From: janus@greynet.net (janus znaiu)
Subject: ~~ FINAL CHAPTER~~ Ch.5 "Biddin' Barry Goodbye" m/m, m/m/m/m cons, teen, underwear
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 09:45:11 GMT

BIDDIN' BARRY GOODBYE 
by janus znaiu

The airport taxi idled in the driveway as Jack Llewelyn gave
my folks a bit of parting advice from the bottom step of our
porch. "Gwen and Bron' shouldn't give you any trouble at all,
but if that Barry guy gets too full of himself, feel free to
give 'im a backhand whenever you think he needs one. Talking
to him doesn't always work. Everything goes in one ear and
out the other-- nothing in the middle to slow it down, just
like his old man," Mr Llewelyn chuckled, ruffling Barry's
mop. If he was serious, it was wasted counsel; my parents had
never hit Nils or me in our lives. Domestic violence of even
the mildest kind was as alien to their natures as the tamest
display of affection was.

They embraced the elder Llewelyns an awkward goodbye, and
stood back while the vastly more demonstrative Llewelyn clan
crowded together in a last, teary mass hug. All four girls,
his mom and his younger brother were crying quite openly.
Soon Barry left them to stand at my side, out of the glaring
porchlights. He regarded the tableau of his family's
leave-taking with a nearly-convincing air of detachment.
"Boy, if this was all you saw of them, you'd never believe
how they scrap with each other the rest of the time," he
chuckled. But his tone of voice, always the true yardstick of
how he was feeling, betrayed a touch of sadness. I tugged on
his sleeve as we waved at the departing cab and took him up
to my room to watch Bonanza.

"This is gonna be so cool, Slim. Nicholas is okay for a pesky
little brother, but I always wished I could share a room with
somebody more like you. And now-- here we are!" he waved his
arms about at our accumulated teen squalor. "It's almost like
I picked up my room from home and brought the whole thing
here!" It sure looked like the mess he used to call his room.
He was in hog heaven, but I knew my mom, and most especially
Mrs.  Kowalchuk, our housekeeper, would have several things
to say about Barry's eccentric definition of 'tidy'. I'm
certain she demanded, and got, a fatter retainer for the
duration.

"Let's get this cot set up for you." I suggested, "Man,
there's nowhere to put the friggin' thing." I shifted several
of Barry's boxes to make room for it.

"I don't see why I can't just bunk right here like I always
do." Barry said with a foul look, making no effort to get up
and help me. He sprawled on my bed and palmed the insides of
his jeans-clad thighs. "That was supposed to be the best part
of this whole thing"

I couldn't see why either; my bed was a double. We'd always
shared it for sleep-overs. I suspected Nils of putting some
bug in my mom's ear because she'd been so
uncharacteristically adamant about it. "A boy that age needs
a bed of his own," she'd said with an air of finality, and
she made pop and me schlep the cot down from the attic. It
was an ancient wrought-iron contraption with a thick, heavy
mattress and a tendency to bite during set-up. In the daytime
it got folded up and wheeled into the bathroom between my
room and Nils'. For the two days it had been there so far, in
advance of Barry's arrival, it had been the source of no end
of whining and complaining from Nils about how it was going
to be like living in a gypsy camp for the next two and a half
months. He made constant wisecracks like that, some of them
dangerous; he even referred to my room as the 'honeymoon
suite' within earshot of the twins earlier that evening. As
much as I was looking forward to sharing my room with Barry,
I dreaded what horrible things would ensue if Nils ever let
his lips get too loose when my folks were around.

"I figure as long we make it *look* like you sleep on the
cot, you can still spend some of the night in with me." I
told Barry. I'd spent the past three months preparing for
this night, ever since we found out that Barry and his
sisters would be our guests until the school year ended. I
lay awake every night planning how best to take advantage of
our proximity without allowing anyone to find out we were
regularly blowing each other. There were so many details. My
door to the hallway didn't lock. "You'll have to be on the
cot by morning, but nobody says you have to start out there."
I smiled him one of those smiles.

"Hey now, that sounds more like it!" Barry said, suddenly
back to his cheerful self. He jumped up and spread a sheet
over the narrow single bed wedged between my bedside table
and dresser. He flattened the sheet out a bit, grabbed the
pillow to his chin and belly-flopped, full length, onto the
cot. "Guess I got to make the sheets a bit wrinkled and
sweaty, to make it look like I slept here all night, like."
he giggled, rotating his crotch into the sheet, treating me
to a compelling view of his ass grinding away beneath his
tight, faded jeans.

"I'm serious about you not being in my bed early in the
morning, man-- sometimes my pop wakes me up to help him with
shit before he goes into the city, and he doesn't always
knock. Anyway, we got to be real careful if this isn't going
to get us into shit. Gotta watch what we say and stuff." I
pointed at the wall between my room and Nils'.

"Yeah, he's turned into a real prick alright. Never mind him
right now. He's downstairs with that homely girlfriend of
his." That was true enough, I could hear a four-handed
version of some gospel nugget drifting up from the music room
directly below us. Barry undid his shirt buttons as he walked
towards me. "Let's take a shower," he whispered, with a
sneaky look.

"Together? Now? Are you nuts? Nils could come upstairs
anytime!" It suddenly occured to me that for all my careful
planning, I'd failed to take into account Barry's impulsive,
almost foolhardy, nature when he was turned on.

"So we lock the door to his side," Barry said, as if he were
explaining it to a four yearold. "Far as Nils' concerned,
only one of us is in there-- long as we keep the grunts to a
minimum. Man, you worry way too much, Slim." With that, he
grasped me about the shoulder with one hand and began undoing
his belt with the other. I followed him with no small amount
of trepidation, but I followed him.

Barry locked Nils' door with a broad look and accompanying
gesture that said: "See? I'm locking it; now calm down and
get undressed."

I had removed my sweater and pants, and was just about peel
off my jockeys, when Barry stayed my hand. "Leave 'em on," he
whispered into my ear. We pulled off our socks and together
we stepped into the steaming spray. My dick began stirring
the instant the hot streams met the front of my briefs,
soaking them with the moist, insistent warmth of many
drilling tongues. Barry spun me around so that the seat of my
drawers could soak as well. His briefs were still almost dry,
but for a few large mottled places on one side. He cupped my
hand and held it to the warm pouch of his Stanfields so that
my fingers cradled his low-slung nuts. He smiled and moved in
to kiss me. A sudden, liquid heat caressed my hand as it ran
between my fingers and dribbled off the backs of them.
Barry's tongue probed my mouth as the flow of his piss abated
and his cock began pulsing to tumescence against my palm. We
broke the kiss and Barry stepped out of his briefs. A pale
pee stain soaked the rumpled pouch on the floor of the tub.
The puddle at our feet turned a marbled yellow as urine
blended with water before disappearing down the drain.

