Kyle, Part 3
Chapter 12
Disclaimer: This story is a continuation of the story of Kevin Foley, Rick Mashburn, and their "sons," Tim Murphy, Kyle Goodson, Justin Davis, and Brian Mathews that started in "Tim," continued in "Justin" and "Kyle," "Kyle, Part 2," and now continues in "Kyle, Part 3." It is about gay men and gay boys living and loving together as a family, and it contains descriptions of sex. The sex is never intergenerational, though. If you are offended by descriptions of gay sex, or if the law in your area forbids you to read them, please exit the story. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it. I appreciate feedback, and you can send it to me at brew_drinker23@yahoo.com.
--Brew Maxwell
(Kyle's Perspective)
I almost got me a chance to kick some major ass, but it was a gay guy, not a homophobic guy. Those guys were the ones I really wanted. That guy who messed with Justin, though, needed his ass kicked, too, even if he was gay. Nobody treats my brother like meat. Nobody.
Those parades that first afternoon were so much fun. I thought you just watched the parade. I didn't know they threw all that stuff. Or if I knew, I had forgotten. I got excited when I realized what was going on, and I screamed my lungs out over those beads. I got Tim up on my shoulders at one point, and we went up to the floats to beg for beads. I didn't know what the hell I was going to do with them, besides hang a few from the rear-view mirror of my car. But we got hundreds of strings of beads, and that was only the first day.
That Endymion parade that night was the best. They had these gigantic double-decker floats with a whole bunch of people throwing beads and trinkets and doubloons and plastic cups. I had been a lot of places and done a lot of things in my life, but that was one of the best, as far as just having pure fun was concerned. I wondered for a second if Tim was having a good time. Then I looked over at him and saw that he was having a great time. Everybody was.
The Endymion parade was over pretty early, about 8:30. Kevin suggested we go back to the French Quarter. First, we went and got us muffaletto sandwiches at that grocery store. Those sandwiches were soooooo good. I had ordered one by that name at a sandwich shop in Emerald Beach, and it wasn't even a third as good as those we got that night. My motto is, If a place invents a sandwich, only get it there. Don't fuck around with knock-offs. Get the original.
We ended up back in the eighth block of Bourbon Street that night. The parents had gone home, so it was just the nine younger generation. We ranged in age from 15 to, like, 28. That was only thirteen years, and I had heard of a lot of families who had a string of kids, with the last ones being that far apart from the first ones. Craig was the oldest, and Brian was the youngest.
"Those parades were awesome," I said.
We had taken pillowcases to put our stuff in that we caught, and we ended up with two full pillowcases of beads and trinkets. We had put all our stuff together.
"Do you want to keep that shit, or do you want to see if we can get back on that balcony from this morning so we can throw it," Craig asked.
"Do you think they want us," Kevin asked.
"They said come back. I think we made a pretty big hit, especially with Kyle's defense of Justin. We can check it out. If they don't want us up there, we can just party in the street," Craig said.
There was a different crowd on that balcony that night, but the head guy recognized us and invited us up. I was taking pictures right and left, and I was getting some good ones of the street and of those boys showing their dicks. Most of those guys looked like they were in college at least, so I was pretty sure Kevin would give them his okay. There wasn't any sex involved; it was just good, clean fun. I didn't really care, though. I was having fun taking the pictures, even if we couldn't use them on our Web site. I caught quite a few tits, too. My only worry was that they wouldn't come out good because it was night time and the only light came from street lights and lights on the buildings.
Then we started throwing the stuff we had caught that afternoon and night. Some boy would come up and whip it out. Sometimes he was alone, but often he was with his girlfriend or a gang of friends. A few were with guys who looked like boyfriends, and a few of them helped the guy take it out. We didn't care if they were gay, straight, or in between. We were having a great time, and the people in the street were, too. We had the benefit of a ton of food if we wanted it, all the booze we could drink, and a place to pee.
"You having fun, Stud," Justin asked me.
"Yeah, I'm having a great time. How about you?"
