Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2013 07:02:21 -0500 From: Jon Kent Subject: LOVES OF MY LIFE This is a revised version of a story I wrote over ten years ago for Nifty. I have substantially revised it (a) because I'm a much better writer now than I was then, and (b) because it is a story worth telling, and (c) because I got a number of emails asking me if I could continue the story. Some boys are homosexual. I know because I was a gay child long before the word 'gay' was used to describe sexuality. And there were other gay boys around me, or at least there were plenty boys enthusiastic about getting into the forbidden world of sex, regardless of the gender of their partners. In fact, it was easier for boys to experiment with each other because girls constituted a truly forbidden territory - girls were simply a step too far. Time for the disclaimer. This story is fiction; it never happened, at least not outside my imagination. Therefore, we all feel better for that, or at least those who need it do. Oh, yes, if you have not yet reached the age of consent, read no further. It is not the intention of the site nor this writer to fill your head with dreams and desires which as yet may be only vague and inchoate. But whatever you do - do it safely! There's lots of fun to be had on the Net; go and find what is appropriate for you. To everyone else who takes some pleasure from this tale, may you and yours live long and prosper throughout 2014 and beyond. Finally - and most importantly - Nifty is a free site, but not for those who run and administer it. They need our help, not only with our contributions but with our donations, whether large or small, though in this case bigger is better. But whatever we do, let's do what we can. Remember you never miss what you've got till it's gone. LOVES OF MY LIFE Fuck it! Late again. That was the second time that week and it was only Tuesday. I'd almost made it. Sprinted out of the house. Down Muirton Street. Into the High Street. Just in time. Just in time to see the red double decker pull away from the bus stop. I shouted. I waved. I bet the bastard conductor saw me. Bet he grinned and waved two fingers. Couldn't really blame him. We were notorious. You could hardly blame us. We were an all boys' school. His was the school bus. Fuck it. We were meant to wreck it every day, twice a day in fact. Going to school. Coming home. Wreck the bus. That was the natural order, the way it was supposed to be. I stopped for breath at the top of Carnegie Avenue. Why hurry now? No matter how fast I ran, bag bouncing against shoulder, I'd be late. In fact being very late was much safer than being just a bit late. A bit late meant I was certain to get caught. I'd been caught the day before. My fingers still stung at the memory of the belting I'd received from the deputy head. But very late meant I'd a sporting chance of sneaking into school without being caught. After all, it was Tuesday. Whole school Assembly. Entire school packed into the old Oak Hall. With its painted portraits of Headmasters of yore. Wasn't quite sure what 'yore' was but if it meant a long long time ago that would do. The lists of gold, names in gold-lettering, listing those old boys, prefects, war heroes, cricket captains, rugger buggers, all of those boys of yore who'd serve God, King, Queen, Country, and school so well. Ah, the old Oak Hall with its serried ranks of boys... boys, boys and more boys. Flanneled boys. Boys in blazers. The noble burgundy with the piping of even more gold round the edge of the blazers. Badge affixed to each left breast. A dead sheep and a stack of corn, representing what....? I hadn't the faintest idea. The school motto: per arduam ad... something or other. Fuck it. I was only yards from the grey squatting hulk of the school. It lay there lay some malevolent Loch Ness Monster or some beached and rotting battleship. I'd been day dreaming again. Focus now, you fucker. Do the Houdini. Slip and slide straight in, as the Bishop said to the choirboy. You won't feel a thing. I tiptoed across the granite drawbridge. It wasn't a drawbridge that could be raised, but it was known as the drawbridge anyway. Pupils weren't allowed to use it, strictly forbidden, which on a Tuesday at this time of day made it the safest entry of all. The Headmaster would be in Oak Hall, bleating on about whatever occupied his pea brain that fine day. That's not fair. Saying the Doc. had a pea brain. Very few of us had intimate knowledge about our glorious leader's brain or much else about him for that matter. Very few of us has seen Doctor Humphreys outside of Oak Hall, beyond Tuesday whole-school assemblies. In fact, there was a rumour that the good doctor didn't actually exist, at least not apart from assemblies. Science nerds suggested he was a hologram projected from his office but they were all Trekkies, Star Trek freaks, so no one paid them much attention. Across the drawbridge. Through the swing doors. Fuck