Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2024 05:09:51 +0000 From: butters2020 Subject: The Boardwalk Part 1 (Gay, Young Friends) It costs money to maintain Nifty. If you enjoy these stories, consider donating to help keep the site up and running. You can do it here: https://donate.nifty.org/ I enjoy getting feedback. If you like the story, please email me, and let me know. My email is butters2020@protonmail.com. If you didn't like the story, my ego couldn't stand it, so email someone else. Look for my other stories under the Prolific Authors page. The Boardwalk By Butters2020 It was 1969, an exciting time to be an American. Neil Armstrong was going to the moon in a few months. We were doing a whole project on the Apollo mission at school. I wouldn't get to work on it. My sister Katie got in trouble and I'm the one being punished. First Dad wanted to kill the boy who got Katie in trouble. Then he wanted the boy to Do the Right Thing. I didn't know what kind of trouble she was in, or how this boy was involved, or what the right thing was. All I know was, it set Dad off more than usual. And "usual" for him was bad enough. Mom said Katie was only sixteen and getting married at her age would ruin her life. Dad said her life was already ruined because boys would know she was easy. Easy? Easy how? She wasn't always easy to get along with, always bossing me around. I didn't know what Mom and Dad were talking about but everything they said made Katie cry harder. She ran out of the dining room and joined me on the living room couch where I'd ben exiled almost as soon as I got home from school that day. Mom and Dad kept fighting in the dining room. I finally got up the nerve to ask her what was wrong. She ran her fingers through my hair like she used to do when I was little. "Henry, you're so lucky you're twelve," she said. "Promise me when you get a girlfriend you won't be an asshole. Don't fill her head with sweet talk and lies. Don't promise to pull out and then not do it." She wiped her eyes and repeated, "Promise me!" She made as much sense as Mom and Dad did, but she was so sad that I said, "Okay, I won't, I swear." The next day neither of us went to school. Mom spent the day on the phone to Gram and did a lot of crying. Then she called Dad at work. "It's all set. There are people there now who have paid for the week so we can't move in until Monday. Dad is canceling all the bookings for the rest of the year but they are not happy about it. That's a lot of rental income they're losing. Can we offer to pay them anything?" Gram and Gramps own a beach house on Bedford Island near the boardwalk. They rent it out to tourists year-round. We stay there every Thanksgiving week. From what Mom is telling Dad, it sounds like we're moving there for a year, but that can't be right, can it? It can. That night after we'd sat down to dinner, Dad cleared his throat which meant he was about to make An Announcement. At least he wasn't as mad as he'd been last night. "Henry, I think you're old enough to know what's going on." Katie stared at her plate. "Your sister's going to have a baby." I whipped my head around to look at her. I'm not a dope. I know where babies come from. I remember what she'd made me promise yesterday. Her boyfriend is Mark Souza. I know I'm not supposed to think about what people do to make a baby, especially when the girl is your sister but I couldn't help it. Mark and Katie did sex. They got naked together. I tried to force that image from my mind but couldn't. All I could see was Mark and Katie naked and them doing sex. I had no idea what either of them looked like when they were naked. I'd seen them in bathing suits, though which was enough for my mind to fill in the blanks. "Henry, are you listening?" I looked back at Dad and had to put my hands in my lap. Thinking of Mark doing naked sex with Katie had given me the ol' "thumbs up" down there. "Sorry." "You're not the one who needs to be sorry." He looked at Katie but she didn't see because she was still staring at her roast beef. "She's going to give the baby up for adoption. But we can't stay here while her belly gets bigger and bigger, announcing to the neighbors that your sister is a whore." A sob escaped Katie. Mom said, "Warren! That's uncalled for." Mom never talked back to Dad. Even Katie looked up in surprise. Dad said, "Am I lying? Spreading her legs for anyone who asks?" Katie jumped up and ran from the dining room. Mom ran after her. That left just me and Dad. I hated it when it was just me and Dad. He could be really mean when it's one on one but he was still using all his anger on Katie. He said, "We're going to stay at your grandparents' beach house for a few months. When she has the baby we'll come home." Then for some reason his anger was aimed at me, but I hadn't done anything. "Never tell anyone about the baby. Not now, not when we