Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 16:30:00 -0700 (PDT) From: don mumford Subject: OLIVER'S AVENTURES Chapter 1 (His Early History) by Donny Mumford OLIVER'S ADVENTURES Chapter 1 (His Early History) by Donny Mumford I'm nineteen now; about to graduate high school. Nineteen is a year late for the normal age for graduating, but there's a reason for that which you'll understand when I tell you about my unfortunate early teen years. Everything was perfect in my life until I was in my fourteenth year. And, in connection with the events that turned my world inside down, I'm thinking of a pleasant recurring dream I use to have, although the circumstances that caused this dream are unpleasant in the extreme. I had the dream for a couple of years. It was pretty much the same dream every time. It's about me and my best friend, Tyler, and we're making out. The dream always takes place in Tyler's backyard tree house. In the dream we're always the same age, fourteen, and it's obvious we'd been swimming in my pool just before climbing into the tree house. My backyard and Tyler's are right next to each other. In those days when I was swimming I always wore one of my brother's hand-me-down speedo swim suits, and I was wearing one in the dream too. My brother is five years older then me and speedos were 'hot' way back in his day. Now it's 'boardies'. Not for me though, I loved wearing Christian's old speedos. He'd gotten a new speedo each year; in the dream I'm always wearing the little red one. When I wore that one the top of my sparse pubes just barely showed, but the reason I liked it was mostly because it made my dick look bigger. In the dream Tyler and me are eating some kind of a snack. He finishes his snack first and makes a grab for what's left of mine; I jump him and we start rough housing. We're skinny boys, but quick and slippery, so getting each other in a real wrestling hold wasn't easy. Usually we'd end up with an arm around each others neck trying to squeeze hard and make the other boy 'give'. The sides of our faces come together, and as we struggle, our faces slide around to the front and our lips meet as our noses bump and rub, and it's a very sexy thing. Loosening our neck grips slightly, but holding our position, lips on lips, and then Tyler opens his mouth and our tongues touch. We then adjust our position to lay stomach to stomach and crotch to crotch. I'm on the bottom, Tyler on top, as we begin to kiss sweetly with our bodies slowly grinding together; first in little circular patterns and then slow little humping movement up and down, boner against boner with little squeaky sounds squeezing from our throats. Sexy, like I mentioned. We have almost identical sized penises, they're about five inches of boner in the dream. A lot of our other parts are almost identical too and our breathing in this dream is almost identical as well; deeply excited and sexually aroused breathing through our noses because our mouths are busy with the making out. With deep puffs of breath against each others face, warm and moist, we exhale with each quiet grunts, and then the breathing changes to little quick bursts as we get more and more aroused. And then, as our hearts beat faster, Tyler scrapes his tongue against the bottom of my front teeth, then up the front of those same teeth and finally his tongue laps up the inside of my upper lip pulling it inside out. He holds his tongue against the inside of my lip causing it to push up against the front of my nose and blocking my nostrils and preventing me from breathing through my nose so I do it through my mouth now. Then his tongue travels right up past my lip, which slips back to it's normal spot, while Tyler lazily does wet lacks at the outside of my top lip and right up the front of my nose leaving it dripping with spit. The smell of his saliva starts my cock to twitching and we squirm together making louder grunting sounds now as the make-out goes on for a while, and then Tyler pulls the front of my speedo down and fastens it under my nuts, which by now are hard and tight up against my stomach. He squeezes my nuts and then slowly strokes my boner as we kiss, and as I get ready to shoot off he floats above me while somehow still continuing to stroke my cock until I shudder and shoot a hard, long stream of cum, and then I'm awake, sweating and out of breath. In the dream it's creamy cum that shoots out of my cock, but in real life it's pee. I pee my bed. It's messy, but the dream makes it possible for me to see Tyler again. Not only see him, but pretend to be with him kissing and wrestling together in the dream. So, even though it ends with me peeing my bed, I still think the dream is worth the trouble. My big brother and me share a bedroom and he always gets out of bed to help me change my sheets as soon as he hears me rustling about stripping my bed of the peed-on sheets. We don't even talk, just change the sheets over the rubber mat that I have on my mattress and after that we get back in beds and go to sleep again. Christian doesn't ask me about it anymore, just smiles a little smile and pats my back. Nice. I've always looked up to Christian and kind of idolized him then, and I still do. He's never disappointed me in anything and he never criticizes me about anything; a brotherly unconditional love that's been my touchstone all my life. No matter what age, it was always fine with him if I tagged along when he and his older friends headed off to play. If one of his friends complained about the little brother tagging along, Christian stuck-up for me and he'd tell the friend to do whatever he wants, but I was coming and that was that. I took it for granted thinking that's what big brothers do, although I've since learned it's rare a big brother accommodates his little brother the way Christian did. Anyway, I was mentioning about the dream; the odd thing about it is my best friend Tyler never kissed me in real life, and I've never climaxed while he was anywhere in the vicinity. We both knew from about the time we were twelve that I was sexually attracted to him, although we never used those exact words. As for the wrestling part of the dream, we did wrestle, but rarely because Tyler knew from experience that I'd spring a boner. He was not inclined towards any form of gay activity whatsoever and was very upfront about it. It was almost like he protested too much. Occasionally he would tolerate a hug and a little kiss from me on his cheek as long as I didn't over do it. It was kinda hard for me at times to be so deeply in love with him, but able to touch him only rarely. We were best friends right up until the day he died; a gay boy and a straight boy best friends like you can't believe. I mean, we were tight! I didn't realize until years later how special his behavior towards me was, what with him letting me hug and quick kiss him every now and then. He did it for me because he loved me too, only not in the same way I loved him. I realized some years later that me kissing and hugging him probably felt to him the way I felt when a girl did the same things to me. Tyler and me often passed as brothers because we were both pretty much the same small size and had the same general features and coloring. I always thought our appearance was kind of special. Brown hair and blue eyes is a hot combo, at least to me it is. Nice teeth and smiles too. Very few boys don't look cute when they smile. So, I always felt we were both kind of cute, but it's a subjective thing so who's really to say? It's certainly not as if anyone reinforced this concept of mine about us being cute; well once in a while maybe, but certainly not on any kind of a regular basis. I've discovered since then that some boys find me irresistible... haha, but I didn't know about any of that when Tyler died. I feel responsible for his death, by the way; completely responsible at the time it happened, and then later I saw it differently, but I was definitely partially at fault. That summer there was some sort of mosquito infestation that was causing the water in