Barry pulled my cock out the fly of my jockeys and pointed it
at his thick, unhooded bone, but I was too aroused to return
the favor. "Guess I'm going to have to work some other kind
of juice out of this fella then," he whispered, dropping to
his knees in front of me. He lathered up one armpit by
smearing the bar of soap around in it and knelt with his back
to me. "Step in close, Slim."

I didn't know exactly what he had in mind, but, as he often
did, he'd evidently come up with yet another novel way to
coax a load out of me. In these situations, I'd learned well
enough over the past months, the best thing to do was just
let him go and put all my trust in the caprices of his dirty
mind. He reached behind him and placed my palms on his
shoulders. Then he reached again and drew my dick into his
soapy armpit, clamping his arm down on it. The very tip of my
cockhead stuck out the front and Barry wasted no time
twiddling it with foamy fingertips. I began tentative fuck
moves into his armpit, gradually gaining momentum as I went.
My knees pressed against his back and I gripped his shoulder
for leverage, pulling his torso on and off my cock while I
thrusted. Barry jacked himself off with his free hand. We
both came quickly, explosively and practically in unison.
With one final lunge, I shot my spunk out the front of
Barry's armpit, splattering the checkerboard tiles with great
dripping trails of it.  Barry's climax went unseen, but felt
by his tremors against the fronts of my legs. When he stood
up to face me under the shower spray, his thighs were spotted
with white goo. I removed my sodden jockeys, licked the cum
off his legs before it could wash away and we went about the
business of cleaning ourselves up for bed.

Bronwyn and Gwen, could be heard
in the guest room on the other side of mine, rattling around
and doing whatever girls do at bedtime that's so damn funny.
They were used to sharing a room; you could tell. Before
Barry and I even got all of their boxes carried up to the
room that afternoon, they'd already turned the bed ninety
degrees and defined their own spaces on the dressertop.
Suddenly there was a shriek from down the hall. We threw on
our robes and stuck our heads out the door. The shriek had
come from Bronwyn, who'd discovered, halfway through her
shower, that there was no more hot water. Pop took a quick
roll of who'd had showers recently.

Barry and I got off with a friendly reminder that there were
more than the usual number of people in the house and that
we'd have to learn to take shorter showers. "Hey, maybe we
should double up, like at school," Barry suggested evilly,
just to wind me up. Pop told him, deadpan, that it shouldn't
come to that. I shot Barry a black look and yanked him back
into my room.

"There isn't enough water in Lake Ontario to get those two
sinners clean," Nils sneered to the assembled group, loud
enough to be sure Barry and I could hear him on our side of
the door.


Being roommates turned out to be less difficult than I'd
feared. Once I realized that I'd never make an instant
neatnik out of Barry, I began to try to make the best of a
messy situation. Most of his stuff just stayed in boxes
littered about the floor of my room the whole time he was
there. His underwear box and my underwear drawer merged
before the first week was out. I had filled out a lot over
the past six months and we were now within a size of each
other. Wearing one anothers' underwear had become something
of a leitmotif between us, even before Barry moved in. It was
perfectly symbiotic: Barry liked the tight feel of my jockey
whites for a change and I enjoyed the slackness and extra
ball room of his Stanfields. Also, he'd started buying
colored underwear, something that was still quite novel then
and considered a bit swish, even if the design and fabric
were exactly the same as regular whites. I didn't have
phys-ed with him, but he told me he took a fair bit of
ribbing over them. I sure never had the guts to wear any of
them on my phys-ed days. We used to laugh at the yellow ones
with the black seams, about how you could forget to shake
your moneymaker after you pissed and it wouldn't matter.

We settled into a comfortable routine of school, home and, as
the weather improved, outings to our favorite haunts. Barry
could keep his car until it was time for him to leave for the
coast, at which time he'd hand it over to his dad's former
partner at the dealership. Doubtless his dad would line him
up with new wheels once he got to B.C.; there were always
more vehicles in that family than there were Llewelyns.
Trouble was, he had to drive the girls to class and share the
Volks with them after school too, so lot of nights we just
sat around home being brotherly. It was idyllic, in a sense,
especially since Nils, my brother only by some perverse
accident of natural selection, had suddenly become less of a
nuisance.

All at once, a peculiar change had come over him. For the
first couple weeks after Barry moved in with us everything
had been the same; he behaved as abusively towards us as he
always had, as full of insults and self-satisfaction as ever.
Then, for no reason I could figure out, Nils suddenly became
not only less malevolent to Barry and me; to the best of his
ability, he avoided us altogether. If we came into a room he
was in, he'd quietly gather up his stuff and go elsewhere. At
meals Nils would join in the conversation with my folks and
Barry's sisters, but he avoided any unnecessary conversation
with me and dealt with me diffidently when he couldn't avoid
it. He treated Barry as though he were invisible, never
making eye contact with him and behaving sheepish around him.
I didn't understand it, but it made a very pleasant change
from having to dodge his nastiness all the time.

It went on like that for some bliss-filled weeks, until one
evening after dinner. My parents had left the table, but Gwen
and Bronwyn were still sitting opposite us drinking coffee,
babbling like some twins do-- talking overtop of one another
in unison and finishing the others' sentences.

"You got any homework tonight?" I asked Barry. Homework, said
in the tone I said it, had become our secret code word for
sex. I was asking him if he was horny-- as if it needed
asking.

"Oh yeah! A TON of homework," he said, smiling and aping my
inflection. "I might have to get started on it right after
dessert, or I'll just never get it all finished." We giggled
a bit between ourselves. Maybe one of us licked our lips in
some vaguely obscene way.

Nils looked up from his strudel. He stared right at Barry,
inhaling audibly through flared nostrils. When his chest
expanded to its broadest, when he couldn't possibly take in
any more air, he exploded. He tossed his fork to the middle
of the table, where it knocked over a salt shaker. "You two
are disgusting!" he shouted in a red-faced stage whisper. The
girls stopped chattering and looked up quizzically. It seemed
like our respite was over and the old, nasty Nils was back.
"I can barely stand to be under the same roof with you," he
spat, "Either of you!" he added, glaring directly at me.

Barry sat back in his chair and met Nils' gaze with an arched
eyebow. "Pick up that fork, Nils." He said it plainly,
without any discernable emotion, as if he expected no
argument over it. He tongued the inside of his cheek
thoughtfully and drummed his fingertips on the arm of his
chair, never letting go of Nils' eyes.

Nils blinked first. A crimson shadow drew across his face.
Exhaling deeply in resignation, he lowered his gaze. He
picked up his fork and took it, along with his strudel and
coffee, upstairs to his room, stomping away with as much
noise as his stockinged feet and the pile carpeting would
allow. Gwen and Bronwyn simply shrugged the whole matter off
and were soon immersed in their own conversation once again.
Nils' door slammed in the distance.