"I am, too. Listen, I'm sorry I was such an asshole at breakfast this morning," he said.
"You mean for doing this?" I grabbed his nuts hard but no harder than he had grabbed mine.
"Ow! That hurts," he said.
"I know it does. It hurt me, too. But I'm going to forgive you this time," I said. We were both smiling and playing around.
"Kyle . . ."
"What," I asked.
"I love you, dude," he said. He was dead serious, and I almost cried.
"I love you, too. We're brothers forever, right?"
"Absolutely. And thanks for kicking that guy's ass for me today."
"I'll do that any time I need to, for you or for any of us," I said. "You were scared, weren't you?"
"I was so scared, I was shaking like a leaf," he said.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"I would have, but Rick and Kevin were right there. I knew they'd help, or get you to help," he said.
"Well, let's hope no more of these assholes recognize you and think they own you," I said.
We threw some more beads, and then we decided to walk the street. We still had a ton of beads and stuff in our pillowcases, and Justin and Tim were carrying them. I had my backpack with disks and other stuff in it and my camera around my neck. I had been reading up some on photography, and I had decided I wanted to get me a good regular camera, not digital. I was willing to save up for that.
We decided to go home around eleven o'clock. Sunday was going to be a pretty big day, and we were all tired, anyway.
(Tim's Perspective)
We had an unbelievably good day on Saturday. Kyle had to whip some guy's ass for picking on Justin. I didn't see it happen because I was outside on the balcony, but they told me about it. I was so proud of him I could bust.
We caught a ton of stuff from the floats. Kyle put me on his shoulders, and I talked to the people on the floats. One of the floats was all ladies, and I made out like a bandit from them. One lady gave me a whole bag of beads that hadn't even been opened. I knew they thought I was cute, and I made sure to be really polite to them.
Kyle was really pumped up after all of that. It was our turn to sleep on the air mattress on the floor, and I was hoping the rest of them would go to sleep quickly so we could make love. I know Justin and Brian fooled around some with Jeff, just like we had done the night before, because I could hear 'em. It didn't last long, though, and they went to sleep.
I had been rubbing Kyle's chest, feeling the hair on it. He was the only one of us who had any hair on his chest, and I loved how soft it felt. He had always had some ever since I knew him, but until recently it was very light and super fine. I don't know if the rest of them knew that or not because you really couldn't see it before unless you got up as close to it as I had while I was kissing his chest.
When it had been quiet for a few minutes, Kyle started kissing me. He liked to play with my tongue with his, and sometimes just kissing was as good as anything else we did. He kissed his way down my chest and stomach, and took my dick into his mouth. It felt so good to be in his warm, wet mouth. He didn't finish me off that way, though. He got down between my legs and tongued my hole a while. Then he got inside me. Everything always felt good when he made love to me, but sometimes it was better than other times. That particular night he was super charged from the day, and he let me have all of his energy and excitement. Kyle had much better control than I did, and that night he drew it out a long time. We were on our sides. He started sucking the one nipple of mine he could get to, and that was all it took. I blasted so hard that some of it hit him on his cheek. I knew he could have gone on for a longer time, but he came right after I did. He didn't pull out.
"I love you so much," he said. "I want all of you forever."
I told him I loved him, but he didn't say anything. I lowered my leg that was raised to give him full access. I felt him breathing deep and steady, and I knew he was asleep.
*****
We rolled out early the next morning. I could have used a little more sleep, but Kyle woke me up to take a shower with him around seven. I could tell he was really excited about the day, but he was also excited over me. We stood in the bathroom kissing. We were naked, and we rubbed our dicks back and forth against each other until we both came. That was pretty intense, and it was a great way to start the day.
As busy as Saturday had been, Sunday was even busier. We ate a big breakfast, as we usually did, and then we packed up all the stuff we were taking. We had some lawn chairs for people to sit on. We had taken those on Saturday, too, but there wasn't much room on the sidewalk for more than a few of those. Mostly Grandma and Miss Rita sat down, but that was really just before the parade started. They said there were three parades on Saturday, but they were back to back so there wasn't any time between them. There were going to be four on Sunday where we were going to be.