swimming pools to be unhealthy and because of this, early one morning, my dad drained our pool. The bad water was to be replaced with fresh water from a truck that fills swimming pools for a price. My mom was doing volunteer work at our church that morning, so before going to work my dad gave me the job of stretching the pool cover over the pool until it was refilled. If he hadn't been really late for work he would have done it himself. There are always 'if's' in life, aren't there? The truck with fresh pool water was due to arrive sometime in the afternoon and I had every intention of covering the empty pool as soon as I finished my computer game, but I'd forgotten and started a new game instead. It was a very hot day in August, but in our house we didn't have central air conditioning. What I had was a noisy window air conditioning unit for my bedroom, which is where my computer is set up and where I was playing games when it happened. All of a sudden, some where in the back of my mind I thought I heard a dull thud from the back yard. It scared me, but my bedroom is in the front of the house with the loud air conditioner running, so I couldn't have heard a dull thud from the back of the house, could I? I remember a scary freezing chill passing right through my body that caused me to shake all over. It made me jump up knocking my keyboard off my desk. Ignoring the dangling keyboard, I ran down the stairs yelling, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" and out through the kitchen to the back yard and over to the pool. It's weird, but I remembering knowing somehow he'd be in the deep end; the end closest to his yard, and that's where he was. A large circle of bright red blood was around Tyler's head as he lay motionless ten feet down on the damp, cement bottom of the swimming pool. He always preferred to dive into the pool, while I always did a cannonball. Why couldn't we have preferred doing each others' entry and then everything would have been very different. I looked down for just a second and then walked back into the kitchen and dialed 911. I said simply, "The swimming pool." The lady kept asking what my emergency was, but I'd started puking and couldn't answer her; my mom always said I had a weak stomach. When in doubt, I puke. That's what my brother always says, 'When in doubt, Oliver pukes'. He was just being funny, not mean. When I couldn't answer the 911 lady, she must have seen which house was calling on their caller ID because she sent a fire truck, a police car, and an ambulance. They're very thorough. The police/fire station is only four blocks from our house so they arrived in about a minute. Metaphorically speaking, I'd already left by then. I was lying in my own vomit on the kitchen floor in a catatonic state. I stared into space and wouldn't or couldn't move a muscle in my body. Tyler and I did everything together and now, at age fourteen, I've been told we did one last thing together, we rode to the hospital in the same ambulance, side by side. I'm glad I don't remember anything about that. I missed the funeral, preferring my catatonic state; reality would have to wait. They have clever psychiatric care and medication and grief counseling so I slowly came out of my catatonic state and began to move my body and drink liquids and eventually eat solid foods again. It took two weeks or so though, and I think that even though the professional care was excellent, it was actually my brother, Christian, who was mostly responsible for me returning to this world. My brother's love had always been a big part of my life, as I mentioned, and it was even more important to me then. My parents are very loving parents and I love them too, but I love my brother more than I can say. I came out of that hiding place in my head because of the many times in the hospital Christian asked me to, and because he cried so hard for me, and because he slept in a chair in my hospital room every night and held my hand all day, every day. That's why I gave in and breathed the real world into my head again. Never had a particular thought, as I lay immobile in that hospital bed, but I heard everything. So, for Christian, I woke up so to speak, but I did it without consciously planning to although when I came out of the comatose state I wouldn't be speaking. I was mute and it surprised me as much as it surprised everyone else. A few days after that I was allowed to go home. Over the next couple of weeks I slowly recuperated a little here and a little there and I eventually began going through the motions of living a fractured life. I had psychiatric appointments twice a week, but since I was unable to talk it was slow going. I'd nod 'yes' and 'no' and I'd write stuff on a tablet, but I wouldn't speak. When they asked me why I wasn't talking, I wrote, 'I don't know.' Nobody was blaming me for the accident; instead they inferring that Tyler knew very well that the pool was being drained, so he either forgot, or he did it on purpose for reasons unknown. I wrote, 'Don't say that!!!' I wouldn't hear of anyone even suggesting it wasn't my fault back then. I never cried about it and I never wavered in blaming myself for killing Tyler. I'd talk to Tyler in my head every night and tell him how sorry I am that I was too lazy and irresponsible to do a simple task like pulling the plastic cover over the empty pool. I didn't ask for his forgiveness because I didn't feel I deserved it. My oversight cost him his whole life and cost me a most important person in mine; my best friend. My parents filled in the pool with dirt, not water. They put grass sod over it and nobody went in the back yard except Christian when cutting the grass. Tyler's parents hired a lawyer and sued my parents, but our insurance company settled the suit out of court. Then Tyler's parents moved away. My family tried to bring me fully back to the real world, but I resisted. Christian was back to high chool for his senior year and even though I still wasn't talking, three weeks into the school year my parents, after many consultations with school officials, tried having me begin the 8th grade. During lunch, on the very first day, one of the kids muttered something about 'Tyler must have been a moron to dive in an empty pool' and I attacked him. My hands became tightly formed fists and my arms windmilling an avalanche of blows on him as tears cascaded down my face. Fighting and crying without uttering a sound. I was suspended from school for a week, mostly because I wouldn't stop punching and kicking even when teachers were pulling me off him. Returning to school after serving my suspension, a week after I returned a similar scenario occurred with approximately the same results. This time I was the one beaten up, but I still wouldn't stop swinging my fists. That kid broke my front tooth off and gave me two black eyes, but I kept swinging. It's like I deserved that beating and many more. My parents pulled me out of school and increased my psychiatric care. Nothing worked and then Christian got in a fight at school with someone who called me a danger to the community. Our house was put up for sale and two months later we moved a hundred miles away. My dad couldn't get as good a job as he'd had in our old town so my mom had to go to work too and I blamed myself for all of it. My brother had been popular at the old school and had been really looking forward to graduating from there with his life long friends, but instead he'd said, 'Oliver is more important to me than what school I graduate from'. Now you can see how one mistake can mushroom into affecting many lives. The one mistake I made was not a small one, I'll grant you that, but still I was surprised at how many people I hurt or destroyed by my irresponsible neglect. It was a very big thing; I wasn't mute for nothing. Be that as it may, nobody in my family ever complained that I was a burden to them or that I was being unreasonable or that I wasn't trying, or anything else of a negative nature. Every day they told me they loved me and every day they asked what they