I opened my mouth to ask Barry what had just happened, but he
waved me off. "Later," he said rolling his eyes towards the
twins. It nagged at me so much that I lost all interest in my
dessert. Nils' outburst had been surprising enough in and of
itself, but to see him just cave in like that and take a
direct order from some mere highschool kid more than two
years his junior, well, stuff like that just didn't happen in
my world.


"Okay, so what WAS all that about at dinner?" I asked Barry,
the instant we were safely in my room again.

"Nothing much," he said.

I grabbed him by the lapels. "Spill it!  Oh, mama! I thought
Nils would shit himself when you shot him that look."

"What look?" Barry asked, sounding nearly innocent.

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. You're
holding something over his head, aren't you?

His pained expression gave me to understand that I was
right-- and that he really didn't want to be having this
conversation.

"Well, aren't you?" I prodded him.

"Well, yeah." Barry admitted.

"I KNEW it! So THAT's why he stopped being such a dink all
this time. Well?"

"Well, what?"

"'What IS IT?"

"I can't tell you, Slim. I promised him I wouldn't."

"C'mon, don't gimme that! You don't owe him shit!"

"Yes I do. He's living up to his end of our bargain-- at
least he was until just now. He realizes he got stupid and
he'll be more careful next time. Just let it rest."

"Let it rest? I've never had an incriminating bit of goods on
Nils in my life. You're not going to keep this from me."

"Yes, I am. Unless he forgets himself too often. Listen,
today was only an accident. He's entitled to that once in a
while.  Anyway, it's not something you can really hold over
him yourself anyway-- it's YOU he doesn't want to find out."

"ME? Now you GOTTA tell me!"

"No, I don't." Barry said, almost impassively.

It didn't make sense, his not telling me about this before--
like back when I used to go on and on, thinking out loud for
hours on end about the possible reason for Nils' sudden
change in attitude. I didn't miss his jibes an catcalls, but
I'd sure been flummoxed when they stopped.

"I can't believe you're taking his side here, Barry," I told
him.

"I'm not taking anyone's side, Jens. I gave the man my word
and that's that."

I pouted, but privately I admired Barry's sense of honor. I
also went bananas trying to figure out what it could be that
Nils was so keen to keep from me. I brought it up often but
Barry always redirected my attention with a change of topic
or, if privacy permitted, a caress. Eventually he'd just have
to give me that cherubic, long-suffering look of his and I'd
back right off. For his part, Nils never again repeated his
outburst, but you could see him seething whenever Barry and I
shared a private joke or risked some innocent gesture of
tenderness in his presence. Thus, the weeks flew by.


In our school system, if you maintained an honors average in
any given subject, you could be excused from writing the
final exam. It turned out that I only had to write math and
physics, but Barry had to spend most of the last couple weeks
of the term poring over his books. I'd tried to goad him into
applying himself more to his schoolwork before that, but on
evenings that I had a lot of homework or papers due, he'd
take off to visit one or another of his Tennis Friends. I
knew who they were and didn't like them much, but I bore them
no particular envy when he did it, I just felt a profound
dismay that he'd take his awful grades so lightly.

One of the Tennis Friends, Jay Katz, was a regular visitor at
our house. During the week of finals he and Barry would
commandeer a corner of the patio just below the window of my
room every day and cram together, weighting their books and
papers down with rocks and glasses of iced tea. I even helped
them out by quizzing them and cluing them in on a way of
memorizing dates and place names without actually memorizing
them. Of all Barry's friends from among the country club
bunch, Jay was the least toxic to my mind. He was still a bit
of a snob, but I got the impression he thought I was 'okay'.
And he made no complaint about the smoked salmon on
pumpernickle my mom was always foisting on us. I admired his
quick, often biting, sense of humor and he sure was easy to
look at, with his straight black hair, his raven eyes and his
strong, manly chin.

On the eve of Barry's last final exam, after Jay went home,
Barry crept into bed with me, spooning himself against my
back. "Hey Slim, are you awake?" he asked, gripping my
half-hard cock through my jockeys. Of course I was still
awake. I wasn't going miss any opportunity to add to my bank
of jackoff memories. I knew very well that chimerical Barrys
would have to sustain me when the physical, sweating Barry
was far away. By my calculation, we had only sixteen more
nights together. It had come as a very happy surprise when
the twins were somehow able to pursuade both sets of parents
to let them stay for an extra two weeks after school let out
so they could check out a few university campuses in our
area. Since Barry had no similar project to occupy his time,
we could be free for our final couple weeks.

He reached past my waistband and gripped my dick, twiddling
the foreskin as my glans filled out. "Most of me's awake.
Keep that up and I'll be completely awake in no time."

"Jay and me are going Watson's gravel pit tomorrow night, to
celebrate the end of exams, like." Barry said. "Jay says you
can come if you like, 'cause you helped us with our history
and geography and stuff." Year-end parties were usually held
at the beach, where kids typically lit bonfires and burned
their year's notebooks, most of them juiced on purloined
beer. A bonfire in an abandoned quarry, without even the
potential for privacy that the beach would afford, didn't
strike me as a particularly enjoyable way to spend time with
Barry, especially not if his classmates were all going to be
there.

"Aw, you know I don't like that crowd. The only reason they
even talk to me is because you live here. You go. Have fun."

"What crowd? It'll just be Jay and his cousin and us." I
could feel his dick broaden aganst my buttcheek. "Kevin's got
a cool van and Jay says he can even get us some reefer and
beer and everything."

"I dunno," I ventured, reaching between my legs, trapping
Barry's swelling pole between my thighs, his knob nudging my
sac. I didn't much cotton to the idea of a less populous
marshmallow roast with Jay and his unknown cousin either, but
I knew, when his tongue began those lazy licks along the
furrow behind my ear, that I'd be going to Watson's Pit with
Barry alright, or anywhere else he chose to go for that
matter.


We arrived at the quarry just before dusk began to fall.
Kevin's van turned out to be cool, just as Barry said. But
cool is relative. In truth, it was appalling. The back of it
consisted of little more than a tired mattress covered with a
grimey sleeping bag unzipped to make a blanket. Still, I
envied the concept, Kevin's mobility and his freedom.
Although Kevin was only nineteen, he'd dropped out of school
some years before and already driven to California and Mexico
a couple times, in fact, he'd only gotten back from his most
recent trip that week. He clearly loved to regale us with his
hair-raising stories of the open road.

We smoked several joints of the ropey-smelling pot Kevin had
brought with him. I'd never smoked anything stronger than a
menthol cigarette in my life, but even before we cracked our
first beer, I was feeling euphoric and incredibly turned on.
We piled out of the van in a billowing cloud, spreading out
in search of firewood. I recklessly grabbed Barry's ass in
full view of the other boys, suddenly wishing we'd gone there
by ourselves.