We got downtown about ten o'clock, and the first thing we did, after we parked the cars, was to set up our spot on the sidewalk. The sidewalk was about twenty or thirty feet wide, and it went right from the street to the buildings. There wasn't any grass anywhere around there. It was bright sunshine, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the shirts came off.
The boys all went for a walk after we were set up. There was a giant statue of Robert E. Lee on a high column that was on a big mound a few blocks down from where we were. We walked down there.
"Look at that dude," Justin said. There was a really big guy in a black tank top with tiny straps. He was really good looking, and he must have been a body builder or something. "How'd you like to get after some of that, Jeff? Maybe he needs a date."
Jeff laughed, but he didn't say anything. Kyle had his camera, of course, and he took the guy's picture. The guy didn't see him do it, though. He also took pictures of the monument and of us around the base of it. Justin teased Kyle by calling him Flash, but I noticed Jus was right there grinning whenever Kyle was taking pictures of us.
When we got back to our spot, some more people from Cherie's office were there. A few had come out the day before, but she had said we could expect a lot more that day.
"It's gotten to the point that Sunday is almost as big a day as Mardi Gras," Cherie said. "And I can't get over how nice this weather is. Do you remember last year, Hon?"
"Yeah. It was freezing-ass cold and damp," Craig said.
Some of the new people were two kids, a girl and a boy, who looked like they were about our ages. The girl was Amy and the boy was Seth.
"Hey, dude. My name is Kyle Goodson." He stuck out his hand to shake hands with the guy.
"Seth Adams," the boy said. They shook hands, but he seemed like he was shy or something.
"How old are you, man," Kyle asked.
"Seventeen."
"Cool. So am I, and so is this guy. This is Justin Davis and Tim Murphy and Brian Mathews and Jeff Martin. Tim and Brian are both fifteen, Justin and I are both seventeen, and Jeff is twenty," Kyle said.
He shook hands with everybody, but he didn't say anything.
"Are you a senior," Kyle asked him.
"No, I'm a junior. I just had my birthday," he said. "That looks like a nice camera."
"Thanks. Here, let me take your picture with your sister," Kyle said. He had introduced himself and us to the sister, too. She was younger than Seth, probably thirteen. She still had her braces on her teeth, and she didn't have very big boobs.
"I'll put it on our Web site, if you don't mind," Kyle said.
"Cool. You have your own Web site?"
"It's for our family. Jeff built it, and he and I maintain it," he said. "I'd show it to you if we had a computer."
"There are plenty of them in my dad's office. It's right in this building," Seth said.
"How long before the parade gets here, Kev," Kyle asked.
"About an hour or so, maybe a little more," he said.
"Kevin, did you meet Seth? Seth, this is Kevin Foley."
They shook hands.
"Seth and I are going into the building. Come on, Tim," he said, and I went with them.
Kyle opened the Web site and let Seth look at the pictures. They had decided to make it seasonal, so there were only pictures that had been taken in December, January, and February. I was sort of glad there weren't any of me naked up on the site at the moment. I'm not shy or embarrassed to be naked around our guys, but I didn't know that Seth kid.
"What's this memorial page about," Seth asked.
"It's about my brother. He died," Kyle said.
"Car wreck," Seth asked.
"No. He got sick from a drug he got in the hospital," Kyle said. "He was only twenty when he died. It was last October."
"I'm sorry."
"Thanks."
"Can I look at the videos?"
"Sure. They work," Kyle said.
He laughed at the one of Kyle peeing on himself and at the one of Kyle kicking Clay in the nuts. He watched the one of them skiing and kept cutting his eyes back at Kyle's face.
"Who is that," Seth asked.
"It's me and my brother," Kyle said.
"Where were you," he asked.
"In the lagoon behind my house," Kyle said. "And, yes, those are houses on the other side. I guess we gave everybody a free show that day."