could do to help me, but I couldn't think of what more they could do, or why I wouldn't talk. Christian fit in easily and made friends in the new school. As for me, everyone involved felt I should just skip this year and start eight grade the following school year. The guidance counselor at the new school said I was so far behind I'd never catch up. My father told her, 'I'm not at all sure he couldn't catch up, but we'll follow your advise', or something to that effect. So I missed a whole year of school. The reason my dad said he wasn't at all sure I couldn't catch up, by the way, is because I'm very smart. So was Tyler. That's one of the many things we had in common that led us to be best friends. Neither he nor I ever received anything less than an A in any subject in any grade. And, we didn't even half try. We'd laugh with each other at how simple a new math concept was; then we'd groan with each other at how long it took the teacher to get the other students to grasp the concept. We were bored all the time in class, but we had a blast together outside class. When we got to sixth and seventh grade some of our class mates began calling us names, like geek, brown noser, fag, and dork. Some of the kids thought we were showing them up, I guess. Tyler and me would look at each other and make a face like, 'What could they possibly be referring to?'. It was all a joke to us. We figured we'd get the last laugh eventually. Instead they got the last laugh. 'The one genius kills the other genius..ha ha ha ha ha, what a couple of losers!!' That was the essence of the comments probably, ya know when it happened back then. I believe some of the teachers secretly enjoyed our troubles too. Plus, we were on the small side and we looked youngish and cute so the bullies had a lot of material to work with in their harassment of us, but when it was just the two of us we'd laugh at the bullies' pathetic efforts. It isn't so funny now that it's just the one of us. Since I wasn't attending school when we moved, I'd be in our house alone until my brother got home from school. In my solitude during the day, I had the largest guilt complex in recorded history, but I still managed to jerk-off regularly and often. I always thought of Tyler while doing it. I still couldn't cry, but I could self loathe quite well. I hated myself and I hated what I'd done to ruin so many people's happiness, including my own. So, the brief relief from my torment lasted only as long as it took to shoot my load, then it was right back to work, hating myself and day dreaming.That was pretty much it, except between periods of wanking off and hating myself I relived the fun times I'd had with Tyler; that's what I daydreamed about. I loved remembering his voice. Isn't that odd? Thinking about how he sounded when he talked of course, but also how he sounded when he sang. I loved thinking about him back then home alone, and occasionally I still do now as a nineteen year old. It was fun remembering how Tyler looked when he got his different haircuts. Tyler was always trying new hair styles and asking me how I liked them. I loved them all. And I'd think about the faces he use to make to get me laughing, and the way he could make himself burp in order to gross out people at the movies or the mall. These thoughts, as well as so many others, combined to make-up my Tyler daydream life. I hadn't yet started my night time dreams of him with us kissing and all that... you know, the dream I mentioned earlier. That came many months after we moved. I think all the hours I spent daydreaming about Tyler probably led to the night time dreams, but all these things took lots of time and time dragged by very slowly for me. Tyler and I liked to do things others didn't, or couldn't do. For example, at age twelve we joined the youth choir at church. There were sixty-eight kids in the choir and only two of the them were boys, Tyler and Oliver. Ha ha. We loved it, being different I mean. In this choir you couldn't just join, which was how the children's choir was. We had to audition for this choir. Anyone attending school could audition, but you really had to be able carry a tune; that is, you had to be able to actually sing. It evolved over the years that guys didn't bother to try out. You know, because no other boys were in it, so therefore no boys tried out. It was a 'What came first, the chicken or the egg' thing. Anyway, it was an all girl choir until Tyler and me broke that up. The girls didn't accept us at first, but here's the thing, we could really sing. We knew we could because we'd been singing along with CDs ever since we were six years old and we were good at it, not that we gave ourselves very much of the credit for that. A person is born being able to sing, or they're not. So we didn't take credit for being able to sing any more than we took credit for being smart. We knew these were gifts given for the complex reason that we had a fortuitous mix of genes. We weren't conceited about these gifts, we were grateful. Thinking back I remembered that one of the two best times in the choir for Tyler and me was the first Christmas we were members. We'd become accepted by that time and the girls adopted us as sort of their mascots. Most of the girls were three or four years older than Tyler and me anyway. They became proud of us and eventually convinced us to do a solo. Well, it wasn't exactly a solo because there were two of us, but it was just the two of us singing and we sang the song a cappella, which means without music. Our voices hadn't quite changed yet so we had some real good 'pipes' to use hitting the high notes. We sang 'Oh Holy Night', a beautiful Christmas song. Tyler and I practiced that song, on our own, a hundred times at least. We sang it for the first time publicly at Midnight Mass that Christmas Eve, about eighteen months before Tyler's death. There were nine hundred people crowded into the church that night, and yet it was as quiet as if it were empty. All you heard was Tyler and me singing, side by side in perfect unison and right on pitch. Out came this emotional hymn with the high, dramatic notes and beautiful words; a true religious Christmas classic hymn, and people where allowed to refer to the holiday back then as 'Christmas'. Anyway, when we finished with a vocal crescendo on a very high note, there was total silence for three or four seconds. I started to frown and look towards Tyler because I thought we sang very well and I expected some applause. Then everyone in the church stood up and cheered and clapped. They had been stunned by our performance. I'd never heard a cheer that loud. We were mobbed and hugged and kissed by the choir girls and it was truly overwhelming. Many of the girls in the choir looked proud and shared in our triumph. It was one of the two most exhilarating experiences of my life, singing I mean. Another one was the time we sang 'Amazing Grace', just Tyler and me... again without music. This was at a Mass in memory of a priest who'd served this parish for years. No hint of scandal ever touched our parish and this priest was generally given credit for that. I'm not sure why that was, but when he died of old age the parish had this funeral Mass for him. His favorite hymn was 'Amazing Grace' and Tyler and me were recruited to sing it. Again the church was packed to over flowing and after the main funeral Mass, when his casket was being rolled out up the center aisle, we sang the song and there were very few dry eyes in the house. Tyler and me felt like rock stars or celebrities of some sort for a while there. The singing carried very little weight with our peers however; in fact, it worked against us. The guys in school made fun of us and called us 'girly' queers. We didn't care because we loved the applause and we made many plans about being a rock star duo sooner rather then later. I helped kill Tyler before we could really get very far along with those plans. I haven't been back to church since Tyler's death and I have no plans to be there anytime soon either. What kind of a God would