A fire was started in the existing circle of blackened
stones. Someone had abandoned the back seats from a couple of
old cars and we rescued them from among the trash that was
strewn about. We pulled them to opposite sides of the fire
pit to use as sofas. Barry and I shared one of them and Jay
and Kevin sat on the other.  The reefer and the beer made it
all quite congenial and light-hearted. Kevin brought out his
guitar and for far longer than I care to admit, we sang dopey
camp songs from our childhoods, laughing hysterically when
Kevin substituted "balls" in the lyric of "Do Your Ears Hang
Low?".

He put his guitar up and passed yet another reefer to Jay.
"You know, it was pretty hokey having to go to camp every
summer, mostly 'cause I was older and I had to look out for
Jay all the time," Kevin said to Barry and me. "

"You're just pissed 'cause I caught you jackin' off with your
bunkmates that time." said Jay, passing the joint to Barry.
"After that they had to let me play too, 'cause they were
scared I'd turn 'em in. I wouldn't have, but it coulda been
hairy if we'd gotten caught-- my folks and Kevin's are
friends with the guy who runs the camp."

Kevin put on a show of being a bit put out by the revelation,
but you could see he also felt a certain nostalgia when he
said, "Jeez, the stuff you get up to when there's no girls
around. You're never going to let me live that down, are
you?"

"Don't sweat it Kevie, we've all done it. And don't make out
like we only did it at camp a coupla times! You always
started it too, you horny bastard. I know a few guys who did
it lots," he stared directly at Barry. "right Bar'?" I saw a
secret look pass between them in the firelight. So, Jay was
one of those guys who'd preceded me in Barry's masturbatory
career. I felt no jealousy whatever. In fact, I felt a new
kinship with him, secure that, while Jay might have had
intimate knowledge of Barry's cock before me, I had Barry's
affection as well. "You were pretty good with the old
two-hander yourself, weren't ya Barry?", Jay poked Barry in
the ribs.

"I guess. That was all a long time ago," Barry said somewhat
sheepishly, shooting a nervous glance at Kevin.

"What's with the 'long time ago' shit? It was two fuckin'
years ago! You better watch yourself Jens, Barry's one of
those guys who likes to put his pecker in your hand while
you're asleep."

He certainly was, but I wasn't about to spill the beans. "I
wouldn't know," I lied, "We sleep in separate beds," I added
jovially, hoping that would dispell any lurid thoughts Jay
might be entertaining about us.

"Beds, schmeds. When he stayed over at our house, he had his
own fuckin' room for chrissakes! Didn't stop him from
sneaking into my bedroom and crawling in the sack with me.
Scared the shit out of me the first time. Don't get me wrong
Jens, I liked it! We jacked each other off plenty of times
after that, didn't we Bar'?"

"I guess," Barry said, poking around in the coals of the fire
with a stick. Again he looked at Kevin who'd been following
the conversation with ill-disguised interest. Each seemed to
be sizing the other up. I'd never seen Barry interact with
anybody quite that way before; it was as though they knew
each other, even though they'd never met.

Kevin cleared his throat and passed the joint to me, even
though it wasn't my turn. "I guess you're the only one here
without a confession to make, Jens. Dont' tell me you've
never whipped it out with a buddy before." He winked at me
and held my gaze while I puffed on the joint. He waited until
I passed it on to Barry. I was hoping Barry might have some
comment to make that would serve to change the subject, but
he didn't. "Well?" insisted Kevin. I coughed a bit, hoping it
might deflect him or at least delay the need to answer. But
even at the end of my hacking fit, his eyes were fixed on
mine.

Kevin was little older than Nils, but it seemed like he'd
taken on an 'adult' form somehow and it felt a little
intimidating.  "I used to... I mean, not a lot, but..." I
hated lying, didn't even know why I was doing it. Everyone
else had openly admitted to some mutual wanking. I guess it
had to do with the fact that I knew I'd be seeing Jay at
school the following year and I didn't want to give him any
fodder for schoolyard innuendo. He was known as a bit of an
evil joker and his good looks made him popular among the more
frivolous, gossipy girls at our school.

"Well," Jay said to me between tiny puffs, "it's tough luck
for you that you didn't start hanging out with Barry before
he stopped circle jerking-- the guy's got magic hands." How
well I knew! I was tempted to add, "and he gives motherfucker
head too!"

Barry was watching Kevin rub the crotch of his cutoffs.
Volumes more information passed between them as they
continued to lock eyes over the fire. "Who says I stopped?"
Barry asked boldly, suddenly bolt upright in the seat. "Who
here hasn't got a bone on right now? Hands up!" Nobody's hand
went up; in fact, my hands, which had been innocently
clasping my knees, drifted to my own tented basket. Nervous
cannabinoid laughter competed with the Bo Diddley hand-jive
beat coming from the van's radio.

"Wanna then?" asked Kevin, "What harm can it do? And we *are*
all boned already." A long cylindrical bulge
threatened to expose his dickhead at the frayed edge of his
shorts. He spread his legs wide, pinched the tip and looked
over at Barry and me. "Maybe Jay and me ought show you how
the big boys do it at camp." he bragged, patently ignorant of
what Barry's baggy jeans concealed.

"Suits me, Kev," said Jay, "but you ain't seen a 'big boy'
'til you've seen the monster schlong Barry pisses outa'!"

Kevin got up to get us all another beer. He blithely stepped
out of his cutoffs, kicking them into the open side door of
the van with a merry chuckle. I was shocked to see that he
wasn't wearing any underwear. That's the first time I'd ever
known a guy to do that. I was disappointed and turned on by
it all at once: disappointed because I kind of looked forward
to checking Kevin's laundry out, but turned on because the
idea of running around all day in just a pair of cutoffs and
nothing else suddenly struck me as the hottest thing I'd ever
heard.

"I don't mind getting a handjob from anybody, or even giving
one" Kevin boasted, "but I sure wish one of you guys was a
chick. I'd get ya' to suck on this thing for me." His slim,
upstanding cock was a circumcised replica of mine in
virtually every respect. The evening breeze had drawn his
hairless nuts close to his body and it ruffled through his
unusually sparse pubes. Making sure he gave us each a good
personal view of his turgid shaft as it bobbed in the
strobing light of the flames, Kevin passed out the beers.
When he came to me, he held the long-necked bottle some
seconds after I'd taken it, forcing me to meet his gaze. He
grinned down at me and remained standing next to my end of
our improvised sofa, his dick only inches from my face. "You
know, Jens here's kinda pretty, maybe..." he put his palm on
my shoulder from behind me. I gulped audibly and spun my head
the other way to search Barry's eyes.

He jumped right into the breech without moving an inch. "I
sure hope you're not going to try any fag shit, man," Barry
said in a forthright, don't-fuck-with-me tone, "I don't like
it when my buddy has to be nervous. If we're going to whip
off a coupla' loads like you said, then let's just fuckin' do
it."