"Did you guys . . ." He just stopped talking.
"Did we what," Kyle asked.
"Did you, er, see each other naked all the time?"
"Just about every day. There was a bathroom between our bedrooms that we both used, so, yeah, we saw each other a lot. He was my brother. Do you have a brother?"
"No. I wish I did, though. All I have in Amy, and she really gets on my nerves sometimes," Seth said.
"When you see the next video, you'll see that he got on my nerves sometimes," Kyle said.
We watched the last video, but Seth didn't comment about it.
"This is a really nice Web site," he said. "Thanks for showing it to me. One thing I wondered about, though. On the first page, it said something about nudity and that the pages with nude pictures would be marked. Did I miss something, or was that warning just for the video of you and your brother skiing?"
"No, they're not there. We have some pictures from pool parties, and most of the time we swim nude at those parties. We'll put those up, or new ones, at least, when we start swimming again," Kyle said.
"Any nude girls," he asked.
"Naw. Just guys. My parents would freak if we had girls and guys all swimming naked in our pool," Kyle said.
"Can we look at the pictures you took last night," I asked.
"Yeah. Do we have time?"
"That man you introduced me to said we had about an hour, but I read in the newspaper the time it's expected to get to Gallier Hall, and we have another thirty minutes," Seth said.
Kyle popped the first disk into the computer, clicked on an icon on the desktop, and we started looking at pictures. The first ones were street scenes, and then there were some of the parades.
"Find the balcony pictures," I said.
"I thought these were in order, but maybe I started at the wrong end of the stack," Kyle said.
He popped in another disk, and that time he got the ones I was interested in. The very first one was of a really handsome young guy who had his pants open and his dick hanging out.
"Where did you take these," Seth asked.
"In the French Quarter, on Bourbon Street," Kyle said.
"I've never seen anything like this before," he said. "Why were they doing that?"
"So we'd throw 'em beads," Kyle said.
"We don't have to look at any more. I just wanted to see if they came out good," I said. It had been night time, and Kyle had said he hoped the pictures would come out since there wasn't any sun.
"How many do you have," Seth asked.
"A couple of dozen disks, I guess," Kyle said. "We can go down, though."
"Let's look at a few more," Seth said. "I'm curious to see if I recognize anybody."
"Recognize their dick," I asked.
Kyle laughed, but Seth blushed hard. God, I didn't mean to embarrass the guy. I was just making a wisecrack like we always did.
Kyle put another disk in the computer, and we continued to look at them.
"They are so big," Seth said.
I didn't think they were all that big. In fact, a good many of them were smaller than Kyle and me. Seth was sitting in the middle between us. Kyle did a thing with his finger and thumb to show about a half inch, and he pointed to Seth behind his back. I wanted to laugh out loud, but I knew Seth would have wanted to know what was so funny, so I kept my mouth shut.
After a few more disks, we went down to the street, and the parade got there in about fifteen minutes. We watched Okeanos, Thoth, and Mid-City, all in a row. Then there was a break for a few hours before Bacchus rolled our way.
During the first parade, Kyle started sweating. It was in the seventies and very humid, so he took his shirt off. All the rest of the young guys in our group did the same thing. Seth kept his on, though. He was pretty skinny, and I'm sure he didn't want to be compared to Kyle and Justin, who were both buff and pretty big. Grandma made all of us put on sun screen, which she had brought for us, and that was probably a good idea.
It was like Seth couldn't take his eyes off Kyle and Justin. One time a pair of beads hit his chest, but he didn't get them because he wasn't paying attention. I didn't think anything of it because Kyle and Jus were nice to look at, but I also thought it was kind of strange that Seth would be paying more attention to them than to the parade. He also checked out Kevin, Rick, and Craig pretty well. He scanned Brian a few times, too. If he looked at me, I didn't notice it. By the end of those first three parades, I liked Seth and was willing to be his friend. Evidently, we were going to spend a good bit of time with him over that Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, so we might as well like him.