let what happened happen? Other thoughts of Tyler included his mimic ability and his perfect timing in getting me to laugh at the absolute worse times, for me I mean. Like in school auditorium during a serious presentation, or in church, or class, or in the movies with some wicked sad scene on the screen. All totally embarrassing moments because Tyler would get me to crack-up while he maintaining a poker face. People looking over at me as I was holding my balls laughing uncontrollably. They could see no one else around me laughing, including Tyler. He got me so many times; for instance, he could make a face during some situation that made me burst out laughing and he'd go right back to having a seriously puzzled look on his face. He did his laughing later while recounting the incident over and over till he got me laughing again. Fun! We were always together and almost every weekend we had a sleep over, taking turns at each others' house. Tyler was an only child and his parents treated me like they treated Tyler, as if I were their son too, but I never saw them after Tyler's death. Their hearts turned to stone and they hated everyone and I don't blame them. They just sued, us and hated us, and then left town. None of the million things that we'd shared together carried over. I was a cancer to them. My parents were very angry with the way Tyler's parents acted towards me, but I still missed them. I missed their cat too, I missed Mrs Harris' brownies, I missed their jacuzzi, I missed all of that part of my life, I missed Tyler most of all; he was one half of me and when he died I was just a half a boy. Why can't I cry? After nine months of therapy from the various professional health care givers and nine months of positive reinforcement and love from my parents; and most importantly, nine months of encouragement and long heart to heart talks with Christian, I finally began to admit that I hadn't killed Tyler. The conversations with my brother were one sided because I still wasn't talking, but one sided or not they were responsible for maybe the biggest part of my recovery. I finally agreed that I was part of the reason Tyler is dead, but not a hundred percent of the reason. I could have prevented the accident by pulling the plastic cover over the empty pool. Yes, that's very true, but I didn't kill him. I settled on the premise Tyler forgot we were draining the pool even though this was discussed numerous times; plus, anyone could see there was no water in the pool by just looking. Even from some distance away it was obviously empty. The large pool hose that went to the main sewer drain was still sticking out at the corner of the empty pool. I was suppose to pull it out when I dragged the cover over the pool. Tyler had to have been extremely careless in many ways to allow this accident to happen. The suggestion Tyler killed himself was patently ridiculous and unthinkable so I rejected that inference. Me agreeing that I was being overly dramatic by insisting I'd killed him was considered a major breakthrough in my mental recovery. It went more quickly after that and I started actually speaking. I began by saying 'yes' and 'no' to Christian at first, and then to others. One night in the dark when we were in our beds I said, "Tha... tha.. thank you for helping me, Christian. I love you." He got out out of his bed and hugged me around my neck, the sides of our faces together, and I felt his tears dripping and running down onto my face. I began to talk more and within a week I talked as much as I ever had, but I'd brought a stutter along with me out of my muteness. I was talking now, but I was stuttering at the beginning of each thing I said. Once I got going I was okay. Odd since I never stuttered before, but a good start just the same. Then I had the first dream about Tyler and me kissing. The subsequent peeing in my bed was troubling to all, but not real surprising to the doctors. They expected there would probably be some substitute aberrant behavior after the months of being mute were left behind. Initially they thought it was the stuttering, but then they believed it was my peeing the bed. The doctors assured us that both things were temporary, both peeing the bed and the stuttering. Just another couple of steps to work through as we worked toward a healthy mental recovery for me. Of course I didn't tell anyone, not even Christian, that the bed wetting was a result of a dream in which Tyler finishes by jerking me off. I kept that to myself. I didn't know what to make of the stuttering, but the harder I tried not to stutter, the more I stuttered. Weird!! The psychiatric people were still worried I hadn't cried yet over the tragedy, because they felt I hadn't dealt with the grief yet. On the other hand, they were encouraged when I began to get these little periods of time during our sessions when I'd be furious at Tyler for his carelessness. He and I had done everything together and it seemed that we'd even teamed up to help him have a fatal accident. Being angry at Tyler wasn't something I felt very often, but this anger was seen as a step in the right direction. Like everything else, however, it too needed to be discussed and analyzed till I was ready to scream! It was getting to the point where I couldn't stand being probed and questioned about every thought I had. Slowly but surely the psychiatric visits came to an end. I begged to have them stopped before I started 8th grade because I was already starting it a year older than my classmates and I didn't want to be seeing a psychiatrist too. Stuff like that has a way of getting out. I wanted to try and be as normal as possible. Sadly, it didn't go well right from the first bell. Maybe if the first day had gotten off on a better note I wouldn't have been labeled a geek or a fag right off the bat. I had no luck though; someone found out I was a year older than everyone else. I still looked very young, I was small and I had that little bit of a baby face and ya know, being older but being smaller and younger looking was too weird for the eighth grade kids. To make matters worse, my homeroom teacher insisted on telling everyone I had an A average all the way through to eighth grade. That was another strike against me in the eyes of my class mates. The teacher wasn't done yet, 'Isn't that a great accomplishment class?' She insisted I stand-up and take a bow and give the class my secrets for getting straight A grades. I knew instinctively this was all wrong and I couldn't understand how this teacher could be so clueless. What choice did I have though, I half stood up real fast and tried to say that I didn't have any secrets about anything, but it came out like this, "Na na no, I da da don't have a secret." I was nervous so my stuttering reared it's ugly head. Shortly after that I heard some kid mutter to his buddy, "Aren't we lucky to have the oldest, stuttering, midget genius in the entire eighth grade right here in our own homeroom," and his buddy laughed and said, "Yeah, and he's definitely a fag, look at him". And that was the high point of my day. It was down hill from there and when a few kids label you a loser it catches on and spreads like wild fire. Others go along with it because they don't want to be seen as backing a fag loser. At first I tried to dumb it down, but my vocabulary became one of my worse enemies. I'd hear, "What the fuck does that mean?" when I'd finally stutter out a word with more than four letters in it. And when the ball gets rolling, forget about it! Just about anything I did or said was misconstrued, mostly on purpose. If I tried to ingratiate myself with one of the Alpha type guys he'd say something like, "What? Are you queer for me or something?" Nothing worked so within a week I was a loner and I concentrated on staying out of everyone's way and keeping my stuttering mouth shut. I kept posting one perfect test score and term paper after another. This didn't help my popularity, to say the least. The fact is, I should have skipped the whole grade in the first place because I didn't learn a