"Relax Barry, I'm just fuckin' with your head," Kevin's hand
left my shoulder, but not before he squeezed it and mumbled
in my ear, quietly, so low even Barry couldn't hear, "Sorry
guy, Just read you wrong, is all. Won't happen again." He
caught Barry's eye and held it all the way to the van. He
came back smiling and solidly boinked, carrying a jar of
vaseline and a roll of paper towels.

Jay was already naked except for his socks and his jockeys.
He'd spread his jeans across his and Kevin's car seat and
pulled it closer to ours, so that they were facing each other
only a couple feet apart. Barry had dropped his jeans and was
fingering his meat through his flyfront briefs, the new red
ones with the bright white waistband and seams. He dug his
elbow in my ribs, "C'mon Slim," It was his reassuring,
it's-gonna-be-okay smile that got my pants off.

Kevin plunked himself down next to Jay, his knees almost
touching mine. He began applying petroleum jelly to his pole
and looked around at the three of us rooting around in our
underwear. "Shit! What's with the skivvies? I feel like I'm
in the middle of a friggin' Sears catalog or somethin'.
C'mon! Whip 'em out!" He gawked at Barry's crotch while he
felt Jay up through his drawers. "Let's see if it's as big as
Jay says, hotshot."

Barry's best dick hand had hooked my waistband behind my bag
and was busily skinning me, so I extracted his cock for him,
proud to be connected to it in some way, however vicariously.
I waved it towards Jay and Kevin a few times and began
unhooding it, more for Barry's benefit than theirs. A clear
drop of lube appeared at the aperture, glistening in the
firelight. Jay gasped when I smeared it around Barry's glans
for him. If he'd ever done that to Barry and experienced the
feeling of raw power one got from the shudder it always
evoked, I knew he was missing it.

"Fuck Bar'!" exclaimed Jay, his eyes glued to my skinning.
"What have you been doing to it? It's even bigger than I
remember!" Jay tugged excitedly at Kevin's dick and spoke
directly into his cousin's ear, "When we were ninth graders,
we all used to rattle Barry's chain about getting a fattie in
the showers. I guess he got just sick of hearing it and so
one day he just starts jackin' it-- right there in the
lockerroom in front of all the guys in our gym class! Once we
all saw what his schvanz looked like when it really WAS hard,
well, everybody just kinda backed off him about it after
that."

I could feel Barry's shoulder jiggle mine as he chuckled at
the recollection. "I had to go pound off a wad in the shitter
right after." He turned to me, "You shoulda seen the looks on
their faces, Slim!" he said. I was having a very hard time
stifling the urge to kiss him right then. His hand was around
my dick, pulling on it gently. My hand was around his. Our
lips were mere inches apart. I licked my lips and tried to
kiss Barry telepathically, holding his gaze with a serious,
squinting expression for as long as I dared. He acknowledged
my frustration by jacking me a little faster. I looked over
to see Kevin watching the tacit interplay between Barry and I
with great interest. Jay's hand grasping mine on Barry's dick
redirected my attention. "Can I?" he asked me.

"Hey! What're you askin' him for?" Barry wanted to know,
taking mock offense. "It's MY fuckin' dick!"

Jay never missed a beat. "It may be your dick, Bar', but Jens
here sure looks like he's used to treating it like it's his
own." He grinned a lascivious grin at Kevin who was scooting
forward to grab my dick and balls. We all moved within easy
reach of one another, our knees and knuckles bumping as hands
traded cocks. Jiggling forearms crossed and collided, like we
were playing some bizarre meat-beater's version of the game,
Twister.

Barry and Kevin got to handle each other a bit, as did Jay
and I, but we naturally paired off. Barry and Jay were
obviously intent on reliving old times and Kevin seemed very
interested in me. I had a nice time fondling him too, but
something about him just gave me the creeps, something in the
way he looked at me. When Barry regarded me with his horny
look, there was always something softer behind it, something
private and noble. The lack of it in Kevin's leer was the
part that made me feel uneasy. I didn't know it at the time,
but it was the look of lust, the look of pure lust,
unsanctified by any depth of feeling.

Physically, though, I responded enthusiastically to Kevin's
expert palm slides up and down my shaft. Presently I felt
Barry's thigh tighten against mine and looked over to watch
him spew. He coated Jay's flying hand and scooped up a wad of
it to bring Jay off, speedily reducing him to a panting,
whimpering pup who had to lean against Kevin for support
until he got his wind back.  Kevin's grunts got louder and
closer together. He humped my fist as I bled his creamy load
onto his thigh.

One would think with all the spunking going on around me,
someone as visually oriented as I would have been inspired to
follow suit fairly quickly. But for some reason I just kept
hovering at the precipice while Kevin continued fervently
flogging my dick. I'd get so close my breath would halt in
mid-gasp and then the urge would recede again.  Normally, if
Barry and I were alone, this kind of delay would be welcome
enough, but it was getting a bit embarrassing.  Barry and Jay
were playing with their own cocks and watching Kevin wanking
me, having already finished toweling themselves off.

Kevin took up a position between my spread knees, obviously
to get better leverage, but he when he bent over my cock,
only an inch or so from the knob I thought for an instant he
meant to blow me. He spit a big gob on my dickhead and worked
it in. Kevin's free hand was tucked up under my bag and was
rubbing my perineum with two very insistent fingertips. Every
time I raised my butt for an upward thrust into his fist, a
finger would poke at my asshole. Barry eventually picked up
on what Kevin was doing and he clamped one of his big mitts
around Kevin's wrist, staying him with a mildly threatening
look. He pulled Kevin's other hand off my cock and replaced
it with his own. I met Barry's, smiling, beatific eyes and
within a half-dozen strokes of his familiar, practiced hand,
I shot and shot and shot. The first jet sailed towards the
fire, landing on a hot rock, where it sizzled and popped. The
next shot splattered Kevin's chest and the rest splattered
me.

"Fuck! Do you always shoot off that far?" Kevin asked as
Barry milked the last of my load. The first of it, on the
firepit rock, had sputtered away to a dry ashen stain the
size of a dime.

"Sometimes, " I gasped, still wracked by tremors. "Not
usually that far though. It depends." I said, suddenly
realizing Kevin's question had been largely rhetorical.
Still, I felt less embarrassed about my failure to spunk on
cue like the others.

"Wow, I bet when you fuck a girl, she can taste it in the
back of her throat when you spooge," Kevin joked. I think he
knew perfectly well I hadn't fucked any girls. He kept
checking to see if Barry or Jay were looking. He took
advantage of the first moment they weren't-- unseen by
them, but plainly visible to me, he coated one finger with my
cum off his chest. Staring directly at me, grinning wickedly,
he licked it clean. His eyes rarely left me for the rest of
the evening, even after we got dressed again and drank more
beers. Whenever I happened to look his way, he'd smile at me
again and sort of feel himself up for my benefit. He always
had a private laugh if he made me look.

