ass. I say, "Pull yourself together, Willie. This is the first day of the rest of your life. You're going to a great Ivy university in five or six weeks, and your whole life's ahead of you." He's walking beside me barefoot because the only footwear he had were the ballet slippers Devon provided for him and Willie refused to put them on. I take that as a positive sign he's heading in the right direction. My cell phone signals a text message. It's from Chubby telling me he won't be home until one or two o'clock, and he doesn't have a key to the duplex with him. Chubby would forget his dick if it wasn't attached to his body, but I love him just the same. I text back that I'll leave the door unlocked, and for him to have a good time. Then add a cryptic, 'we have a house guest tonight'. He texts back, 'who?' and I tell him, 'it's a long story'. Willie's starving so we stop at a deli and I buy him a ham and cheese sub, which he gobbles down. It surprises me a little that I'm not interested in why Willie shit himself, or how long the plug was in his ass, or why he's starving, or what the hell his parents must think of his shaved body, or what the hell he wore leaving his house, or when that even was. I don't want to know anymore about this nightmare than I already know. At the duplex all the lights are off so we tip-toe inside and I grab a couple of beers and then go out on the deck that's lit only by the moon and stars. Crickets chirping and the sound of cars going by below are the only things breaking the silence. We sit in deck chairs as I light a cigarette, then offer one to Willie. He takes it mumbling, "Thank you." We light up and take deep drags, exhaling the smoke up in the air, then chug some beer as I realize how tense I've been the last two hours. It's only half-past midnight, but it's been a long two hours since I spotted Willie on a leash. Willie seems shy as he quietly sits next to me smoking and drinking his beer. Then he starts talking quietly and he doesn't stop for twenty minutes. He tells me in a monotone about his past three months of life. It's not as bad as I expected, but it's not good either. He apparently groveled in the bad treatment feeling he deserved it and, not having any friends, he just took it because he felt he had nothing else better. I stop listening sometime during the twenty minutes, and when he stops talking, I say, "At college all that will change. You'll have roommates and classmates and you can begin with a new group of friends. Try not to be as big an asshole as you were in prep school and you'll be fine. I like you, so why wouldn't others?" He says, "I know I was an asshole. You're right. I'm turning over a new leaf and the first thing I need to do is stop feeling sorry for myself." I go, "That's a good starting place because frankly you've got less to feel sorry about than anyone I know." He looks at me, then says, "Um, you mentioned us doing it. Were you serious?" I say, "At the time I was, but I mostly was taking a stab in the dark trying to get you to think straight. I kinda got carried away with my rescue scenario." He says, "You should be used to rescuing me by now." That's all he has to say, no nagging or bull shit about having sex. He just accepts I basically said 'no'. Hmmm, I wonder if Chubby got laid yet? Maybe I can still beat him to it. I look at Willie and, damn, he's lost weight but he still has a hot body and except for being bald at the moment, he looks cute to me. And am I really a hero, who deserves a reward? Yeah, a hero along the lines of Don Quixote maybe. We get another beer and smoke another cigarette. After he's finished with the cigarette, Willie flicks his butt twenty feet over the railing. I flick mine off Willie's leg and he laughs, saying, "Still an awesome butt flicker I see." Then he looks at me, and says quietly, "I still love you, you know." I say, "Come here, and show me." He slowly gets up, then leans over and gives me a wet, tongue involved kiss that tastes like nicotine for awhile, and then it doesn't. It's a very familiar kiss as I mentioned before and I slowly stand up and put my arms around his neck and our bodies rub together as we make out deliciously. He leans into me pushing me back against the table as his hands squeeze by ass cheeks, and that feels familiar too. Willie has his own way of squeezing my ass and his own way of kissing. I would know it's him even if I was blindfolded and he was wearing strong cologne. He's not wearing cologne though, and his sexy scent hasn't changed a bit. He grinds his groin into mine and the feel of his boner makes my boner harder. Willie's