Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 08:03:48 +0000 From: Andrew Passey Subject: Summer in Ladakh Part One (Young Friends) Another new story here. As I've said before I have been ill with Covid recently. I imagine you can tell from some of my stories I love to travel and it's been one of the things I've missed most of all during this whole Covid thing. So while I was bed ridden a few weeks ago I let my mind wander and go on holiday even if I couldn't. This story is the outcome of my feverish writing. Apologies for any glaring errors, I'm still suffering a bit from brain fog... The bus slowly wound up the steep switchbacks, bumping as it did over the narrow stony road. I tried not to think about the long drop to the valley below but then again the bus was going so slow it wasn't like it could speed off a corner or anything like that. It was barely going fast enough to climb the road as it was. The engine spluttered with the low oxygen, misfiring occasionally as it struggled to head up to the 5000 metre pass. I felt light headed from the altitude, the lack of oxygen causing my brain to misfire like the engine was.. I wouldn't admit to anyone but myself but the views were pretty spectacular and made all the bumping and boredom just about worth it. My mum snored gently next to me missing the amazing scenery but no doubt exhausted from her "experiences" in Manali. I kept seeing other more local passengers turn to look at me in amazement, or so I thought anyway. I guess I might just be being paranoid. My blond hair and blue eyes probably did make me stand out a lot in this part of the world though! Overall it was definitely a crazy situation. How on earth did I end up on a death trap of a bus for two days in the far northern reaches of India? I guess I need to take things back to where this probably all started.. The first eleven years of my life were pretty standard suburban fare. Growing up in North London, nice house, normal parents, well as normal as parents can be anyway. I had some good friends, just your average boy's life really. Then May 1998 happened, the 16th being a very happy day for me as Arsenal won the FA cup, a week later the worst day of my life as Dad told me he had terminal cancer. He had treatment and fought as hard as he could but not much over a year later that was it, he was gone and I was left behind with Mum. My Mum had always been sensible, the main breadwinner in the family working in central London for a bank earning a decent amount of money. However my Dad's descent into cancer and ultimate demise left her...changed. I didn't notice it at first. We were both so upset that there were a lot of tears before I tried to lock all that away as did Mum. Mum made it clear it was time to move on, which I thought was really just her saying she didn't want to deal with it, or helping me deal with my grief. So I focused on my school work, working hard to try and do the best I could. I knew my Dad would want me to do my best and to make him proud. While I did that as best as I could unfortunately to my horror Mum seemed to drop the sensible side of her and she threw herself into "finding herself.". It started with her joining a local bereavement group but this was the gateway drug, before I knew it Mum was involved in local hippy spirituality bullshit. Suddenly the house was full of crystals and other new age bollocks. She even put a couple in my room until I politely told her to keep her stupid shit out of there. She was clearly looking for something, some sort of solution to the grief she felt for Dad dying. But in her quest for it she forgot one very important thing - me and my grief. She'd realise sometimes, "I'm sorry Sammy, I know I'm not providing you what you need but I'm struggling" she said to me more than once. I hated her calling me Sammy and would remind her of that which she would usually ignore. I knew she was struggling but so was I. I was also grieving and struggling to cope, at times I felt like I was falling into dark moods that I just couldn't get out of. Luckily I had good supportive friends at school but still, I certainly did find it hard to express my feelings. It was at this point me and Mum started to drift apart and would have some big arguments. I'd blame it on her "finding herself" quest, she'd blame it on my "teenage hormones". The situation wasn't great for either of us but it had begun to become entrenched, the hole that my dad left was slowly swallowing us both up, Through the time of this struggle, I turned 13 and had just started to dip my toe into the waters of puberty, which quickly became more or a raging torrent. As one of the older boys in my year I did okay dick size wise but still, when I surreptitiously checked boys out after PE there were quite a few with much bigger dicks than me. Then I had another difficult situation to deal with on top of my home life. . To my horror I also started to realise I really liked looking at naked boys and their dicks. Even a bare nipple or a flash of arse would set me off. I'm guessing it probably didn't help that I went to an all boys school. The only naked flesh I ever saw was a boy after all and that seemed to be having an impact on my mental development. I guess all teenagers have moments of sexual confusion but I was completely all over the place. Outside school, well if a girl even looked at me I'd blush and clam up, they were just a mystery to me. Boys, well I understood them better, I was one after all! Making rude jokes about wanking, about having a big dick, about doing sex stuff. Of course it was all talk but it was good fun. One warm sunny day, walking on the way home from school with my best friend Daniel, he sort of stepped over the joking line with a more serious question. "Sam, do you think I wank off too much?" he asked. "Er how the fuck do I know?! How often do you do it?" I replied trying to get some more data. I wasn't really sure how to reply really, after all what was the baseline? "Usually three times a day, sometimes more, sometimes less." Daniel said, wincing slightly before asking me a question I didn't really want to answer. "What about you?" I blushed with embarrassment at such a direct question. It was one thing making jokes about it but I'd never been put on the spot quite like this. I stammered a reply, "Er....um....yeah maybe not quite that much, ..um...at least once a day sometimes more. Anyway, we're teenage boys, we're supposed to do it, don't stress about it!" I said trying to change the subject. "I can't help myself! I've got one