We went up into the building to Cherie's private office after the third parade. We all got a pretty good load of food, and my baby zonked out. He had gotten up early that morning, and he had spent a whole lot of energy being excited and carrying on over the parades. The office had nice, thick carpet on the floor, and Kyle curled up into a little fetal ball and went to sleep. Nobody paid any attention to him, although Justin did take several pictures of him with Kyle's camera. In a little while, most of us either went to sleep or closed our eyes to rest them. Kyle woke up around six o'clock, and he was the last to wake up.
"Kyle, you were beautiful when you were asleep," Grandma said.
Kyle actually blushed a little bit when she said that.
"I know. Too bad he turns into a troll when he wakes up," Justin said.
Three or four people laughed when he said that.
Kyle was the kind of person who woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed every day, ready for anything the minute he opened his eyes. He was sluggish and kind of dazed that evening, though. He hadn't eaten anything in a couple of hours, and he had the tell-tale sign of a boy waking up who had to go to the bathroom sticking up in his lap. He got up and sort of stumbled to the restroom. I went after him.
He and I were both standing at urinals. They were just on the wall without any partitions between them. Kyle wore the kind of underwear that didn't have a piss hole in it, so he opened his belt and pulled down the front of his briefs to pee, like he always did. He was hard as a rock, and it took him several seconds before he could start. He was at the middle one of three urinals, and I was at the one on his left. Who should come in just then but Seth.
"Hi," Seth said. He pulled up to the only free urinal and started getting his stuff out.
"Hi, Seth," I said, but Kyle just sort of grunted a greeting to him.
Seth looked at Kyle's crotch out of the corner of his eye, and then he started to get hard, too.
"Seth, Kyle just woke up from a long nap. He's kind of out of it right now," I said.
"Hi, Seth," Kyle finally said. "Sorry, man, but I am kind of out of it, and this damn thing ain't working." He was having trouble starting to urinate, and I wasn't surprised. I often couldn't pee right away when I was hard in the morning either, even though I had to go bad.
Seth didn't say anything, but he glanced at Kyle's dick. He hadn't peed a drop, but he packed it away and zipped up. He was out of there in a heartbeat.
"He's embarrassed," Kyle said. "We gotta make it right."
Kyle and I caught up with Seth, who looked like a deer in the headlights, or something. Kyle was really, really nice to him and told him he shouldn't be embarrassed. I always thought Kyle was at his best when he was trying to make somebody who was hurting feel good. I think he succeeded with Seth. He went into Cherie's office with us to get something to eat. In a few minutes we locked up Cherie's office and then went downstairs to watch the parade.
(Kyle's Perspective)
I thought the Endymion parade was good, and it was, but that Bacchus one was un-fucking-believable. Nicholas Cage was the celebrity king, and he was one of my favorites. That Gallier Hall place was just a couple of blocks down from us, so a whole bunch of us ran down there to see Nicholas Cage toast the mayor, or whoever. It was a sort of light-skinned black guy, so I guess that was the mayor. Anyway, ole Nick looked mighty good on that float. I wanted to climb up there and shake his hand. Instead, I just stood on the street and clapped for him real hard. I thought they probably would arrest me if I tried to climb up the float.
We moved on back to where our people were, but we caught a hell of a lot of beads in those couple of blocks because all of the floats were stopped for the toast. Those guys were humming those things at us, and I figured they had all been center fielders or something. This one guy told me to go out, like I was going out for a pass in football. He threw me a whole unopened bag of beads. Tim had scored a bag like that on Saturday, but the lady had just handed it to him. I had to catch mine amidst a whole bunch of people. I felt really good about that.
Bacchus was over pretty early, too, just like Endymion had been the night before. I felt really rested and good, so I was ready to party when it was over.
Kevin, my dad, and Justin were standing talking together when I went up to them.
"Kevin, can we go to the Quarters tonight," I asked.
It stopped them dead in their tracks.
"What did you say," my dad asked.
"I said, can we go to the Quarters. We've had so much fun there. I want to go back."