get back, not ever. Is that clear?" "What do I say when my friends ask why we're leaving?" "Say your gram is sick and we're going to take care of her for a while." I didn't know it then, but Katie was already nearly three months pregnant. She'd waited until the last possible minute to tell Mom. We packed up the station wagon and six hours and one ferry ride later we were on Bedford Island. No more scout meetings with Jimmy and Eric. No more church, so that was good. No more friends, which sucked. Instead of going to the island, why couldn't they just send Katie to live with Gram and Gramps in Virginia? Why make them lose their rental income? Why make me move away for six months? I used to love staying here. It was great surf fishing, and swimming, and on the last night Mom and Dad always took us to the Boardwalk. None of us was having a good time. Every day Dad sniped at Katie until she cried and locked herself in her room. It got so bad I got to where I spent as little time at the beach house as possible. The houses on either side were other rentals. Even if there was someone there worth hanging out with, they'd be gone in a week. The beach was still in our backyard. I escaped there a lot. The boardwalk was only a few blocks away. I wasn't allowed there at night on my own but it was okay if I went there for a hotdog or cotton candy as long as the sun was up. After the first week of Dad being mean and Katie crying and Mom trying to be peacemaker, even the beach was too close to the fighting, I hollered, "See you later!" and walked to the Boardwalk. This was my fourth year at the beach house. The Boardwalk never got old. There were restaurants and games and rides and a freakshow and a Hootchie Hut with dancing girls wearing next to nothing doing exotic dances at the entrance while a man lured people inside to see the secret Bora Bora dance, never before seen in this country, and ice cream carts and hotdog stands and photographers strolling down the boardwalk taking people's pictures. There were always Sailors on the Boardwalk. They whistled at the hootchie dancers and tried to haggle for a cheaper price to see the mystic Bora Bora dance revealed, but they always ended up paying full price. I was watching three sailors arguing about whether to pay two dollars to go into the hootchie hut or just one dollar to go to the freakshow tent when someone next to me said, "They're so busy giving the looky-loo to the hootch dancers, they don't notice the dip." I turned and there was a kid about my age next to me. He must have been on the island for a while. He had a suntan but I was still pasty white. My rusty colored hair was cut in a crew cut, but his shaggy brown hair hadn't seen a barber in at least two months. His flower-patterned shirt was faded by the sun but my yellow shirt was still crisp and new. "What's a dip?" I asked him. "The pickpocket. The guy in the checkered jacket." Next to the last sailor there was a teenager in a super gaudy jacket I thought only used car salesmen wore. He was reaching for the sailor's back pocket. He relieved the sailor of his wallet and the poor goob never felt a thing. The kid next to me laughed. I reached for my own billfold and took it out of my pocket and shoved it down my sock. "I'm Chet," the kid said. "Haven't seen you before. You here for one week, or two?" "Ha. We'll be here for at least six months." "No shit. I live here year-round. It's good to finally get another permanent resident." "I'm Henry," I said. He gave me a critical look. "Naw. Henry is a rube. Henry gets his pocket picked. I'm gonna call you Hank." I could live with that. Hanks are cool. Henries are Poindexter's. I held out my hand. "I'm Hank Gallo." We shook, then he reached into his pocket and handed me six dollars. "What's this?" "If we're going to be pals, I can't keep it. Check your wallet, Hank." I narrowed my eyes at him and took my wallet out of my sock and opened it. The six bucks that was in it this morning was gone. The glare I gave Chet was half anger, half admiration. He not only took the wallet from my pocket, but he'd also emptied it and put it back in my pocket. I'd never felt a thing. He shrugged. "The dip is my brother. We're good at what we do." I put the money where it belonged and put the wallet back in my sock. "You sure are. Can you teach me how to do it?" I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought it was Dad and I flinched. He never told me not to go to the Boardwalk but I knew he wouldn't like it. I took a deep breath and turned around, ready for a smack in the face. But it was Chet's brother. The Dip. He tossed me a wink and said, "I bet there are all kinds of things I can teach you." Something about the way he said it made my stomach do flipflops. The dip's name was Clay. His and Chet's dad owned the Freak show and the Hootchie Hut, which were part of the same building. The Freak