it. Somebody should take an oil can to those swing doors, but who the hell had an oil can in an all boys' Scottish grammar school. It was all: amo, amas, amat. We left the dirty-hands' stuff to the local technical schools. Places for plebs and proles. Not for us, not for the intellectual creme de la creme, not for the boys of Bruce Academy for the Sons of Gentlefolk. Whoever dreamt up that name had a sense of humour - or was a complete moron. Take your pick. Sharp right. Tiptoe through the tulips, metaphorically speaking, past the double doors of the Oak Hall itself - Fuck it. They were only into the first hymn: Who would true valour see... humm dee dum... down the Classics corrider and into the Junior Boys' Toilet. Strictly legit. After all, I was only 13, so technically I was still a junior. At least until the Summer Holidays rolled in, and then away. In late August I'd be in Middle School - hurrah! -then I could have my wicked way with the fresh-faced juniors, but for the moment safety was best. To be caught in the Middle Toilets by the Seniors meant you'd get a chance to see the brown goldfish -- a large brown turd - close-up and personal. The Junior toilets it was. Swing door open. Step inside. Let door swing closed. Fuck it - what a pong. Piss, crap and disinfectant. The smell of hundreds of boys, even this early in the week, even at this unearthly hour of... let's see: 5 past 9. To be honest, I didn't mind the smell. It was pure school. It was pure boy. And to be honest, I liked school and I loved boys. Wow - what a weird statement: I loved boys. Pretty strong for a 13-year-old, don't you think? Thing is, I did. I loved their open faces, and their unruly hair, and legs going every which way, and the chests, broad and thin, topped with chewable raisins. And the way their bodies narrowed into their school trousers, or cricket flannels, or gym shorts. I liked their big feet, and their long toes. I liked their scabby knee-caps. I loved their bums, the fat ones, the thin ones, the round ones, the flat ones, the sticky-out ones, the sticky-up ones. I didn't discriminate. I loved them all. And I loved their cocks, their dicks, their penises, their stiffies, their hard-ons. I loved them even when they had dumb names like 'members'. That's what our idiot tutor called them as we trudged through dog-eared manuals on Sex Education without ever really learning what we were desperate to know. Could you get pregnant if you swallowed another boy's... ejaculate. I swear that's what they called it. We called it stuff, or semen, or sperm, or the newly-fashionable word: cum. I wasn't sure if that was spelled 'come' or 'cum'. At this point I should admit I'm homosexual, or is that homo-sexshual? To tell the truth, the word was too embarrassing to use. It was hinted at in our Sex Ed. manual but only to rule whatever those homosexshuals did as unmentionable, beyond the pale, the guaranteed route to Hell. I seemed even worse than the big 'M'. Masturbation! I still shudder when I say that word, or even write it. They managed to turn one of the most beautiful activities on the planet, a gift as God-given as snooker, into something only fit for the fallen, only fit for their Satanic majesties and their Satanic minions. Sucking cock - yes! But Masturbation - no! That will get you to Hell faster than you can say "Beam me up, Scotty!" And I can't admit I was a 13-year-old 'gay' because the word hadn't been used in that way yet. And I can't use the word homsexual because at 13 I wasn't sure what I was yet. But I can admit I was queer. Fuck it - I AM queer. I can't say I was proud of being queer. That's just the way things were. Might as well be proud of being left-handed, or ginger-haired, or having a big dick (well, I'm proud of that) because that's just luck, just the way the cookie crumbles, the way the genes combine, the way the cards fall - all a matter of chance. But whatever caused it, I'm grateful for my big penis. At first I was embarrassed about it when I arrived at secondary school and found we had to shower naked in the showers after PE. No cubicles. Just a row of showers under which around 30 boys tried to scramble at any one time. Of course you had to wait until the Seniors had the best of the hot water, just sit there naked and watched their long thick penises swing like fire hoses. Nirvana! Fuck it! The door swung open, and in stepped Raymond. Raymond, ah, Raymond, how can a boy, so well-built, so good-looking, be such a nonentity. Raymond was 13, he was in my Year, in some of my classes. I'd even sat beside him in class a few times, and Raymond, with those big sheep's eyes, those freckles, that tidily-combed fringe was utterly fucking boring. And so passive! I always felt, when I could be bothered, like giving Raymond a sharp kiss up his fat arse - not fair, it was big and round and firm, definitely not fat - telling him to lighten up, unload, have fun. Raymond was an over-looked boy. Last to be picked for the rugby team, not