These events occurred somewhere in a place I've been. A place where time passes dreamily. A place where our heart's desires are fulfilled. Where every yearning heart is held and kept and lifted up in loving embrace. Please play safe and be kind to yourselves and to one-another.

Our community always felt like a small town. In truth, it is a semi-rural enclave on the outskirts of a large northern city. But it is one of those places that people don't seem to move away from. Or they do, but only for a while, and then they're back again. Our parents and grandparents came here and put down roots -- and boy, what roots! Most of the people in this story still live in the same houses, these grand old cozy big homes that once rang out with the shouts of their parents' voices as children. Grandma's cooking smells are still there, in the walls somewhere, if your nose is keen enough.

Anyway, a few years have passed -- not a lot -- and some of us have moved away. But the place just keeps drawing us back. Some to raise a family, some to heal. And I still see these people in the course of a day and often we have a moment to stop, perhaps to touch, and to look each other in the face and smile, remembering how we were.

Brand was a little older than me. And for a long time, I didn't really know him too well. His mom had a hysterectomy when he was a baby, and they were... not fated to hear the sound of any more little Coulter-feet pitter-pattering around the place. Our folks all knew each other, sure:  long grown-up phone calls and parties we were all too young to go to. All us kids with the same babysitter at one of our houses.

Yeah, the grownups were together. But they weren't of our world. In fairness, these were the Woodstock parents. Late breeders, many of them. Responsible. Many of them professionals of one sort or another -- and they had come back here to find a Norman Rockwell place to raise kids the way they had been raised. So those of us growing up in the 70's and early 80's had a bit of the best of both worlds: a peaceful town with the resources and excitement of a nearby big, Midwestern city.

When Brand was about eleven, his folks adopted a 21-month-old boy, Dustin. Dustin was just a bundle of sunshine, a little blond kid with a big smile and the sweetest disposition. And unnaturally bright. You could see something in his movements. For all their appealing little-kid gentleness, he had an indescribable... control. Cute, brilliant and always purposeful.

Brand took his role very seriously. He loved the little guy with a depth of devotion that you could palpably feel, when they were talking. Brand almost never smiled. I mean, well, he did, but he would look over at Dustin real seriously and the smile would just appear, a gentle thing, it would just naturally come to the surface when Brand talked to Dustin. And Dusti... Dustin knew that Brand was His Special Person -- not a brother, exactly, not a parent, certainly -- there were some of those in the house, too -- but his guide and mentor, someone who was there to run to, to look up to, to hold onto, to fall asleep and pee on. Brand was always there for him.

I guess that's why Brand and I just hadn't spent all that much time together. I mean, we certainly saw one-another. Around. But Brand was just so serious, so absorbed, that he seemed to spend a lot of time alone.

No, that's not exactly right either: Brand played a few sports. He was quite good at soccer, actually. Soccer wasn't real big back then; none of the schools had teams. But his folks got him into one of the early leagues, and -- I guess it was sort of a conspiratorial bond -- a lot of those players stuck with it through High School, when the sport actually began to catch on.

So, he played soccer a couple of times a week, and he rode his bike. Now, in this he was pretty serious. Many weekends he was gone at some sort of bicycle motocross thing or another. But as far as hanging with the kids in town, well, that's just not Brand.

So, it was one of those things: we both got older. I saw him put on this huge growth spurt, and start to burn off the baby fat. He started to move like a teenager, and sometimes smell like one. But there was still this indefinable aloofness, a seriousness about Brand that carried forward.

You must have made one of those pacts with yourself: after some particularly cool kid-thing happened, or after some grownup totally missed some point that any kid would have instantly understood, you say to yourself, "I'm never going to forget this. I promise, I solemnly swear that I will never forget..."  ... whatever it was.

Well, those years are not too terribly far behind me, and I do remember some of the secret formula. I do remember the difference between the grownups, who always had something that you should (or shouldn't) be doing. But kids... a kid... any kid -- heck, you wouldn't even have to speak the same language -- you could just hang around with each other and be safe. Nobody wanted to fight or have hard feelings or lay any trips on each other. I mean it happened, but it was either a passing thing or it was some big kid or bully and you simply didn't hang around with them. They were a sort of gauntlet that you had to run, like walking through the kitchen when the trash needed to go out. Whew, made it! Made it past Mom. Made it past the big kids.

So, there was a time when Brand was a chubby-cheeked seven, or eight, or nine year old, and even after the teenage hormones kicked in, he still maintained that indescribable freshness. A subtle bit of extra cheek, the rosy bloom of health in his skin, a fragility of line, that an adult reads as "angelic." But to a kid, this was a budding teen god, flush with power, quick of eye and wit. Not really a kid anymore, quite.

So that's Brand, the summer I turned 13.

I was an early puberty case. Hit me smack in the head just before I even turned eleven. I accidentally discovered masturbating and thought I was going crazy. "But," I thought, "what a way to go!" So, I kept it my little secret. `Till Dad caught me.

My door was open and I had a night light on. I had woken up with my dick ready to explode. Sleep was out of the question. Maybe this was my third time, ever, but I had to do something. So, reaching down, I was wailing away on my turgid member, when I looked up and stopped. I thought I saw something. When my eyes adjusted to the hall gloom, it was Dad! Oh, Man! Icewater on the balls! But he just smiled and said, "I wondered what you were doing," and went back to bed.

After that, I was more careful. We'd moved away for a year and a half, to Argentina. That's where the whack-off-as-performance-art thing happened. And I don't know if it was the climate or what, but I hit puberty at 10, and had absolutely no outlet and no hope of ever finding any. It was a strict Catholic country, with the girls all in these old-fashioned, modest little cotton dresses. And the boys -- ahh, yes, the boys -- in their black pants and brilliant white cotton shirts. That smooth, light, coffee-colored skin and those flashing white teeth. They smiled shyly and hurried on past the Americano, with his pale skin and his brilliant blue eyes. And my hair was a lot lighter than theirs, almost blond. So they would pass on by, smiling, speaking Spanish between themselves far too fast for my rudimentary understanding.