groaning in his throat as he moves his lips from mine and kisses all over my face, murmuring, "I'll love you forever, Dylan," and his lips are on mine again. He moves against me and his long eight-inch boner has two inches protruding out the top of his waistband of the cheap swimsuit I bought him. It gets under my t-shirt and is wet against my stomach as a moan leaves my mouth. He humps his hips moving the head of his cock against my bare belly spreading precum around my belly button. Willie gasps, then murmurs, "May I please do it now, Dylan," and I nod my head unable to speak except to grunt, "Uh huh." Willie pulls me gently away from the table and over to the side of the house where an overhang blocks the moonlight. In the darkness his hands go inside my shorts and underwear to squeeze by bare buttocks as his lips try devouring mine and I'm dizzy with sexual arousal by now. After a few minutes up against the house he pulls down my shorts and the night air surrounds my private parts. He says in my ear, "Pull my trunks down," and as I do that his tongue explores my ear causing a squeaking whine of desire to escape my throat as I clutch his body to mine. Then I pull up his t-shirt, then mine, and as I lean my bare stomach against his he squirms against me grunting and licking the side of my face. Then he's licking down under my chin, followed by sucking kisses on my neck that give me goosebumps. We're squirming against one another, our bare cocks rubbing together. With a desperate grunt he turns me around a little roughly and, with his hands tightly gripping my hips, the head of his boner spreads the lips of my asshole. Moaning quietly, almost like crying, Willie pushes the head past my sphincter and I almost cum right then and there. He goes, "Ooooh, mmmm, ooh, ooh, oh," then slides his boner in about two inches and we're both moaning, "Aaaaah, mmmm," and it all comes back to me... it's Willie's sex that made it worth putting up with all his crazy shit. What if he eliminated his crazy shit, what then? "Ooooh,' from me as he slides his long boner further up my ass. My head goes back and Willie kisses the side of my face as he encircles my waist with his arm and a hand rubs around my shaved groin before taking my boner in his fist. His chest is plastered to my back, with the back of my head on his shoulder and the sides of our faces together. His sexy scent is so awesome, so Willie, so deeply embedded in my memory. He moves his face and kisses me, murmuring, "We're together again, baby, and the world is back to being perfect," then the last three inches of his boner poke up my rectum with me going up on my toes, moaning, "Mmmm, Willie, ooh, ooh, mmm." He leaves it there pressing his groin against my buttocks for maybe a minute as he gasps and grunts softly in his throat and then withdraws that long eight-inch boner tantalizingly out of my rectum while my anus grips the shaft of his boner as it moves backwards out my ass. Then it's moving forward again and I'm squirming with sexual pleasure. Awesome sensitive spots in my ass send buzzing sexual sensations that travel from my rectum to my stomach and all around my pelvic region like there's an electric massage machine strapped around me from below my balls to my nipples. It's almost a sexual overload as I struggle in his arms. Willie cups his hand under my chin and holds my head tightly against his shoulder and fucks my ass with his long engorged boner creating a buzzing in my stomach. With our bodies plastered together his hips move rhythmically, fucking my ass steadily now with long thrusts of his boner smoothly sliding back and forth in my throbbing rectum. I'm limp against him and Willie seems to sense he's taken control as he hammers his cock up inside me making, "Ohh," grunts with each thrust. I'm quietly moaning from the intense pleasure I'm feeling, giving myself to Willie in this hot sexual endeavor. No thoughts of love cross my mind, only a concentrated appreciation of the sexual thrills I'm experiencing. My boner tightens ridiculously and moves away from my body to stick straight out, quivering, so tight I groan, "Aaaah, ooh, my god," as my balls grow heavy and tight against the top of my scrotum, and still that long, hard boner slides back and forth in my ass. It's so fucking sexy and hot, then I squeal and Willie's hand covers my mouth as my back arches, my muscles clench, and my hips hump forcing a hard stream of creamy cum to streak up the shaft of my cock and fly out the quivering lips of my pee slit, splashing against the side of the duplex, then three more streaks of cum fly out