because he couldn't play, he could, not because he wasn't strong, he was, but because he was hardly there. At cricket Raymond always fielded in the deep, as far away from the action as possible, and he always batted number 8 though he could belt a a cricket ball into the stratosphere with those arms, those shoulders of his. Pointless trying to have a lively dialogue, conversation, or debate with Raymond to pass the time. All you could get out of him was 'Yes', 'No', 'I don't know'. Sample: "Fuck it, I missed the bus this morning." "Mmmm..." "Did you miss the bus?" (I knew Raymond didn't take the bus, but might as well try for conversation.) "No." (I swear Raymond blushed when he said the one word.) "That's the second time this week." (Reponse there was none.) "How the fuck do you get to school, Raymond." (Pause for thought.) "Car." "You're too young to drive." (That was me being facetious. No effect.) "I know." "Well, who the fuck drives you?" "My mother." The entire exercise was pointless. "How long till the bell?" (Raymond studied his watch.) "13 minutes." "That'll do." I ran my hand across my flies suggestively. 'Suggestively' is the wrong word. I was suggesting nothing. This was an open direct, invitation. Did I tell you that Raymond was queer, too? Well, he was. Fucking raving queer. Though I doubt whether he'd have done anything about it until I sat beside him and stroked his flannels through an R.E. (Religious Education). (Well, how did 'you' pass the time during R.E. lessons?) Raymond responded! And I mean 'responded'. His face lit up like a Halloween lantern. He shuffled that sweet arse of his, but made no attempt to move away. Bingo! And when I let my sweet little fingers slide across his fly, he had a stiffy like a half-pint milk bottle. Big, too. Big and fat and hard. Big balls, too. When I slid my cute little fingers beneath his balls, he opened his legs wider and let me explore. Meanwhile he gazed straight ahead, listened raptly about 'all things bright and beautiful' while I tried naughtily to bring him to orgasm. You'll notice that those Sex Ed. lessons weren't totally a waste of time. They gave us the language. We learned the terms, and I sat there trying to squeeze and stroke Raymond to orgasm. The Devil in me, and there's a lot of Him, was trying to make sweet Rayond 'cum' in his Y-fronts. He'd go around the rest of the day with dry cum sticking his skin to his Y-fronts and I would be the author of the achievement. Bravo for me! So I gazed at Raymond and ran my fingers across my fly. I already had half a hard-on anyway. One of the reasons I'd been delayed was I'd been playing with my dick too long before breakfast. Not that I was intending to cum, because I was aroused. And why was I aroused? I hear you ask... because I was going after Eric. I was going after Eric that morning. Going after the first prize, the big one, the school idol, at least the sports idol of the Junior school. So I was playing with myself that morning, giving myself an edge, making sure I didn't turn back... with the result I'd missed the bus and had to stroll-cum-sprint all the way to school. Raymond stepped forward. I stepped back. Into a cubicle. Raymond followed. I turned on tiptoe, probably looking like a fucking ballerina, so Raymond was facing me, knees against the toilet seat. I gave him my best 'yes please' smile and stepped forward. He reached tentatively forward and let his fingers brush across the front of my flannels. Knowing Rayomnd, I suspected he might take his time, time we didn't have, so I reached down and slowly unzipped my flies. Then I pushed him gently backwards. His legs bent at the keen and he was sitting on the loo. Is there anything more erotic than the sound of a boy's fly being unzipped? I know a few things, so I'll leave you to answer that. My shirt tail stuck out of my flies - hardly erotic, but it least it served as flag and guide to the treasure, to the family jewels, as it were. Raymond, like a good boy, reached in with his fingers, fished around like a blind man, got his fingers through my Y-fronts, and pulled out my hot, hard and sticky shaft. Yes, I'd gone from half-hard to tent-pole hard in a matter of seconds. Hell, I was only human, only 13, a mess of hormones and insatiable desire. I looked down at Raymond. His nose was up against my dick. I wondered just what he could see. He was enraptured, I could see that. He was worshipping my dick, my 7, well, nearly seven inches of hot hard flesh. I could feel his breath against my skin. I knew what he wanted to do, and I knew he couldn't do it without my help. God knows, I was a helpful boy. "In your mouth, Ray," I whispered. "Go on, suck it. You know you want to. And I want you to. Go on." And on he went. I felt the shaft of my penis slip between Raymond's thick lips, felt his tongue caress the unsheathed head, felt him release my penis for a moment and slide little kisses down its length. Felt him take me deep again till the head of cock