single goddamn thing the entire year. No friends, and my brother was away at college now, so I was unhappy and lonely. Instead of a psychiatrist I was now going to a speech therapist once a week. I played on my computer a lot and took up jogging because it's something you can do alone and it doesn't require talking. Also, running felt good. That 'burn' you feel when you run past your previous endurance level is a rush. Plus, it took up time. Obviously there were other kids in school who were ostracized. I'm not implying I was the only one by a long shot, but I couldn't connect with any of them either and I shunned some of those geeks myself, so I wasn't a total innocent in this whole loneliness thing. I could have hung out with some of the labeled losers, but I had some standards too. It was a lonely time in my life back then, and that was that. During that summer Christian came home and I became his shadow day and night. He didn't baby me, but he did include me in everything he did. I got revitalized during the summer. In ninth grade I joined the track team and did pretty well, but I still couldn't break into a clique of any kind. Each year there was less name calling from the 'in crowd' and more of just ignoring me. They wouldn't bother me if I didn't bother them. I took a deep breath and tried again to form a number of friendships with labeled losers like myself, but nothing really was worth the effort. They weren't any fun so I decided being alone was better than that. My main past time, other than daydreaming about me and Tyler, became looking for cute boys to perve over. It's funny that, while the kids didn't know I was gay, they called me a queer anyway. As far as I could tell there weren't any gay guys in my school except the obvious ones. The drag 'drama queen ' types and the 'I'm here, I'm queer...deal with it' types. Way too confrontational for me; I liked guys who were regular guys who just happened to be gay. You know, gay guys who in all other ways looked and acted like guys. I couldn't find even one of that kind of gay guy in the entire five years I looked for one, and I suppose that's because most gay kids at that age are in the closet. After ninth grade my folks bought me an aluminum "Trek" road bike for my birthday. It cost over six hundred and it was awesome. I was intent on staying in running shape and bike riding was an excellent exercise, especially for my legs. My parents were just glad I had healthy activities like running and biking to keep me occupied. I spent time with Christian that summer too, but not as much as in past years. Now I was taking long mile bike rides. I had a helmet and a small back pack with snacks and water in it, and lots of free time on my hands. With earphones in place I'd bike all over the place listening to all types of music, except I couldn't get into jazz or rap. When I'd ride the bike I'd sing along with the songs and never stutter, but when I talked I usually began with stuttering. Very frustrating! I rode that bike everywhere with a map of our town and surrounding towns, but I still frequently got lost although that's one way to discover new places. Half way through the summer I took a bike trail that left me off at a rest stop, which also served a major highway. Bikes were not allowed on the highway, but this rest stop was still a good find. Many times I'd pee behind a tree, but now I had this rest room that's for bike riders and motorist. Maybe there were other rest areas along this new bike trail that I'd stumbled onto as well. I'm thinking this might be a very good discovery. I park the bike and went in to pee. While I was standing at the urinal a man came right out of a toilet stall and stood behind me. He said, "Do you want to come in the stall for a second so I can show you something?" My pee stream immediately dried up. I wasn't especially naive even way back then, so I knew right away what was happening. I said, "Na.. na.. no tha... thn... thanks." Then I zipped up and went to wash my hands even though I still had to pee a lot more. He lingered saying something like, "No problem, kid...that's fine. Sorry I bothered you." He said it all in a very polite, pleasant tone. I looked at him in the mirror and saw a nice looking, clean cut guy about thirty or so and realized that even though I was gay it panicked me a little to actually be in the company of a gay man, but I knew I didn't want to go in that stall with him. For one thing he was much older then me and I'd never thought about an older guy before this. I was sixteen at the time. Nothing happened though, and I left and rode down the path to finish my pee the way I usually do, against a tree. A squirrel came up behind me to watch, but I was probably too old for it. The next day I came back with a vague plan to see if maybe a kid around my age was hanging around the men's room; if older men did, why not a desperate gay teen like me? I waited an hour, but only older motorist used the facilities. Two of them gave me eye to eye looks with raised eyebrows in a questioning manner, but I looked away. Some of the cars stayed a long time in the parking spots which screwed up plans of me hanging around there, so I finally gave up and took off. For a while I maintained hope of connecting with a kid around my own age there, so the rest stop became a must visit every day. I rode up on my bike one day and there was another bike locked in the small bike rack. Hot shit, another kid. It's a long shot, but still I had to calm myself down before going inside. I wanted to be cool, like I knew the drill. I went in and saw legs in the first of two stalls. My heart was pounding as I started my pee. One stall door opened slowly and I heard foot steps coming up behind me. I was losing my nerve as the kid put his hand on my shoulders and said, "I'll hold that for you while you finish" and a hand came around and took my dick from my hand. It was the first time anybody but me had held this sixteen year old cock of mine and I started to get hard at the feel of his fingers on it. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the hand. It was the hand of a middle aged man with some gray hairs and bulging veins. Gasping and backing up into him I said "Na.. na... na... noooo!" and his hand pulled off my dick making my pee stream swing across the urinal wall and then onto the floor. He backed away saying, "Okay, okay, my mistake. Take it easy." I looked around and this guy was dressed in all the tight bike gear alright, but he was at least 50 years old with a pot belly and gray hair. My face was red from being angry with him and angry with myself too. I ran out the door like a little kid, jumped on my bike and rode away as fast as I could. I know I willed it to be some gay boy my age and that's why I thought it was one until I looked at his hand. There wasn't anything wrong with that man except in my eyes he was too old to have sex with. I was disappointed at my prejudice, but I couldn't make myself want to have a sexual experience with just anybody. Why was I doing this anyway? Why was I hanging out in a public toilet? It seemed perverted and, I don't know, unhealthy or something. I didn't go back for a week and when I did it was more of the same. Going back to the toilet made me realize how much I wanted some bodily contact, but it looked like it was going to have to be from a boy around my own age. That is just how my subconscious mind had it set up. The need for some kind of a satisfying sexual experience got to be a stronger and stronger urge. Jerking off helped, but I was itching for a gay buddy, if just for a one night stand. The rest stop did not seem to be the answer though and I was sexually unfulfilled when tenth grade started. My dreams of Tyler continued and I was still peeing the bed every time I had the dream, but the dream only occurred once or twice a month now. I couldn't figure out a meaningful pattern; it seemed to occur randomly. Because the dreams were so infrequent now I just tolerated the peed bed and continued using the rubber under-sheet. If the dreams happened more frequently I'd have considered incontinent underwear at night; the kind that some adults have to wear all the time due to some health issues. As far as my family was concerned, the bed wetting wasn't even discussed; it was just part of Oliver's world. In the tenth grade I got the biggest crush on a boy. He reminded me somewhat of Tyler except this boy was six feet tall. Never mind how tall he was, the crush got stronger and stronger the more I looked at him. His name was Robert and he was in my homeroom as well as three other of my classes, including gym class. Oh my god, all the crazy things I went through in gym class trying to see Robert naked. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. He had brown hair that was cut in a crew cut, which was one of Tyler's favorite styles. Robert's face had a medium complexion with dark blue eyes, complementary ears, nose, mouth and chin and all of them were pretty much perfect. Like Tyler, Robert had a great smile. Everything he did seemed so natural and cool. I got boners just watching him; hard, painful boners. For a while I felt guilty like I was cheating on Tyler, but even I realized how stupid that thought was. The fantasies I concocted for Robert and me got more elaborate as my crush on him intensified. It got scary being so infatuated with a boy I'd never even spoken to. I had many daydream of him, mostly during classes we were in together, and then while laying in bed before sleep. This took up some of the time I used to use for daydreaming about Tyler. My fantasies about Tyler and me had never gotten further than that dream of mine about Tyler and me kissing and grinding together, and then Tyler jerking me off. That is the only Tyler sex acts I could make believable in my head. I tried to imagine Tyler blowing me or me blowing Tyler, but it just didn't work in my head and therefore wasn't 'hot'. Everything I fantasized about Robert 'worked' in my head and I was jerking off like crazy as fast as I could make-up new sexual fantasies about him. One fantasy had Robert unexpectedly showing up at my house. In my fantasy, I had him ringing my doorbell after school while I was home alone. I'd act surprised he even knew where I lived. For his part he would be shy all of a sudden and get red in the face. I'd try to put him at ease telling him there's no need to feel funny, 'How are you, Robert? Wonderful to see you. You look great! Come on in." He'd say that he didn't think I even knew his name. He'd confess he came to my house because he couldn't hold off any longer; he had a wicked crush on me. I'd look a little surprised again. A crush on me? Then, in the fantasy, he grabs my head with a hand on either side of my face and kisses me and licks me all around my mouth. Shortly he'd begin kissing with his tongue in my mouth while slowly rubbing his hand over my head and all through my hair. In between the hot, passionate kissing he'd tell me how delicious I tasted and how cute I was. He would finally work up the nerve to put his hands down the back of my pants while grinding his crotch into mine. Being three inches taller than me his rock hard boner would be poking my belly button, I suppose, but that's a mere technicality and in fantasies many things are possible. The fantasy expands each time I had one and in one Robert would be groaning and moaning and very aroused as he covered my face with his saliva and my boner would be throbbing and leaking and twitching and feeling all together better than it had ever felt before in my life! In a near frenzy he'd then grope my bare bum cheeks and began fingering my hole. I would be trying to catch my breath, but in my daydream Robert was like a run away train. Once he started in on me he just couldn't stop. He kept saying how hot and cute I was and how he loved shorter boys with brown hair and blue eyes. He said he'd never smelled anyone who smelled as sexy and yummy as me and he couldn't get enough of me. After a few minutes he'd blow out a long hissing sound between his lips and hump into my belly with his boner shooting a long rope of cum into his pants moaning and sighing and swooning. The cum would wet right through his pants leaving a huge stain on the front. He'd then sink down to his knees and beg me to let him suck my cock, which was like a dripping steel pipe between my legs by now; in my fantasy and for real. He'd undo my pants and pull out my boned up cock and swallow it right down his throat. I'd then hold his head in place and fuck his face for ten minutes before squealing a high pitched noise that only a bat could hear, while filling his throat and mouth with my huge creamy cum load. He'd be so hot and turned on by that he'd pull the rest of my pants off and roughly turned me around, forcing me on my hands and knees. Spitting on my hole he'd force his latest, brand new amazingly large boner in my twitching hole and push it all the way up till his huge swinging balls were smacking up against my ass cheeks. Those big balls make a slapping sound against my creamy white bum with each thrust into me and he'd fucked me till I saw stars. We'd shoot off our cum loads at the same time. Then, still not satisfied, Robert would pull my head back by my hair and made me lick his dripping cock until it was clean. We'd collapsed into each other's arms after that, falling madly in love. And that's just a mild example of my fantasies about Robert. All this from me, a boy who has never experienced a real gay sex moment in his life. Apparently that didn't matter when fantasy is involved. My cock was raw from jerking off thinking up new things for Robert and me to do together. Sometimes I'd be dominate and sometimes he'd be dominate, but the sex was always rough when Robert and me did it in my mind; we weren't pussies. I became obsessed with him and he became obsessed with me, but only in my fantasies; I was obsessed with him in real life. I'd had two spontaneous orgasms in my pants at school thinking of a fantasy while looking at Robert in class. Both times I pulled my shirt tail out to cover the cum stain that soaked through my pants. Peeing my bed and cuming in my pants. I was a a bit of a mess at that time in my life. This fantasy life I conjured up continued all through tenth grade and into eleventh grade. Finally I'd had it with fantasies and decided I had to make an effort to meet Robert. Using the Internet to find out where he lived, I'd ride my bike to his neighborhood hoping to see him and start some sort of communication with him for real. Finally, on my forth try, I saw him walking a dog so I rode up and said, "Ha, he, hey, Hi...you you're in my biology class aren't you?" Robert looked up and said, "Yeah, duh! I'm in your homeroom and two other classes too." My face got real red and hot. "O, ah, oh yeah, that's right. Hi Robert." He asked me what I was doing around the neighborhood and I gave my planned explanation about training for the track team by doing long bike rides. I kept my replies short and to the point. I didn't want to ramble on, like I do sometimes because he might lose interest right off. Apparently he was already losing interest though because Robert wasn't paying any attention to me at all. He was staring at his German Shepard as it did a huge dump on someone's lawn. "Good boy, Rabbit", he said, and began walking away from the steaming pile of dog shit, totally ignoring it, and me. I rode away feeling a bit like that turd the dog just shit out. Next day Robert didn't even say "Hi" when I saw him in class. Well, one good thing came out of that encounter and I didn't even realize it until a couple of days later. My crush for Robert was totally OVER! I didn't hate him or anything, I just didn't have a crush on him anymore. I couldn't imagine why I'd ever had one on him in the first place, and it went on for over a year too! What was I thinking? What the fuck had I seen in that dorky tall drink of water. The mind is a weird thing, a complete mystery to me. Robert and me were through. I hope he doesn't take it too hard, break-ups can be painful