Jay and Kevin dropped us off at my house just minutes before
curfew. Amid the parting insults and see-ya-laters, Kevin
drew my head inside the driver's side window and said,
quietly, so the others couldn't hear, "My folks' number's in
the book. Call me if you ever need a ride someplace... or
whatever."


The days and nights flew by. It was difficult to be in denial
about Barry's imminent departure; increasingly, every little
activity stunk of it. The boxes of stuff that had cluttered
my room for the past couple months had been transferred to a
staging area in the garage, along with the twins' stuff where
it awaited sealing for transport. Unavoidably, each
conversation was peppered with references to his leaving,
causing a new sinking feeling in my gut every few minutes. I
decided to stick as close to what would be my routine after
Barry left as possible. Barry seemed content to do anything
at all, even farm chores, as long as we were doing it
together.

We'd just finished preparing a stall for the steer my pop was
going to fatten for the freezer. "I want some of this," Barry
said, using his husky voice, gripping my dick through my
overalls.  He backed me up against the stall's side partition
and his hands yanked at my suspenders. They slipped past my
shoulders and dropped around my ankles, leaving me naked from
there up except for my jockeys. I wasn't boned yet, but the
happy tingling had started.

We didn't often mess around in the barn any more, not now
that Barry was sharing my room. We had the nights to
ourselves and we used them well, but as our time together
dwindled to fewer and fewer days, Barry seemed more inspired
to jump on me whenever or wherever the urge struck him.

Barry's fingers tugged at the waistband of my briefs and he
dropped to his knees in the freshly-scattered straw. His
mouth clamped onto the cloth-covered bulge that was my soft,
spongy dickhead. Warm spit soaked through the cotton and I
could feel the swirling of his tongue all around my expanding
glans; even more so when he reached inside a leghole and
retracted my foreskin. I heard the zip of his fly opening and
the rustle of fabric as he doffed his jeans, but I kept my
eyes closed and concentrated on his lapping and the humid
heat of his breath as it seeped through the fabric of my
underwear, which was actually his underwear.

Barry had me turn around to face one of the side walls, my
palms pressed flat against it. He pulled my jockeys down past
my butt and began licking the length of my crack with a lot
of slurping and humming. For my part, I clamped my eyes shut
in concentration and used my biceps to stifle my pleasure
noises.

There are always odd sounds in a barn. The boards of its
cladding pop and bang as they expand and contract with the coming
and going of the sun.  Pumps and fans go on and off
automatically. Animals kick at their stabling. That's the
reason we didn't see Nils until he was practically in the
stall with us.

"Oh, my GOD! STOP THAT!" he shouted , clearly horrorstruck by
what he saw.

Barry pulled his tongue out of my asshole and sprang to his
feet, hastily stuffing his meat back into his briefs. I
crouched to gather my fallen coveralls and pulled them up to
conceal my bobbing knob.

"Is there NOTHING you two won't do? That's absolutely
SICKENING!"

"I'm warning you Nils, fuck off right now." Barry growled,
his eyes fixed on Nils', as they'd been that time at dinner.

"No, I won't!" Nils shouted, "You've gone too far this time!
What if my mother had come in, instead of me? You'd have
given her a heart attack!"

"But it wasn't your mom, it was you. Just turn around and
leave! Do it now!" Barry's face was flush with an anger I
didn't imagine him capable of. He gave Nils a few moments to
think it over, but he grew visibly more impatient as the
seconds stretched out. He wiped his spit-spackled nose. "Just
GO!" he shouted finally. I was struck utterly dumb.

"The HELL I will!" Nils swore. He made a lunge for Barry as
if he meant to punch him in the mouth, but he started his
swing from too far back to have the element of surprise going
for him. Barry deked it handily and Nil's fist deflected off
Barry's shoulder. That gave Barry a text-book opening and he
landed a low jab to Nils' mid-section, just below his belt
buckle. Nils bent over with an 'oof' and staggered backwards
a few steps. He looked momentarily shocked, as if he'd really
believed that a single, feeble punch in Barry's general
direction would be a sufficient to bring him down. He
gathered himself and launched another charge at Barry,
growling as he went. By some miracle, Nils' punch actually
connected with Barry's jaw and it sacked him. Barry's head
flew back and the rest of him followed, his shirtails flying.
He bumped his head against the stall's back wall so violently
when he landed that it shook dust from the beam over our
heads, sending it shimmering in the parallel shafts of
sunlight streaming in through the spaces between the barn
boards above us. Barry rattled his head and regarded Nils
with an expression of bemused curiosity. One ball had escaped
a slack leg hole of his briefs and pieces of straw clung to
the hairs of his legs. I bent to help him up, but he gently
pushed my arm aside without looking at me. Slowly and
deliberately, he hauled himself to his feet and once again
faced Nils, who was hunched forward in anticipation, hopping
from foot to foot and taking loud, panting breaths through
his nose.

Barry stepped within striking distance and they circled each
other for a few moments like sumo wrestlers. "We don't have
to do this, Nils." Barry kept saying. Finally, he just
straightened himself up, as though he suddenly felt silly
doing this pugalistic pas de deux with my brother. "For the
last time Nils-- just fuck off!"

Nils growled again, obviously encouraged by the fact that
he'd been able to knock Barry on his ass and lured by Barry's
less-than-defensive stance. Turns out that punch he'd landed
to Barry's jaw had been a fluke. He attempted another one to
Barry's face which Barry fended off with a ready forearm.
Once again, Nils had left himself open for a gut punch. What
he was expecting even less was the clean uppercut to his jaw
that followed it. Nils flew backwards and there was a
sickening clunk as thick, fundamentalist skull met pine
timber. This time Nils was the one on his ass, rubbing the
back of his head with a confused look. It seemed like he
might get up again for a second or two, but he looked up at a
seething Barry towering over him and visibly thought the
better of it. I remained nailed to the ground at Barry's
side, slack-jawed and awestruck.

"Why couldn't you just leave well-enough alone, Nils?" Barry
demanded. "I'll be gone in a week. You could have just let it
go... "

"Fuck you!" Nils spat up at him. In our whole lives, I'd
never heard Nils use that expression. It sounded as alien
coming from him as it sounds when you hear three year-old
saying it.

"Fuck you?" Barry asked, as incredulous at Nils' use of it as
I was. "Them's fightin' words, Bunky. Get up, asshole. Looks
like I haven't knocked enough sense into you yet! Come ON!"

He waited a few seconds for Nils to make a move. But he
didn't. He just lay in the straw, glaring up at Barry in
impotent rage. "Fuck you," he repeated, softly, without much
conviction.