as I squeal into Willie's hand blowing out lots of saliva that wets his hand and all around my mouth. Willie blows a lot of air out, humps into me hard and I feel his cum-stream hit the wall of my bowels. The sides of our faces slide in the sweat that's formed there as Willie lays against me doing short thrusts of his hips pumping more cum up my ass as he grunts, groans, and whines quietly. Taking his hand from my mouth he hugs me to him as he does longs lazy thrusts of his boner, sliding so easily in all the cum he deposited up my ass. He kisses my sweaty face rubbing the palm of his hand on my stomach and then down to my groin and finally his fist goes around my cock again and he strokes, then squeezes the last of my orgasm out of my now softening cock. We're both spent as Willie withdraws his cock, turns me around and we hug chest to chest with the sides of our face together again. After a minute or so he murmurs, "Thank you for that, Dylan. Thank you for everything. Thank you for saving me again." I nod my head, and mutter, "You're welcome, Willie. I'd forgotten how good you are, sexually speaking." He goes, "I sincerely want to get better at other things, too. You'll see." I go, "Un huh," thinking that I'll worry about the consequences of this latest development later. For now, that was awesome sex. He holds my head between his hands and kisses me, "I forgot how wonderful you are, baby. I've got a lot to make up to you." I say, "No you don't, Willie. As your friend I'm happy to hear you're going to try a better approach to life, that's enough for me." I wanted to sneak in the 'friend' word so I don't mislead him. We finally pull up our shorts and sit down again to finish our beer. Afterwards, I get him a third beer and go in to take a quick shower and clean my ass. Chubby's probably not going to be pleased when he sees Willie, but maybe he won't see him. I plan on leaving early in the morning to drive him home. After drying myself I put on clean boxer shorts, and what the fuck, I grab a third beer too. When I rejoin Willie, he asks if he can clean-up and I nod my head, muttering, "Sure, grab a pair of boxer shorts from my bedroom to wear after you've cleaned-up," and he goes in to use the bathroom. Smoking a cigarette I think about the excellent fuck we just had. Willie always could fuck good, but I guess I forgot how good. I'm not going to project anything past getting him home tomorrow. Whatever happens after that happens, but for now I'm not speculating. For some reason I believe Willie will actually try to be a better person. Sometimes it takes a dramatic occurrence, like his humiliating experience with Devon, before a person can change. He'll try being better, and he almost has to be successful by default. I mean, it wouldn't be hard for him to be better then he was, and almost impossible to be worse. Oh, that's not fair, I guess. He wasn't always the shit he turned into at the end of our relationship, and I'm partially to blame for him deteriorating into what he became. I didn't protest his behavior nearly as much as I should have. I more or less went along with his bizarreness. Well, that's in the past, that's ancient history. Willie comes out cleaned-up wearing my boxer shorts and sits down next to me, squeezing my arm as he sits. He smiles at me, then says, "I've been thinking, as much as I'd enjoy being with you for seven hours while you drive me home, it's totally unfair to you. You're on vacation. If you lend me the money I'll take a Greyhound bus home. You'd have to lend me a pair of shorts and sandals, too." I go, "Man, why didn't I think of that? Sure, of course, Willie. Thanks for suggesting it. Jeez, it'd be like driving fourteen hours straight, seven down and seven back." He says, "My fucking head's clearing now and it's all because of you. You're so very special." I grin and say, "Yeah, I hear that all the time." I'm doing my joking around to keep it light. Don't want to let this get too heavy. I say, "Come on in and we'll make up a bed for you. The room's really small but the bed's new." While we're doing that Chubby comes home humming happily, so I guess Jen came through for him. He stops in his tracks, looks at Willie for a few seconds, then mutters, "You need a new barber, dude," and goes into our bathroom. I grin, then say, "Get a good night's sleep Willie. We'll get the clothes and money situation straightened out tomorrow." to be continued... Donny Mumford thinat20@yahoo.com Please consider a tax-deductible donation to Nifty, a non-profit organization, to help offset the expenses of maintaining this awesome story site.