show was at one end and the Hootchie Hut was at the other end. "You wanna see the freaks and geeks?" Chet asked. "I get in for free, and now you do, too." Clay told Chet, "Save Zoltan for another time. We don't wanna scare him his first time. But don't skip the blowhole. We did promise to teach him something." He winked at me again. "You got whales here?" I asked. Clay laughed. "Yep. A regular Moby Dick. I'll see you later, Hank. There are fat pockets out there that I aim to make thinner." He tugged the lapels of his checkered jacket, which looked even sillier on him up close. He did a little bow and left us at the entrance to the Freak show. Chet waved to the guy taking tickets who waved back at him and we went inside. "Dad emcees shows six times a day. Each of the geeks does a bit. Fritz hammers nails through his nose, and Roy eats light bulbs, and Corrine folds herself into a tomato crate. Tony the strong man lifts weights and bends a steel bar, and shit like that. You can see that later if you want. Right now, we're just gonna look at the exhibits." When my family visited Bedford Island before, we'd been on some of the rides, but Mom and Dad had steered us away from this part of the boardwalk. Chet led me to a wooden crate. The sign over it said Giant Rat of Sumatra. We peeked over the top of the crate and sure enough, a rat the size of a tumbleweed looked up at us. It wasn't stuffed but alive. I jumped back. Chet said, "It's not really a rat. It's a capybara." It looked to me like capybara was Spanish for giant rat. Next to the giant rat of Sumatra was a glass jar with a two-headed fetus in it. That made me think of Katie. "Why do you suppose it has two heads?" I said. "Probably cuz its parents were brother and sister. Do you have a sister?" "Yeah." "Don't fuck her or she'll have a two headed baby." "Her boyfriend already fucked her," I said, forgetting I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. It was also the first time I said "fuck". Dad wouldn't like me hanging out with Chet, even if his dad didn't own the Freak show and the Hootchie Hut. Chet was a bad influence on me. But I liked his influence. "How do you know?" he leered. "Did you see 'em doing it?" "No. But she's gonna have a baby." "Oh." He sounded disappointed. "Too bad you didn't get to watch 'em fucking. Does she have nice tits?" "I guess." "Wonder how big her boyfriend's cock is." "Me too." I hadn't meant to admit that out loud. Chet leered at me again. He showed me the mummified mermaid that he said was really a fish tail sewed onto a spider monkey's body, which is cool but gross. "We can see the rest later," he said. "I want to show you the blowhole." I looked around for a whale. "Naw, it ain't in here. It's by the Hootchie hut. Follow me." He led me down a hallway. We passed the entrance to the freak show stage and I saw his dad introducing a fire eater to a group of twenty-five or thirty people sitting in folding chairs. Chet kept going down the hall. I heard foreign sounding music and tambourines and we passed another door. I looked inside it and saw the Hootchie girls dancing. The only thing they were wearing were thin scarves that you could see totally through. I mean it, nipples, and everything. Chet said, "Never mind them." He kept on going so I followed him. At the end of the hallway, he opened a closet door and motioned me to follow him inside. When he closed the door it was too dark to see much. Chet took a Zippo lighter out of his pocket. He clicked it open and lit it, one handed. He held it a few feet off the ground and I saw a hole cut into the wall. He kicked an apple crate over to the hole. "We need to stand on that cuz we're not tall enough." "Tall enough for what?" "For the blowhole." "I blow through it?" "No, dumbass, you stick your dick in it and get a blow." I felt like checking my wallet again. "I'm not sticking my dick through that thing. What's on the other side, someone with Chinese handcuffs or hot sauce?" It was too dark to see him rolling his eyes, but I "saw" it in his voice. He said, "Do you even know what a blowjob is?" I was about to say of course I did but he'd know I was lying I shook my head. "You jack off, though, right?" I was beginning to see why Dad didn't want me hanging around the boardwalk. "That's none of your business." "Yeah, I do, too. But a blowjob is to jacking off like Thanksgiving Dinner is to a baloney sammich. So shut your fucking piehole and stick your dick in the fucking blowhole." This still sounded fishy to me. I crossed my arms over my chest. "Suit yourself . . . HENRY." Oh, that was low. "You better not be tricking me," I said. I unzipped my fly and fished out my pecker. "Willikers!" Chet said in disgust. "You ain't taking a whiz." He closed the Zippo, putting the closet into darkness. Next thing I knew he's pulling my pants clean off me, down to my ankles. Then my underwear. He