"That's it, Nils. You just blew it right there." he said
flatly and turned to me. "Slim, I wasn't going to tell you
any of this, not until just now, but big brother here hasn't
left me any choice. He's been a very nasty boy, Slim. Oh
yeah! Just as bad as us, maybe. Haven't you Nils? Oh no,
don't get up now; you had your chance to split. Now, I'll
just have to knock your pathetic ass back down again. So just
sit there and take it like a man-- and be glad that scrag of
a girlfriend of yours isn't here to hear any of this.
Remember, you brought it on yourself." Barry straddled Nils'
booted ankles, pinning him with another threatening look.

Nils propped himself against a straw bale, still panting and
rubbing his jaw. He daubed the thin trickle of blood off his
chin with his shirtsleeve. He'd obviously bitten his tongue.
The helpless cast Nils' face took on when our eyes met ought
to have elicited some pity for him, but it didn't. I'd spent
too many months hating him.  And I was far too curious as to
what he could be so guilty of that would make him kowtow to
Barry this way. I wasn't about to let simple fraternal
compassion complicate my enjoyment of its revelation.

"This isn't the first time Nils has seen us mess around
together, Slim. Not at all. When I first came to stay here,
old Nils used to watch us by opening the bathroom door just a
crack when we were, uh, busy, like. I only noticed it once,
but for all I know he might have been doing it for days. He
might have ALWAYS been peekin' in on us like that. To keep
the peace I didn't call him on it, but that's why I got so
weird about keepin' that door locked all the time" Barry
cleared his nose and spit.

"But, when did.." I ventured.

"But that's not even the worst of it, Slim. Remember that
Saturday you and your old man went to that trade show in
Niagara Falls? Well, I gets up from sleepin' late and I go
into the bathroom to hang a rat, you know. I notice that
Nils' door's open a little and there's all these squeaky
mattress sounds goin on, so I decide to sneak a peek of my
own. Nilsie probably thought he was the only one home."

Nils shuffled his feet in the straw and Barry picked up on
it. "What's that, Nils? You want to tell him the rest?" Nils
cringed some more and drew his knees closer to his chin.
"No?" Barry went on, "Naw, didn't think so. Well, anyways,
Slim, here's Nils with his legs thrown over his head and he's
jackin' off to just beat all hell. Really rockin' the old
headboard weren't ya Nils? Now there's nothin' too weird
about pumpin' a load into your mouth that way-- everybody
with a dick and a mouth's tried it. But Nils here's got a
whole extra kick to that game. I look a bit closer and see
that he's playin' with his asshole too. Nothin' too weird
about that either, unless you go around making trouble for
people about the shit THEY DO..." he tapped the bottom of
Nils' boot with his toe, as if he didn't already have his
attention. I could tell Barry was feeling a fresh wave of
rage pass through him and that he desperately wanted to hit
Nils again. He tapped Nils' foot again, a little harder this
time, as if urging him to get up. I grasped Barry's elbow.

"Well, to make a long story short, Slim, there's Nils
stuffing his butt with one of those metal tubes like my dad's
cigars come in-- just a-stuffin 'away. Man, no wonder there's
never any fuckin' Vaseline around here." He turned to Nils
again. "So what were you thinkin' about while you were pokin'
yourself Nils? Sure sounded like you were havin' a good
time-- all that gruntin' and moanin'. Were you thinkin' about
some big ol' boy scout bonin' ya? Or was it some Jesus
preacher maybe?" Barry stepped a little closer to Nils'
grimacing face and hefted the pouch of his briefs at him,
accentuating his flaccid cock between the tails of his open
shirt. "Maybe you were thinkin' about me! Would ya' like a
bit of this one right here?"

Nils' face was even redder than it had been just after the
shock of Barry's first punch registered. He stared at the
ground, tears steaming down his cheeks. "No," he croaked.

Still I felt no pity for him. In fact, I wished Barry still
had his dad's Poloroid camera when he'd caught Nils, wished
that he'd gotten a picture of him in that most compromising
position. That would have made my adolescent revenge
complete. But even without concrete evidence, I knew that
Nils and I now stood as equals again-- he had something on me
and I had something on him. The two things cancelled
themselves out.

"You SURE you don't want me to fuck you?" Barry asked, still
badgering Nils, still gripping his cloth-covered softie a
foot from Nils' face, still making Nils squirm, just as Nils
had made us squirm, all those many times. "Maybe you'd just
like to lick it a little..." he shuffled astride Nils feet.

"NO!" said Nils, pushing at the fronts of Barry's thighs, a
sudden flash of anger rising out of his humiliation.

"Well now, that's funny, because I seem to remember you
offering to blow me if I promised not to tell Jens about your
nasty little hobby. Remember that part? Or were you so
shit-scared that you just said it without meanin' it? Fuck, I
was staring to think you're really just like us under all
that mama's-boy diguise. Maybe you'd like to blow me right
now. You know, join in the fun, like." His tone changed
abruptly to one of baiting anger again. "Or maybe you just
want to try to take another round out of me," He kicked the
sole of Nils' boot again, trying to goad him.

My grip on Barry's arm tightened. I didn't feel any
overwhelming compassion for Nils, but I didn't like where
this was going. I honestly didn't want to see Nils get beaten
up. Not for his sake, but for Barry's and mine. If he left
marks on Nils there would be explanations to make. "Let him
go," I said.

"See that? Now that's a brother for you, Nils. Next time you
get a yen to make life a little tough for Jens, remember how
he stuck up for you just now, asshole. Now, get on your feet
and get the fuck out of here." He pulled me out of the
doorway to give Nils an exit. It suddenly occured to me that
my standing where I did probably prevented Nils from
bolting long before.

Nils gathered himself up and slunk out, brushing straw off
his ass and flattening the front of his Howie Highschool
brushcut back in place. He avoided eye contact with me, but
scowled openly at Barry, who had slipped a chummy arm around
my shoulder solely for Nils' benefit. Still, Nils didn't
say a word, as if absolutely all the jam had been kicked out
of him and he had nothing left, even for a parthian shot.

Barry gave me no time to absorb what had just happened. I
could still hear Nils' departing footsteps as Barry pinned me
to the wall with a wild, passionate kiss, one of unremitting
tongue-thrusting, one tinged with the taste of his blood. He
pawed at my overalls again. Still transfused with adrenalin,
he broke the kiss and flung me backwards into the loose
straw.

He crept between my splayed knees, roughly yanking my dick
out of my jockeys. I wasn't nearly erect yet. Barry clamped
his lips just behind my glans and blindly tugged my spongy
cock up and down until blood finally began to fill it. As it
stiffened, he began long, sloppy glides on it, accompanied by
a lot of snorking, gagging sounds. It was as if he were
venting the last of his anger on himself, as if the act of
impaling himself on me like that, without regard to his
comfort, would somehow dissipate the rage he still felt.
Barry felt me twitch in his gullet and he buried his nose
further into my pubic patch.  He moaned and shook his head
from side to side while I spunked into his convulsing throat.