sometimes. Christian taught me to drive that past summer and after completing Driver Ed at school I'd gotten my license. I got to drive Christian's hand-me-down car. Not as hot or as much fun as his hand-me-down speedoes had been, but it was a 'ride'. A ten year old Toyota sedan. He'd bought it off our uncle some years ago so I was able to get around, plus run the many errands that my parents came up with. I enjoyed it and loved the independence a car provides. It made me feel like I was no different than any other kid my age. Just a teenager, normal as all get out. Christian graduated college the year I graduated 11th grade. I was a senior now. I still had no one that was really a 'friend', but I talked to a couple kids that were on the track team and a couple in class from time to time too. No one called me names any more, but I was still an outsider as far as anything vaguely resembling the 'in crowd' was concerned. My goal was to get out of High School and start fresh in college. I'd gotten an early acceptance to a number of Ivy League schools, but decided on the University Of Pennsylvania. They offered a total academic scholarship. A full boat free ride though all four years and it's a good thing or else I'd have the burden of college loans that Christian has. Never receiving a grade below an A during my eleven years of school is what got be the scholarship. Okay, my stupid crush on Robert is behind me, but there were a couple of other crushes on cute guys that were mainly useful only during my jerk off sessions. By then I'd accepted there wasn't going to be a gay sexual episode for me until college. In college I was going to go for it because I was one randy boy! The 'Tyler and me dream' still happened every couple of months, but I was expecting them to fade away in the next year or so, I could just sense it. Something was changing in my head. My feelings for Tyler were still very real, but after almost five years those feelings lacked the sharp edges of my earlier years of mourning. I could feel very, very sad at times from thinking about all the things that he and I would have done together if he had lived. Of course, that would never have included sex together. That wasn't going to happen. Ironically I had more sex with Tyler through my dreams, because of his death, than I ever would have had if he had lived. What would we have been like? I wondered about that often. I know my life would have been much happier with Tyler in it, but he was dead so I felt I had to try hard to move on and I felt I was moving on, although slowly. By my senior year I had grown to what I was sure was my maximum height of five feet-nine. I was pleased with that because there were some earlier years when I never thought I'd make it to even this height. Very thin, but I had a tight body from all the bike riding and track team activities. Running keeps off the fat for sure. I was happy with the way I looked even thought apparently nobody else was very impressed. Fuck em, was my attitude by now. The stuttering persisted some, but a little less each month. Peeing the bed only happened every two months or so by then, but as I said, I could feel that it was fading out. I was comfortable at school even though I wouldn't say I had any fun there. I just wanted to graduate and put this entire unfortunate high school experience behind me. Of course I wish I could have had some fun, but I don't think I was depressed about it. All would be a better life for me with a brand new start in College. On the sexual side, my latest infatuation was gay style fucking. I wanted to be fucked by some cute young guy. No one volunteered though, so what to do about that? Maybe do it myself, like I had to do everything else. Hmmmm, buying a dildo was way out of the question, but buying a cucumber wasn't. I decided to have some fun by myself planning this self-fuck. After some research in the produce section of the super market, I decided the English cucumber was best suited to act as a boner. It has a more realistic size and shape than regular or pickling cucumbers. I wanted to do it with a condom on the cucumber so I bought some lubed condoms at the drug store. That was a story right there, but I'll spare you the details. Suffice to say it took almost two hours to make the condom purchase, and I needed to try two different drug stores before I finally pulled the trigger and suffered the embarrassment of handing my purchase to the lady at the counter. The cucumber was a much easier purchase. I did look carefully around to make sure there was no one from the drug store where I got the condoms watching me pick out a cucumber. I bought a lot of other stuff I didn't need with the condoms purchase, and I did the same with the cucumber purchase. Finally I was alone at home with all my stuff. Heart pounding and head sweating, I tried to calm down to enjoy my first fuck. Peeling off the plastic wrap on the cucumber and rolling the lubed condom onto it, I had my boner. Purposely chosen a smaller size English cucumber for obvious reasons. The cucumbers were all $1.50, large ones and small ones, so probably me choosing a smaller one made the cashier consider me a bad shopper. That I would even think that kind of thought should give you a clue how goofy I was getting over this whole matter. Determined to try it so I'd get an idea of what it might feel like, that's all I was hoping for, just an initial idea of what it might feel like. I lay on the bathroom floor naked, my knees pulled up near my chest and reached around with the condom covered cucumber to find my asshole. It was awkward, but I got it there and exerted some pressure. No luck, it didn't go in with that first push. Before I could try again, out of no where, an image of Tyler filled my mind. He had his big smile that I remembered so well and I immediately recognized the surroundings in this image. I remember he'd just whispered to me he wanted to tell me about this bizarre incident involving a cucumber. We were sitting, wearing our choir robes, in the choir section of church just before Mass started. I remember frowning at him, asking, "A cucumber?" He was obviously trying not to laugh as he thought about the tale in his own mind. Although he was smiling, he talked in a serious voice. In the beginning I thought it was a true story he was telling me. He'd leaned over to me and whispered, "Oliver, I read in the paper about a doctor who had this poor bastard in the emergency room with a whole cucumber up his ass; it probably had slipped inside his rectum." I said, "No way!" Tyler continued, "Oh yeah, it's true. The patients wife asked the doctor how the cucumber could possibly have gotten up there and the doctor told her, 'Ma'am, your husband needs to chew his food better!' Realizing it was a joke, I laughed and my laughter was too loud and I was escorted out of the choir section by one of the older girls. Holding my condom covered cucumber, I was laughing on the bathroom floor now too. Not at the joke, but Tyler telling me the joke at the worse possibly, inappropriate time. He was so funny like that, with his cute grin when he got me laughing. I lay on the bathroom floor laughing at that, except I didn't seem to actually be laughing, actually I wasn't laughing at all. I was hysterically crying and blubbering and blowing mucus bubbles out my nose, and I couldn't stop. I heaved the cucumber against the shower curtain, then stood up and swung my arm across the shelf over the toilet knocking pictures and bottles of stuff on the floor. I was out of control and the tears ran down my face like rain in a thunderstorm. I'd never cried this hard as a baby or as a toddler, not even that time I fell down the steps. I was literally screaming through my tears, "What kind of a fucking idiot dives into an empty pool. Tyler, you couldn't possibly be that stupid! Why didn't you look? Why? Why? Why? Any fucking fool could see there was no fucking water in that fucking pool!" I yelled stuff and threw the bath mat and kicked at it, then wildly pulled the entire roll of toilet paper off the