Justin had a big shit-eating grin on his face, and I wanted him to stop it. It was like he knew something I didn't know.
"Son, you don't mean the Quarters. You mean the Quarter. The French Quarter," my dad said.
"Yeah. Whatever. I don't get the difference," I said.
"Bubba, the word Quarters, with an 's' on the end, refers to the part of town where the black people live," Justin said. "It's kind of racist, you know?"
"No, I didn't know that, Jus. How is that racist?"
"Well, Quarters, like slave quarters, you know?"
"How was I supposed to know that? Nobody ever told me that."
I was pretty annoyed. My parents had raised me to be against racism. We only had a dozen or so black kids in my school of about 1,350, and all of them were boys who had been enticed from in town to go to school there to play sports. The state had a freedom of choice law when it came to which school you wanted to go to, and they had used that to get some good athletes from the city schools for the beach high school. I had gone to public schools all my life on the beach, but I had never had a black kid in a class with me. I had had a couple of black teachers in middle school and high school, but no black kids. I knew that was very unusual in the South, but that was the way it was on Emerald Beach. Almost no black people lived on the beach. Even though I didn't know many black people, I hated racists almost as much as I hated homophobes.
"You're getting upset about this, Bubba," Kevin said. "We'll go to the Quarter, if that's what you guys want to do."
"I'm not a racist. I don't want people thinking I am, either," I said.
"Nobody thinks you're a racist, son," my dad said.
"Justin does."
"No I don't, asshole," Justin said. "Jesus, Kyle, you get some strange ideas sometimes."
"Okay, so let's go to the Quarter," I said, making sure to say it right. They laughed a little, but I didn't intend it to be funny. "Seth wants to go with us. Can we take him home afterwards?"
"Yeah, go get him," Kevin said.
I found Seth. "Seth, we're going down to the Quarter. You want to go? We'll take you home afterwards."
"Can I," he asked his parents.
"You've had a busy day," his mom said, like she didn't want him to go.
"Honey, he's seventeen, and it's only nine o'clock," his dad said. "Yes, you can go." His dad took out his wallet and gave Seth two twenties. I started to stick my hand out, too, but they didn't know me and probably wouldn't have thought that was funny.
There were ten of us going down there, and we were on foot. We had a good parking place that we didn't want to lose, and it was only a few blocks to the Quarter. You couldn't drive in there anyway, so we left well enough alone. We had beads around our necks, but we didn't take the pillowcases full of them like we had the night before. I even put my camera in the trunk of my mom's car. I loved that camera, but carrying it around all the time got to be a pain sometimes. I noticed Jeff had his, though.
The French Quarter was packed with people that night. We made it through the first six blocks of Bourbon Street holding hands like we had done before. By the seventh block, it had thinned out enough for us to walk on our own. We passed a place that had a band playing on the patio. Kevin, Rick, Cherie, Tim, Jeff, and Brian wanted to go in. Craig, Justin, and I didn't. We wanted to keep on walking. We decided to meet at that place in an hour and a half. Seth went with us.
"Have you guys ever been to a strip show," Craig asked. We all said we hadn't been.
"Do you want to go to one?"
"Hell, yeah. I'll do anything," I said.
We found a place just a little down from where we were, and we went in. We took seats at a table near the front, and the waiter was there in a minute. Craig ordered four bourbon and 7-Ups. The guy brought them, and we all started sipping. Justin lit up a smoke, and I bummed one off him and lit up, too. Seth was kind of staring at the two bad boys for smoking, but he didn't say anything. I knew he must have known guys our age who smoked.
The show started. The first act was a really pretty girl who just danced and stripped. She was followed by a couple more who more or less did the same thing. The next act, though, was two girls. They both had huge tits, and one was rubbing her tits against the other one's tits, nipple to nipple. That seemed real sexy to me for some reason, and I got hard. Me! There I was, queer as a three dollar bill, with a hard-on over two girls! What was that all about?! I was embarrassed as hell. To make it worse, my best friend and brother, Justin Davis of Shit Hole, Alabama, reaches over and feels it.