lit the Zippo again. "Nice dick," he says, nodding his head. "You ain't hard but next time you'll be bouncing a boner before you're halfway down the hall." He put his hand on my naked butt and pushed me to the blowhole. "Now stick it in." I had to use my fingers to put it in the hole. I was right, someone was on the other side. I tried to pull out before the snapped a mousetrap on my pecker or something but Chet held me against the wall. The person on the other side sucked it into their mouth! They were like a calf sucking on a teat, nursing on my pecker, and sliding their tongue all up and down it. In no time they sucked a boner outa me, which made their sucking and licking feel even better. Chet hadn't re-lit the lighter. I couldn't see a thing. I made some kind of noise and he put his hand back on my bare butt and kind of squeezed it. I tried to push more of me through the blowhole. Whoever was back there got the idea that I was having a good time because the tongue flicked all over my foreskin and the mouth sucked harder, then softer, then harder, and all the while Chet is squeezing my butt. And then my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I made a noise I ain't never made in my life and just trembled and cummed and cummed and trembled and I kept making that noise. The next thing I know I'm on the floor opening my eyes and Chet is holding his Zippo over me and patting me on the cheeks and calling my name. "Willikers!" he said. "I ain't never seen no one cum so hard they passed out before!" He grinned. "But I was right, wasn't I? Thanksgiving dinner!" "Willikers," I managed to say. I reached for my pecker. I was amazed it was still there; I was certain it had exploded when I cummed. The next day I woke up before breakfast. The only thing on my mind was getting back to the blowhole. For the first time in my life peeing didn't make my morning boner go away. I couldn't go to breakfast with it and I didn't want to jack it away because I wanted it at 100% when I stuck it in the blowhole. I've never worn jeans at the beach house. Not once. But no matter which shorts I put on, there was no way to hide the boner. I put on my jeans and hoped no one would notice how hard I was. Katie was still in her room. Dad was at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the paper. Mom was at the stove making flapjacks. A big pile of bacon was already on a platter on the table. She was focused on the griddle and Dad's eyes were on the paper. I sat down quick before anyone noticed my boner. "Where's Katie?" I asked. "I've got a better question," Dad said. "Where were you yesterday?" "On the beach," I lied. His face was still behind the paper. "No, you weren't. I went looking for you when lunch was ready." "I was down on the south shore looking for sand dollars." "When I look for you, I expect to find you." "Yes, sir." "Who's hungry?" Mom said, putting a plate of flapjacks in front of me. She added three slices of bacon to the plate and put the bottle of Mrs. Butterworth next to it. I nearly dropped my fork when Dad suddenly shouted right next to my ear, "Katie! Come eat your breakfast!" "I'm not hungry!" Katie shouted from upstairs. "She's not hungry," Dad said to Mom. "You went to all the trouble to cook for an army, and she's not hungry." He shouted, "You're eating for two so get hungry and get your ass down here!" Mom said, "She's got morning sickness, Warren." "Oh, really? You know how that could have been prevented?" "Please don't start that again." I wasn't all that hungry anymore either. At least Dad had managed to cure my boner. "May I be excused?" "Finish your breakfast," Dad said. I knew better than to argue. I made myself keep eating but I didn't taste anything. They kept arguing, with time outs every few words for him to yell upstairs at Katie. When my plate was emptied, I asked again if I could leave the table. Now that my boner was gone it was safe to change into shorts. I forced myself not to think of the blowhole. "I'm going to the beach," I said. "Stay where I can see you," Dad said. "But Dad! I was going to hunt for sand dollars again." He lowered his paper. "Excuse me?" "Yes, sir." "'yes sir,' what?" "I'll stay where you can see me." I needed something to do at the beach if I had to stay in sight of the house. I got some fishing gear from the closet and went outside. I've been surf fishing with Gramps since I was a little kid. I spent an hour catching sand fiddlers for bait. I eyed the surf to see where the waves were breaking. There were two promising troughs. I picked the second one just because it was further out and I felt like showing off in case anyone was watching. I put a fiddler crab on the hook and cast it into the trough, then stuck the fishing pole into the stand I'd shoved into the stand and waited. If nothing bit after ten or fifteen minutes, I'd check to make sure nothing sneaky