spindle until the toilet paper lay in a pile on the floor as I ripped the towels off the towel racks and threw them around my head and, finally, out of shear exhaustion I flopped on the floor again laying there sobbing as the tears kept coming. After awhile I got a bad case of the hiccups, but still couldn't stop crying. Then I felt that unmistakable feeling that I was going to puke. I barely got to the toilet before vomiting violently into the toilet bowel. I cried all the harder as I started in on myself by hysterically screaming, the words echoing off the bathroom tiled walls, "Why didn't I pull that fucking plastic cover over the pool? Why was I so lazy and stupid? But still, who the fuck is going to dive into a pool that clearly has no fucking water in it? Who? Who? Who? That stupid fucking Tyler, that's who! He ruined my life!! I hate that fucker so much!!" My crying was not letting up, but my strength had given out. Naked, I laid on my back on the bathroom floor with tears and mucus running off both sides of my face and I continued the irrational tirade in my head being too weak by then to say the words out loud. Then another thought drifted in, 'I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm having one and that's for sure, maybe I'm going crazy!' These thoughts slowly brought me back to the boundaries of reality, the edge of sanity. I calmed down some and lay there quietly sobbing, testing my state of mind. When I thought of my remark about 'hating Tyler' I began crying again and I blubbered out that I was sorry I said that. I loved him, I didn't hate him.The crying built up again because young love is a very powerful thing. I was too weak by then to do anything but lay there and cry. Feeling so sorry for myself at first, then I felt so sorry for Tyler. I tried to imagine how different my life would have been and how much more fun I would have had if only that accident hadn't happened. I sobbed and groveled and cried for a half hour more and then fell asleep right there on the floor. That was during the last week of winter and when I opened my eyes it was dusk outside and rather dark in the bathroom. I knew immediately where I was and what I'd just experienced. My watch read five thirty so I'd been in the bathroom almost two hours. I must have slept for more than an hour. I didn't have the feeling I was about to start crying again so I slowly pulled myself up and turned the light on, then felt I was in a trance and without thinking very much about anything I spent twenty minutes cleaning up the bathroom. The last thing I did was wrap the cucumber and condoms in newspaper and put it all under other trash in the middle of the trash barrel and then took a long shower. Gulping two tall glasses of water after the shower, then I wrote a note to my mom because she gets home from work first. I told her I loved her, but I couldn't think of the proper way to describe my feelings so thought it best not to even try. I told her I had the flu or something and I didn't feel well so I was going to bed and sleep right through until tomorrow. What to do next? Put on pajama, which is what I did. My head ached like mad so I took three Tylenol and, not being hungry, I just went to bed exhausted. Laying in bed thinking about my tirade again I got weepy and then dozed off. Some time later I thought there were footsteps coming up the stairs and knew it would be my mom looking in on me. The next conscious thing I noticed was the steady sound of rain. Thinking crazy thoughts like, I'm glad it's not snow, because if it was I'd have to shovel it, I then thought back to the previous afternoon and my breakdown, or whatever it was. It's six o'clock in the morning so I've been in bed for twelve hours and I'd slept through most of those twelve hours. Getting up and dressing for school I needed food, so ate two large bowls of cereal and drank two large glasses of orange juice. No one was up yet. My mind was in neutral, but I knew something important had changed. I knew I was never again going to see Tyler and me in our dream together, and I bit my lip as big fat warm tears rolled down my face, but it only lasted a minute. I'd finally dealt with my grief and I sent Tyler a message in my head, 'I'll never love another person as much as I loved you, Tyler' Then I said to him, in my mind, 'I'll never forget you, but I have to put you in a special place in my heart and begin to make a life for myself.' I was 19 years old, two months from graduating high school, and good riddance to it too! Pulling myself together I out went to face the world again. There were two main items left to get through and then I'd be done with twelfth grade and high school forever. I was valedictorian so I'd have to give a speech at the graduation ceremonies. At first I was going to take the opportunity to give a scathing account of uncontrolled bullies in our schools who were ruining the high school experience for those students not deemed worthy to be part of the 'in crowd' and include the teachers and the administrators who did nothing about it. But, in the end I wrote a speech of optimism and opportunities and challenge. Exceed your dreams and that kind of drivel. Maybe one, just one student will think, 'Fuck, why was I so mean to that kid?' Just one.The other thing I need to deal with is the Senior Class Trip. I wasn't going to go until I discovered it'll be in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is where the University Of Pennsylvania is located, and that's the college I'm going to in the fall. I'd seen the campus on a two hour tour, but I wanted to roam all around it on my own. You know, while the students are still there and just see what I can see. Maybe check out if there are any openly gay activities. I had a few fantasies of a freshman at Penn noticing me and taking me to his dorm room and fucking me all night long, or at least taking me out for coffee and talking to me. The one huge hangup about the senior trip was the 'buddy system' for rooms. Buddies could stay together. Most of the rooms were for four, but a limited number were for two guys. I wanted a room for one of course, but there were none of those available. Guys like me, who didn't have a particular person we wanted to bunk with were listed on a sheet and assigned alphabetically as room mates. Then, the guys on the list switched around with their assigned guys until I was the last one left. Yep. There were three hundred and eighty-one students going on the trip and I was that guy; the one with no roommate. So guess what, something even worse, I had to share a room with one of the chaperons.The hits just keep on coming. A week before the trip Mr. Degenerate called me over as I was walking down the hall. Trying to be funny he told me I was the lucky guy who got to share a room on the trip with him. He's a first year guidance counselor, just one year out of college. I'd talked to him a couple of times and he seemed real nice, real helpful. Very youthful looking guy with a ready smile and something nice to say to everyone. I could have gotten a lot worst roommate. He squeezed the back of my neck and says, "Don't seem so thrilled, Oliver!" and then he chuckled a little. He goes, in a conspiratorial voice, that he'd gotten us a room with a double bed AND a pull out sofa so we'd each have our own bed. He'd hesitated, and then added, "That's if we want our own bed." Another laugh and another squeeze at the back of my neck and he was off to spread good cheer elsewhere. I realized my face was kind of scrunched up because I was puzzled about something... something about him that I couldn't put my finger on. Oh well, a week to go until the high school senior trip, then a little bit more High School and then my life begins for real. to be continued... next chapter, "Current time, Dylan's Senior Trip" where Oliver loses his cherry. Donny Mumford thinat20@yahoo,com Please consider donating to non profit Nifty. It's tax deductible and there are expenses involved keeping the site going. Imformation is on Nifty's 'contribute' section. Thanks.