"Goddamn it, Justin. Keep your fucking hands to yourself, man," I said. I was pissed.
He was laughing. "The stud's got a hard-on," he announced to Craig and Seth.
"Why don't you stand on the fucking table and scream it out for everybody to hear? Huh?"
"Calm down, Kyle. It ain't nothing to be ashamed of, dude," Justin said.
Yeah, right! If you're straight, maybe, I thought.
I took a real healthy slug of my drink, and then I lit up another cigarette. I wasn't used to smoking that much, and it burned the inside of my mouth. I didn't care, though.
Then, to make it worse, the next act was a man and a woman. He got down to something about the size of a Kleenex and just about as transparent. The two of them were rubbing all over each other, and you could see him get hard. That boy was built, too.
"How you like that one, Stud," Justin asked me.
I couldn't help myself. I started laughing at him, and in a minute, Craig was about to fall out of his chair he was laughing so hard.
The waiter came around with a second drink for everybody. I hadn't noticed Craig say anything to him, but he must have.
"I plan to get drunk," I said, and Justin and Craig laughed. Seth didn't say anything, but he looked like he was having a good time, taking everything in. After a few more acts, the show was over.
"Kyle, are you calmed down now," Craig asked me.
"Yeah," I said with a little laugh. "Still rock hard, though. How about you?"
"That's none of your business," Craig said.
"Justin, feel these two up to see if they're hard," I said.
He started to get out of his chair.
"Hey, wait a minute," Seth said. There was panic in his voice.
"I wasn't really going to do it, dude," Jus said to him. "I just do that to my stud, here."
"What are you, queer or something," Seth asked. He didn't say it mean or anything, but you could tell he wasn't expecting the answer he got.
"Yeah. Queer as they come."
"You're joking, right," Seth said. "You can't be gay."
"I don't know how to prove it, unless a blowjob will make a believer out of you," Jus said. "I'm really not joking."
Seth blushed something awful, and then he said, "I just find it hard to believe."
"Well believe it. How about yourself?"
He didn't say anything.
"I saw the way you were looking at us at the parade, Seth. If you're gay, it's okay with us. You can be yourself with us, straight or gay," Justin said.
Seth got these big tears in his eyes. Shit, I thought. This is all wrong. This poor guy doesn't need this shit. I hadn't really thought about it before, but, thinking back, he had done some stuff to make you think he might be gay, too.
"Seth, I'm gay, too," I said.
"But what about . . .? Did you really get . . .?"
"Yeah, I really did, and I don't know why I did. Did you?"
"Only when I saw the man," Seth said, and he smiled a little, but real shy.
"Seth, we want you to be our friend, man, and you've got to know. All of us are gay. Kevin, Rick, me, Justin, Tim, Brian, and Jeff," I said.
"What about you," Seth asked Craig.
"He's right on the fence and teetering," Justin said. Craig and I laughed at him.
"No, I'm not, Seth. I'm straight, and I'm married. But I'm going to tell you something. You won't find a better bunch of guys, gay or straight, than this crew," Craig said. "If I were gay, I'd be proud to be like them."
"I've never had this kind of conversation with anybody before," Seth said.
"Well, you're with your brothers tonight, buddy," Jus said.
Seth started to cry, but I could tell it was shit coming out that had been inside him for years.
"I feel so good right now. It's like this load has been lifted off me or something," Seth said.
"Just relax and be yourself, dude," Justin said. "You're safe with us."
Seth was grinning big. He wasn't a cute boy, but he was a nice boy.
"I have a million questions," he said.
"Ask away. We'll make it up if we don't know," Jus said.
All three of us laughed.
"How are all of you guys related? I mean, who are you?"
We explained all the connections among us.
"Kyle, your parents don't care if you're gay," he asked.
"No, they really don't," I said. "My brother was gay, too, and Jeff was his partner."
"The brother that died?"
I nodded. "Tim is my boyfriend. We've been together for over a year."