Well, when we moved back to our hometown, I was "all dressed up and nowhere to go," sexually, you could say. And, yes, I was whacking it like Dr. Pepper: 10, 2 and 4. But, man, that was just "Basic System Maintenance!" I was at that age and I had already been through two whole dry years, since I started yanking it. Something was missing. Something I couldn't exactly put my finger on.

Brand was saying something to Dustin, all gentle and serious, when I first noticed him -- I mean NOTICED him. Why I was there, I don't know. Brand was an early-adopter type, always had some sort of radio kit going and batteries and stuff, and I think it had to do with this "Brainiac" kit that was supposed to be a computer and solve math puzzles.

So Brand said something to Dustin, all gentle and serious: "OK, Dusti, When you and Mom get back." And then, as Dustin left, he looked up at me. I mean right in the eyes, and time stopped. It was almost too much: I was shy. I should look away, but the power of it just locked me. And the room tilted a little and I took a step toward him and it grew stronger. And I was melting and my dick was getting real hard. I had a... tightness... trouble getting my breath.

I don't know what was said -- If anything was said. I was there. I was... open... like my chest had opened... and I was emotionally naked before Brand. Helpless. And Brand said something cryptic like, "Ya want?" And I said, "Yeah," and my breath rushed out of me. And he came to me and caught me with his hands and pressed his lips to me and his dick to me and he took me up in his arms and it all happened in one motion.

The kiss was so powerful, it took me out of myself. I was only the lips and the heart and the blazing dick and his mouth was sweet. I remember that: how surprised I was. His saliva was actually sweet to taste. And I threw myself into the power of the experience.

Somehow we found ourselves at the bed and I was on it and he was with me and kind of next to me but above, and I was... almost drowsy... mesmerized and gentle... indescribably soft inside. And I saw those cheeks, not a child's cheeks. Yes, a child's cheeks! But with the promise of the man to be, and I kissed him, devouring his lips, wrestling with them, moaning and whimpering and making little mewing sounds as he plucked my heart. Whew! The need to breathe, and moaning in his mouth and breathing his air. And the sweetness, and the blazing in my loins as I was his, absolutely, unquestioningly.

Somehow, he was the instigator, but at the same time he was aside, made himself a blank slate for me. Just there, for me to write the blazing letters of my need and passion. We rolled and I was above. Somehow he managed to just be there, somehow an object, though I devoured his lips, moaning and whimpering, pulling them away from his face with mine and letting them go, only to plunge myself back and devour them again. I ran my fingers deep into his hair, along his scalp, and grasped it, tangling in it, as my mouth ran wildly across his face, trying to devour the essence of what I found there, tried to lift his soul right out of his face and taste it. Breathing together, moaning.

I don't remember how the clothes came off. But then, I don't remember much else but the feelings. My body was on fire. His cool hands between me and my shirt, soothing and loosing me as my pants came off, and his. And the feeling as the breeze from the open curtain dried us.

Somehow he turned around and we were in a 69, and I remember taking him into my mouth and it was so natural, and the salty fluid at his tip, and the musk. Still, he was somehow silent: his penis in my mouth was almost a place-keeper, so we could say that I had sucked him, too. I was in my own urgency. He took me in his mouth and lifted me up, taking me in, taking me all the way in, as I had been longing to be taken. His lips pressed, now, to my body. My entire self between his lips.

Then, as the first wave passed, I began to see and feel and taste and smell the gift between his legs, as I gently reached down to cup those snug... those beautiful, snug, generous balls. I moaned as his musk hit my brain, the softness of his penis skin and that boy-taste behind the head, the tender and urgent head. How it filled me. And I wanted to crawl into him, to be with him, to become part of him, as I reached down to cup him and hold him.

Later, he told me it felt like a little baby's hand, cool and tentative, and that is what took him over the edge. I felt him. Swelling, trembling, clenching, heard the gasp and the moan, and him crying out into his closed mouth, around my penis: once, twice, three times, as he came; gentler now, a wondering note creeping in, as his surges became less frequent, as the tension drained from him. Drained into me!

I was gentled, but inflamed. Awakened, aroused and unreleased.

I had to turn around and drown myself again in his lips. Again, I was lifted out of myself. It was just the mouths and my flaming spear, my urgent straining penis, which was sliding against his belly, glowing brighter and brighter. Almost there. I began to lose my muscle control and my strokes became disorganized, as he smoothly took over and kept me moving the same, the same, the same, by pulling on my ass. I came in a vast shuddering wave of burning, jerking orgasm, and fell back upon his mouth. That wonderful mouth. That existed at some great distance from my body.

As my glow mellowed, I ran my fingers through that hair and mouthed that face. That serene and self-assured face. And I took in his soul and spark. And it was as if a vow had been spoken.

I think we both fell asleep, because I certainly remember waking up! My body was filled with a sort of golden fire of libido. Effervescent! Bubbles of golden fire, like my whole body was tumid and ready to go. Brand was already awake and had a sparkle in his eye.

Laughing with joy, I just grabbed him and rolled with him, and he was on top, with those wonderful cool balls on my dick, and he laughed, and it was so wonderful to hear his joy, and I sort of squealed and wiggled and we were both hard together and we sucked each other hard, pounding our fists and sucking the head until we both exploded, brilliant and clear: a sharp note of triumphant boyhood, 'till the wave crashed down and we both sighed and laughed.

"Let's get something to eat," I said.