touch the back of his throat, tickling his tonsils as it were. I opened my legs to let his fingers slide inside my underpants, dig deeper until they unearthed by sweaty little sac and manipulate the testes within. Then I whispered what I wanted. "Stick a finger up me, Ray. Right up my hole and wiggle it." Like the good boy he was, Raymond agreed to my request while I tried to breathe through my hole to give him easier access. Amazing how the handle of mum's hairbrush had made life so much easier. I sighed and ran my fingers through Ray's thick rather coarse dark hair and thought about... thought about myself actually. I found it a fascinating subject: did then, still do. Thirteen years old. Not that short, not that tall. Maybe about 5 4. Slim but not thin. Dark brown hair in a sort of bowl cut, the fringe parted at the middle and swept away on either side. Lovely skin. I've always had lovely skin. It sort of glowed, even in the winter, now it was sun-kissed. Yes, the sun does shine in Scotland. Brown eyes set fairly wide apart with curving eyebrows, and thick up-turned eyelashes that made me seem permanently cheerful and inquisitive and cheeky. No little upturned nose, but nicely shaped, and framed on either side by round cheeks that dimpled when I smiled, and I smiled a lot. Nice, white, shiny teeth. Thanks, mum. I'd served my time in braces, and here I was now with a lovely set of nice white, shiny, even teeth. Little ears. Legend has it that mum had sellotaped my big brother's dumbo ears every night when he was little. No need of that for my small pointed elfin ears. What else? Oh, yes, I had/have a big penis. Have I mentioned that before? For my age anyway. Actually I'd had it since I was about 11 years old and since it was much the same at 16, I guess it was big for my age. About seven and half inches long and quite thick with it. Not like Eric's, not that jumbo-sized beauty, but big compared with boys my age, my Year, and in the Years above. I'd seen Senior boys gaze at it in the showers, so it must have impressed some people. As I think I said, we all bundled into the showers after sports. No curtains. No cubicles. No separation of the ages. All for one, and one for all. Bundled into a big marbled shower room where the pipes rocked and rolled and the shower heads spat either scalding or freezing water with no Mister In-Between. And we all compared. What boys don't? And, wow, I was big for my age, noticeably big, pleasingly big. I saw other boys eyeing me up and staying to linger. No hair yet. Smooth as marble. And a dick many a Fifth Year could envy. Surrounded by naked boys, all sizes and shapes. But none as big and shapely as Eric, my Eric. Not my Eric yet, but if he was human, if he was seducable, I'd have a real go at it. My sac had tightened, my balls risen in my scrotum. I felt the pulsation that leads to the shudder, the uncontrollable shaking, the heavenly squirting and spurting. No, no, not yet. Keep the edge. Keep the hunger. We had German second period. German, where I sat beside Eric, the seats so small, his thighs so big, where contact was guaranteed. Fuck it! Gently I eased Raymond's head off my penis. He looked up at me, glassy-eyed. My pre-cum glistening on his lips. Shit, he had beautiful eyes. I'd never really noticed them before. He lowered his head to graze again. I eased him away. "The bell," Raymond. "Listen. That's the fuckin' bell." "Oh, yes," he mumbled. "Thank you," he mumbled. "No... thank YOU," I whispered, pressing my erection against my belly, stuffing my shirt tail back in, zipping myself up. "Raymond. Raymond." "Mmmm... yes?" "Get off your fuckin' knees, Raymond." "Oh... yes." Raymond rose to his feet just as the door burst open and half a dozen juniors came storming in. "Hi, Max." "Hi, Allan." "Hi, Max." "Hi, Marshall." "Hi, Max." "Hi, Dougal." "Wanna fag?" "You know I don't smoke. It's fuckin' disgusting. How was the Assembly?" "Fuckin' bor-r-ring." That was a chorus. "What have we got now?" "Latin." "Shit, let's get going. Corky's a real bastard if you're late." "Sure is. I know the first chapter of Caesar's Gallic Wars off by heart. I've written the fuckin' thing out often enough." "Hey, who was that in here with you?" "Just Raymond." "Oh, Raymond. Come on let's go." An hour later we are sitting in German. I feel the heat of Eric's thigh pressing against my own. We are reading, or rather translating, 'Emil and the Detectives' word by word, line by line, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, from German into English. If I Eric wasn't beside me, I'd scream from boredom. I like the book. I've read it twice. I think that Emil is cute, and, after all, he is surrounded by boys as they chase the thief across Berlin. It's German I can't stand. All this hanging round till you get to the end of a sentence, find the verb, and work out what the fuck is going on. If that weren't bad enough, the teacher is 'Jock' Macdonald, deputy headmaster and vicious bastard, who hates