"And Brian's mine," Jus said.
"Do you, like, . . ."
"Have sex? Yes, we do," I said.
"You seem a lot older than Tim. You said you were seventeen, but . . ."
"I'm a year and a half older than he is," I said.
"That's pretty young."
"Don't you know any seventeen-year-olds who are having sex with fifteen-year-olds," Craig asked.
"Yeah, I know a lot. At least they say they are, and I believe them," Seth said.
"Seth, these guys really care for their boyfriends. If you're around them long enough, you'll see they really are in love with one another. Being gay isn't a phase they're going through. It's who they are. If it's who you are, accept it and celebrate it, dude," Craig said.
"Craig, you're about as smart as Kevin, man," Justin said. He meant that as a compliment, and if Craig knew what we thought of Kevin, he'd know just how big that compliment was.
"Thank you, Justin," Craig said.
"Kevin is your brother, right," Seth said.
"Yeah. My brother and my best friend," Craig said.
"And it doesn't bother you that he's gay?"
"Not in the least, Seth," Craig said.
"Wow!"
"Guys, finish your drinks so we can catch up with the others. This has been quite an evening. We all got erections, and we all learned a lot about one another," Craig said.
"You got one, too," Justin asked him.
"Do you think I'm stone or something, Jus?"
"Not all of you, but I know the part that is," Jus replied. "Or was, probably, by now."
That made us all laugh.
"I can't believe you joke so freely about sex and all," Seth said.
"Shit, if you hang with us, you're going to hear all kinds of stuff," I said.
"Good. I'm not hanging with anybody else, at least not for the next couple of days," Seth said.
We walked down to the place where the rest of them were, and we met them as they were coming out. We didn't tell them anything we had been talking about, but Seth seemed much more relaxed and outgoing than he had before. I didn't think it was from those two watered-down drinks we had, either.
We took Seth home. He lived in a really nice house.
As he was getting out of the car, Seth said, "Thank you all so much, especially you, you, and you." He pointed to me, Justin, and Craig. "This has been probably the best day of my life. I'll see you all tomorrow night."
"Do you want to hang with us during the day tomorrow," Craig asked him.
"Yeah, that would be great. Call me, okay? Good night everybody." Then he went inside.
"Wow! What a transformation in him," Cherie said. "He's usually as quiet as a mouse. What did y'all do? Get him laid?"
That made everybody laugh.
"Guys, maybe we ought to let Seth handle matters his own way, okay," Craig said.
"Okay," Jus and I said at the same time.
"I found out some very interesting information about my stud-buddy here tonight," Justin said. "Can I tell 'em what happened, Kyle?"
"No," I said.
"We told you it's nothing to be ashamed of, Kyle. If you are, forget it, man," Craig said.
"My God! I'm dying of curiosity," Rick said.
I thought about it a minute. It had happened, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. If they didn't find out, Justin would tease me about it and hold it over my head.
"We went to a strip show at a bar," I said. "There were these two women rubbing their bare tits together, and I thought it was sexy. I got a ha . . . er, an erection, and Justin saw it. That's it."
Everybody in the car thought that was the funniest damn thing they ever heard, and then Tim started going "woooo-woooo" at me.
"Craig, you're our straight male resource person, and I want you to tell the truth. If you saw two guys rubbing their erections together, would that arouse you," Kevin asked.
"No way," Craig said.
"Bullshit! You know it would, Craig," Cherie said, "and seeing two women having sex would arouse me."
"Yeah, it would arouse me to see that," Craig said. "And I'm not ashamed to say it."
"Kyle, you heard 'em, Bubba. You're still as gay as you always were, son. You haven't quit the team," Kevin said.
"No, you didn't quit the team, Stud; it's more like you missed an easy infield pop-up fly," Justin said, "and there was definitely a pop-up."
Everybody laughed; even me. I felt sort of relieved after that conversation. All of a sudden I got this huge surge of love for everybody in that car. I knew I was right where I would always want to be. With people I loved and who loved me.