had made off with the bait. Which is exactly what happened. So much for showing off. I put another crab on the hook and cast again. My aim was perfect. I put the pole in the stand and waited. "Catch anything, Hank?" I was so focused on watching the pole I hadn't noticed Clay walking up to me. Instead of that goofy car salesman jacket he was wearing just a pair of swimming trunks. I almost didn't recognize him. My stomach did the same flip flops it did yesterday when he tossed me a wink and said he bet he could teach me lots of things. "Not yet, but I've only just started." "I never saw anyone fish like this. Can you really catch something this way?" "Are you kidding? People do this all the time. Looks like I can teach you a few things," I said. He looked out over the water, putting his hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the sun. When he did that, I could see his armpit hairs. I didn't have any yet. My stomach did another flipflop and my boner came back. I was in my swimsuit too which is the worst thing to be wearing when you have a boner. I should have looked away from him but I couldn't stop staring. I only came here once a year but he lived here and it showed. He could have been a model for a suntan lotion ad. His hair had bleached streaks that only constant exposure to the sun can give you. Yesterday I was a pale ghost next to him. If I hadn't known he was a 'dip' I'd have thought he was a surfer. He looked like one of those guys in the beach movies with Frankie and Annette, only better looking. "You got one, Hank!" he said. The tip of my rod was arcing. I grabbed it from its stand and could feel the fish pulling on the line, trying to get off the hook. I pulled up on the rod, setting the hook, then lowered it as I reeled the fish in, then lifted it, pulling it closer to shore, then lowering it as I turned the crank. I repeated the up, down, crank; up, down, crank; while Clay cheered me on, until I pulled a flounder onto the sand. "Damn, Hank! I've been swimming here a thousand times and never knew I was sharing the water with things like that!" I couldn't help grinning. I'd caught lots of fish but it'd been a long time since I'd felt this proud about it. I pulled the hook from the flounder's mouth and held him up for Clay to get a better look before putting him in the cooler I'd brought to the beach along with the fishing equipment. "So," he said, tossing me a wink and a stomach flipflop at the same time. "That hardon you're waving around like you wanna poke someone's eye out, reminds me. I hear you enjoyed the blowhole yesterday." I grinned even harder. "I wanted to go back today but my dad said I have to stay where he can see me." "I hope he can't see that," he said, pointing to my boner. "He'll think you get horny for fish and take you to a shrink. Or think you get horny for me and shoot one of us dead." I blushed. He was getting too close to the truth. "Yeah, fish sticks day at the lunchroom is always risky." Clay laughed. "If it makes you feel better. You would have wasted your time at the blowhole today. It's not active 24/7. If you stuck that monster in there right now the only thing that would wrap around it is a cool breeze." I blushed. "It's not a monster." I wondered how big his boner was. I bet that WAS a monster, at least compared to me. "Don't sell yourself short, Hank. Suppose the hootchie girl on the other side is afraid of foreskins. She'd think it was a monster even if it was only two inches long." I laughed but he suddenly got nervous. "Can I try to fish?" he said. I helped him bait the hook and told him how to recognize where the troughs were by watching where the waves broke but he was hopeless at casting. After three tries I finally did it for him. But when he got a bite, I let him reel in the fish, a twenty-one-inch red drum. I let him bait and cast the next one and this time his aim was perfect. He caught another red drum. I told him we had enough for supper now, thanks to him. "Bullshit. Thanks to you, and you know it." He looked at his watch. "I'm having fun Hank, but I have to change and head back to the boardwalk." I nodded. "Fat wallets need to be thinner." He tossed me another wink and flipflop. "And now that you've taught me to fish, I owe you some pick pocket lessons. You can collect the next time your old man lets you out of his sight. Or grow a pair and sneak away, whether he lets you out of his sight or not." "Okay. Tell Chet I'll be there tomorrow for sure. I've gotta clean these fish or I'd come right now." I didn't tell him that I had to go jack one out, thanks to him and his suntanned chest and armpit hairs, winks, and stomach flipflops. If Dad knew, he'd shoot me all right. But at least no one has to worry about me making their daughter pregnant, right? It didn't occur to me until I was covered in fish scales to wonder how Clay knew I still had my foreskin.