me even more than I hate him. It may not be personal. Jock Macdonald hates all boys from the 'wrong' side of the city, from the working class areas around the jute mills. He's a snob, and that cuts no ice with boys who didn't know what snobbery was until they beached up on the shores of the Bruce Academy for the Sons of Gentlefolk. Jock Macdonald carries a strap, made of the finest Lochgelly leather, slung over his shoulder, under his academic gown, and when he gives you 'six of the best' you can't feel your fingers for an hour after. My fingers have been so numb, I've even had a friend fish my dick out of my underpants when I've needed to take a piss. Well, fuck it and fuck Jock Macdonald. I had Eric Murray by my side for the next fifty minutes and nothing was going to deny me that pleasure. I slide my glance to the right as if watching the seagulls making their way up and down the Estuary. Eric's is in profile. My heart skips a couple of beats and I hear my indrawn breath. Christ, he is beautiful. I wonder if Eric is aware of his own beauty. he is by far the best all-round sportsman in the school but, unlike me, he isn't in the top sets for every subject. Especially not Maths, and especially not Algebra. I've been trying to demonstrate to Eric just how logical algebra is, but he's no Mr Spock, and he just can't get it. In the end, he grunts and says "Let's do some place-kicking," and off we go. I hate rugby and I hate place-kicking, but I'm with Eric so it's Nirvana. We learned about Nirvana in R.E. I know where my Nirvana is; right between Eric Murray's legs and up his bum hole. It's really weird but every time I hear the intro to David Bowie's 'The Man Who Sold the World', I think of Eric and get a stiffy. Weird or what? Eric's got the first sentence of Chapter 3 to translate. His German's worse than his Algebra. It's my favourite chapter and I whisper an adequate translation. He repeats it for Macdonald, loudly because Macdonald is a bit deaf. My turn, and I rattle off the next three sentences, knowing that will annoy Macdonald who likes it sentence by sentence. The teacher glares at me. "Didn't you hear my instructions, boy?" I gaze blandly back. "Sorry, sir, what, sir? My ears are waxed up. Can't hear a thing. Getting syringed this afternoon." Macdonald grunts and glares. I doubt whether he heard much of my mumble, but he doesn't seem in the mood to accept a challenge, and he goes on to the next boy. Twenty two more boys to torment. It'll be a while before he gets back to us. I return my gaze to that heavenly profile. The straight nose. The slightly curved lips. The cheekbones. The skin kissed by the summer term's sun. The straight ash brown hair, flopping over the one eye. Those shoulders. That chest. Those thighs - like fucking tree trunks. That bulge below the grey flannels. I take a breath and take the plunge. I run the fingertips of my right hand along Eric's thigh. His school trousers are so tight I might as well be running them on his bare skin. I whisper, "Did you have a good weekend?" I'm not the least interested in Eric's weekends, but I know he's fascinated by mine. Eric has got it into his head that I spend most weekends doing 'dirty stuff' with girls on the 'wrong side' of town. Eric lives on the right side of town. I know that's in his head because I put it there. I wonder if Eric wanks (masturbates) to images of me doing dirty things to girls. Actually I masturbate to images of doing dirty things with him. Eric's not completely wrong. I don't do much dirty stuff, at least not with girls, but I see more than my fair share of dirty stuff with girls. That's because my elder brother, Iain, and his best mates, Dougal and George, are notorious for doing dirty stuff with the girls in our neighbourhood. And sometimes, when they're in a very good mood, they let me watch. Iain is fucking good-looking, though I've no interest in him 'that' way; Dougal isn't bad; buy George gives Eric a run for his money in the body-beautiful stakes. George, with his shock of black hair, his thick eyebrows, pouty lips, straight white teeth, and ear-to-ear grin, has been the image that launched a hundred of my orgasms, but he belongs to Iain's crowd, and I'd get a good kicking if I even mentioned homo stuff in front of them. Although they're only two years older than me, they belong to a different world that includes a different kind of school where they build bird-baths, stools, and better kinds of mousetraps. I don't know if any of them have fucked a girl yet. I'm pretty sure they have but I always get sent away when the knickers come off. Not that I'd want to hang around and look at 'that'! So I sit there in German class, casually stroking Eric's thigh with my fingertips, describing as graphically as I can what 'we' did that weekened. Her name was Marie. One of the Irish girls, from the poorest part of our neighbourhood. She was 14, maybe 15. Saturday afternoon. Hot and sunny. And Marie was stretched out in the gravel