Once I got my wits back, I made moves to do him back. It
might have been with far less vehemence than the blowjob he'd
just given me, but I owed him a big thank-you for getting
Nils off our backs once and for all. "Naw, Slim," he said
when I started feeling him up, "Save it for later. I'm going
to take your bike out for a while."

"I'll go with you. I'll take Nils' bike." I told him.

"Well, I'd kind of like to be by myself Jens. You know, just
work it off, like."

"Sure, okay..." I told him. By the time I'd gathered the eggs and
was making my way back to the house, Barry was leaning into
the pedals near the end of the laneway. He stayed away for
most of the rest of that day.


Later, in the darkness of my room, after we'd split up to go
to sleep, we talked a little about what had happened in the
barn. The image of Barry walking in on a very chagrinned Nils
kept passing before my closed eyes, in all its possible
variations. I wanted to know everything.

"Did he really offer to suck you off?" I was obsessed with
this part.

"Yeah, listen Slim..."

"And did he?"

"Of course not. I wouldn't have made him. I..."

"Does he have a big cock?"

"No bigger than yours. Look Jens, I'm tired, and I'm not real
proud about what happened today. Can we just go to sleep?"

"Okay," I told him. I reached over and stroked his hair, the
only part of him I could reach because of the way the beds
were spaced. He clasped my hand next to his ear and we fell
asleep.


The days that followed were filled with activity as the final
boxes of the Llewelyn kids' stuff got packed and shipped out
west. Barry and the twins, reduced to living out of a
suitcase each, often had their heads together, making plans
and speculating on their new lives. I felt pretty out of it
most of the time, but not in bed at night-- then, I had Barry
all to myself and we made every climax count. School was out,
so we were able to prolong the time we shared my bed without
having to worry about having to get up early the next
morning.

Finally, the eve of Barry and the twins' departure was upon
us.  Pop took us all to a nice steak house and Barry and I
were able to toast each other with real French wine above the
table and play ankle hockey beneath it. Nils had dragged his
girlfriend, Shiela, along. With her safely at his side to
assert his manhood, he managed to pull himself out of the
funk he'd been in since that morning in the barn-- at least
enough to be affectedly sociable. Otherwise, he'd taken to
avoiding us again and I was glad of it. All in all, it was a
fun evening, but even so, every few minutes I'd feel the cold
chill of realization pass along my spine. I'd look at Barry,
laughing and joking and kibbitzing with the waiter and I'd
have to fight back the tears. It was difficult, but I managed
appear as carefree as Barry did. I didn't completely loose it
until we got back home.

"Don't go." I told Barry as we shuffled through the last of
his stuff.

"What?"

"Just don't go. You're over sixteen! You could stay here with
us and finish highschool here and... "

"Slim, you're asking me to desert my family. I can't do that.
I wouldn't expect you to, if it was the other way around.
Besides, you'll soon find somebody else who you'll like as
well as me."

"No I won't! It won't ever be the same as this!" I told him,
believing every syllable. "I LOVE you!" I blurted out,
instantly sorry I'd said it.

Barry caught my eye and held it for a long, thoughtful
moment.

"That'll happen again," he said finally. Looking past me, out
the open window he added, "for both of us."

He moved in and enfolded me, aware, and not caring, that the
door to my room was open and that anyone could walk by. We
just stood there holding each other for a short eternity.
This time there was none of the pawing and crotch grinding
that position would ordinarily provoke in us. We didn't even
kiss. Eventually, I thought I detected a tremble pass through
Barry and I backed off him a bit. He was blubbering as badly
as I was.

"Damn you, Jens," Barry said, biting his lower lip and
forcing a chuckle. "I haven't done this since my grampa
died." He dragged the corner of his t-shirt sleeve across his
eyes and sniffed hard. He smiled a red-faced smile at me and
tittered self-consciously. I could see he was trying to claw
himself out of whatever well of emotion he'd fallen into. I
got out of his way. Pulling out a few for myself, I passed
him the box of kleenex, as I had so many other times, though
never for tears.

That was the moment I began to make the break. Suddenly, I
realized that if I was going to get through this at all I'd
really have to start facing a world without him. "C'mon let's
get the rest of your stuff packed." I told him, willing
myself to my feet, refusing to listen to the panicked voices
screaming in my head.

That night, when the house fell quiet and we'd spermed our
last, Barry scooped my sticky form into his arms and settled
himself in, his head on my chest, his forearm across the
waistband of my jockeys. He didn't use the roll-away bed that
night.


The chaos of departure day is a blur in my mind. I like to
think we had some final, purgative climax together that
morning, but all I remember is the stilted farewells at the
airport.

After hugging the living stuffing out of my astonished
parents, Barry took Nils' hand and leaned in close enough
that only the three of us could hear. "Just don't be givin'
Jens a rough time after I'm gone, big brother. I got one or
two friends back here that would break your arm just for the
fun of it, if I asked them to. And you can believe that,
because you know who I'm talking about." Nils jerked his hand
back when Barry let it go and rubbed it, wincing.

"Well, Slim, I guess this is it. I'll try to write, I
promise. And we can talk on the phone sometimes. Maybe you
can come out for a vist."

"Sure," I said, choking. I was hypersalivating like a St.
Bernard, but utterly unable to swallow. The throbbing at my
temples increased, my peripheral vision narrowed and I felt
my knees threaten to buckle. I had to grip one of the chrome
stanchions to remain standing.

Barry picked up his carry-on bag and pulled his ticket out of
his inside pocket. One last, almost prefunctory,
suitable-for-the-public hug. One more croaked, self-conscious
'bye' and he turned and walked down the long carpeted
corridor to join the twins as they made their way to the
boarding area. About half way there he looked back over his
shoulder. The last time I saw him he was winking and bumping
his chino-clad butt at me.


I locked myself into the music room as soon as we got back to
the house. Usually, the family played the upright piano when
we played; the concert grand was kind of my pop's private
altar. But that day I went right to it and fell into long,
meditative repetitions of a familiar, perhaps universal, 12
bar figure. Eventually the need to ornament it took over. I
let that part of my mind and my fingers have at it, while the
rest of me hung there suspended, more a spectator than a
participant.  When I finally stopped playing, I was shocked
to discover that it had grown pitch dark; the only light in
the room coming in from under the door to the foyer.

I gathered myself up and met my pop on his way upstairs. He
completely ignored the fact that I'd been on the Boesie.
"That was really, really good, Jens. Very genuine-- even if
it was ALL in one key."

I had to chuckle at his naivete, in spite of my profound
sadness. He thought I'd been woodshedding. In fact, I'd been
living the blues; teaching myself how to defeat them on my
terms.


I lay on my bed and stared at my dresser. Taped to bottom of
the third drawer-- my underwear drawer, appropriately
enough-- there was an envelope containing the three naughty
pictures of Barry we'd taken the previous New Years' Eve. It
was enough, for now, to know that they were there. I knew it
instinctively-- it would be several weeks before I could
bring myself to look at them.

END

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