of my brother's pornos and when I see those girls with their big breasts..well I just have to cum on them, although the pages are getting stuck together now!" Daniel said with a giggle. "Ugh you're gross!" I replied, Daniel laughed a dirty laugh and the conversation moved on, but it did flag something up in my thoughts. So that evening in bed I fondled my dick gently. I was building up slowly to a big wanking session. I thought about what Daniel had said about the porno. While I might try and lie to myself at times, I knew it wasn't breasts that turned me on, it was dicks and balls. Whether it was Daniel's circumsised dick the same size as mine (he was jewish and not having a foreskin was very uncommon at our school), James's big thick black dick or Jason's long thin dick, it was dicks I thought of as I wanked. Thinking of putting my hands on them, playing with them, even putting them in my mouth. But I began to strongly suspect that boys were what was I was interested in, not girls. Maybe it was just the hormones but it was one more thing I had to deal with. I tried not to think like that though, I didn't want to be different to everyone else and fancy boys. Having a dead dad made me different enough. I was struggling to handle my sexuality on top of everything else. I got even more confused about it after an intervention from one of my mum's "friends". My Mum had obviously decided "finding herself" meant having the odd man to stay in her bed every now and again, usually a fellow new age nutjob like her. I was working on my homework one day when there was a knock on the door and Mike came in. Mike liked to think he was cool and down with the kids with his tie dye t shirt, I just thought he was a dickhead. "Hey Sam, let's chat" he said and sat down on the bed without asking. "What about?" I asked suspiciously. I had no desire to chat or even see Mike. Fine, he was sleeping with my Mum but that didn't mean he could play surrogate dad to me. "Well your Mum is worried that as your Dad isn't around..." he started to say. "Thanks for reminding me Mike" I interjected causing him to look briefly flummoxed. I chalked that up as a win for me. However Mike didn't let it deter him. 'You're at that age when your body starts to change...' He said before I interrupted him again. "Mike. I know all about sex from school, and from the noises you and Mum make sometimes." I replied, quite pleased with myself as Mike blushed then waved away the interruption. 2-0 to me I thought. "I'm not talking about the mechanics, I'm talking about sexuality. Sex is a beautiful thing to be shared by two people, or more if you're lucky!" he paused to wait for me to laugh. I didn't and just stared at him stonily. "As a teenage boy you're going to be chock full of hormones and masturbating pretty much all the time - that's fine, I was at your age. You're going to be curious about other boys and their private parts, are they bigger than you? Do you look the same? That's all natural. It's also fine to be confused about your sexuality. Do I like girls? boys? Or both? Those questions are natural. if you like boys it doesn't mean you're gay but it's also fine if you are. Basically it's okay to think of dicks when playing with your dick and if you are gay you can have all the dicks you like! If you ever have any questions then I'm always here for you I". I was dying inside and bright red with embarrassment, I did not want to talk to a strange man about who or what I wanked off about or anything like that. This was an epic comeback from Mike and after my early smugness as being 2-0 up he'd more than overturned it. I mumbled "thanks" and to my relief Mike left the room. Mike disappeared off the scene soon after to be briefly replaced by Rob until it was just me and Mum again. Still not getting on well and still struggling. Things however took a very unexpected turn one evening in early June. We were eating dinner in silence when Mum cleared her throat. Here comes trouble I thought as I could see she looked nervous. "So Sammy, we're off on a foreign holiday over the summer!" she said, making it like it was a grand announcement. We used to holiday abroad all the time before dad died so it wasn't that surprising. However I was instantly suspicious. She was clearly up to something. "Oh good, I guess. Where? Spain? France? Greece?" I asked listing our three previous popular spots. "No! Better than all of those put together...Exotic, mysterious India!" She replied with a flourish of her hands. I looked at her with a bit of contempt. "Right. In the middle of the Monsoon season?" I said simply. I'd studied the monsoon in Geography recently and it was a topic that really interested me so I was all across it. It was going to rain an awful lot when we were there and it didn't really sound like a holiday at all. Stuck with Mum in some shitty hotel room while it pissed it down outside? No thanks. "Yes clever clogs but we're going to the far north, above the monsoon and in the rain shadow of the Himalayas. So we fly to Delhi, get a bus to Manali, then one to Leh, then maybe one to Srinagar then maybe Dharamsala, it will be an amazing spiritual experience for us both," she said beaming at me. She mentioned the S word which straight away caused my hackles to go up. Fuck her and her spiritual bullshit. "And if I don't want to go? I was planning on relaxing with my friends over the summer" I said hopefully. "Sammy. You're 13 years old. I'm your Mum. I'm in charge of you, you're coming whether you like it or not but you will LOVE it! Everyone at the group raves about it, it will be a spiritual awakening for us both! We'll find ourselves there, it'll bring us closer together and we'll have memories to last a lifetime!" She was so overegging it and I wasn't having any of it. "It's Sam not Sammy. What the fuck does "finding yourself" even mean?" I asked in annoyance. "Watch your language Sammy, I'm your mother. In answer to your question, it means finding that thing you're looking for, that is missing. It's the essence of spirituality. I'm struggling at the moment, and work has very kindly let me take the whole of the summer holidays off to get better, unpaid though so money will be a bit tight but it will be worth it!" I wanted to buy into her enthusiasm, I really did but I couldn't, six whole weeks away?! Just me and Mum?! The thing missing was this equation was Dad. I was pretty sure being stuck with Mum in India for six weeks wasn't going to be a replacement for that. I had so many problems with it I didn't know where to start.