pits. My brother straddled her belly. Her blouse was open, her bra was down at her stomach. His big fat thumbs were kneading her big fat nipples. His fly was open, his hard cock pulled out. He ran it across her lips. I looked away; it felt wrong to be looking at my brother's hard cock, though I was happy that he, too, was blessed down there. Down below, Dougal was under her flimsky skirt. He was playing 'stinky finger'. Dougal was ruthlessly finger-jobbing the girl with his middle finger. He'd pull it out every now and again, wave it at me, and laugh, "Want a sniff?" Yuk! Marie's head would have rolled from side to side, but it was trapped between George's knees as he knelt above her, cock out, tossing himself off over her eyes, nose and mouth. Every now and again, the head of his cock made contact with the head of Iain's cock. "Let's see if we can shoot together," laughed George. "Hey, Marie, keep your eyes closed and your mouth wide open. Wider. Wider. Good girl, that's it." My own cock was so hard it ached. George's cock was thick, brown, wet, slimey, slippery, beautiful. That should be my face below it, eyes closed, mouth wide open, but I wouldn't wait for him to cum, I'd slide up and slide it in, I'd swallow him to the root, until that thick black hair tickled my lips, until... "Fuck off, Max." That was Iain. He didn't even turn his head. Just hissed, "Fuck off." I didn't argue. My brother could be violent. I had the childhood scars to show it. And to be honest, I didn't like watching him. It made me feel weird, uneasy, a bit ashamed. I'd stay because George was there, but when Iain told me to fuck off, I felt relieved, turned and scarpered across the gravel pits, through a hole in the high fence, and off to meet Alan Aitken. Eric hears nothing of the end of the 'seduction' of Marie. He hears about the hair and the slit and the 'clit' (I'd only just learned that.), and the big puffy breasts and the pointy nipples. My fingers are caressing the buttons of his flies. Bingo! But why the fuck hasn't Eric got a hard-on? Is he flesh and blood or what? I've been working hard for a hard-on. I deserve a hard-on. But Eric is still soft and squishy. I'm puzzled but I don't remain puzzled for long. "Up a bit. It's up a bit," he whispers. So up a bit I go and discover I've been squeezing his balls. Holy fucking Moses! It's not his cock. It can't be. It must be his bicycle pump. He must've shoved it down the front of his trousers. It's thick and hard and it goes on an on, up and up, forever and ever... A-fucking-men! Eric's erection is so long and hard that it doesn't seem real. Jesus, if he shoved that up Marie it would poke out of her mouth - or mine, if I got really lucky. I fit my thumb and fingers round it. Must be 4 inches in diameter. I should know, I'm top of the class for Maths. And the length - 10 inches. That's what we see in the changing rooms, and that's what I have in my hot little grasp, ten thick inches of a stiff Eric Murray. "Fucking hell, Eric, it's BIG. Where'd you get it?" "Well, yours is 7 inches. And you've got a curvy shape to the end of yours." How the fuck did he know? Ah, the changing rooms, the showers. He must watch me as much as I watch him. That counts for a lot. As we whisper, I keep stroking. "You know what I'm doing, don't you?" "'Course I do. I'm not an idiot." "Do you do it to yourself?" "'Course I do." "How long?" "About 10 inches, I guess. I measured it. Ten inches." "No, I mean how long before...?" "Before... before what?" "Before you cum, shoot, squirt?" There's a pause while Eric works it out. Maths isn't his strong point. "About 10 seconds." Ten fucking seconds! "Ten fucking seconds?!" "That's in the morning. When I'm in a hurry. At night I can make it last a bit longer." I know what I want to ask next. And I know I don't dare ask. "What do you think about when you're wanking?" That's to myself. I don't know what my next question would have been. The bell on the wall behind us explodes. A flurry of books closes around us. We stand up behind our desks. Everybody up - except Eric Murray. He sits there blushing furiously, his Dumbo ears on fire. "Murray, that was the bell." That's Jock Macdonald. "Yes, sir, I know, sir. But I wanted to... I wanted to... ask your help. I can't understand this last sentence." Eyebrows are raised around the room. Murray doesn't ask for help with German, and Macdonald never stays behind during the break. Break is fag time, and the only thing Jock Macdonald enjoys more than paralysing a boy's fingers is his coffee and cigarettes, cheap fucking Woodbines at that. "Cameron can help you. He seems to know 'Emil' by heart. Cameron, help Murray." And with that Macdonald swept out of the classroom in a swirl of chalk dust and black gown. Eric stands up. His erection is outlined obscenely in his thin grey flannels. "We'll have to wait a minute." I reach out my hand. He slaps it away, but he's grinning. "Help me in the nets after school?" he asks. Cricket. I fucking hate cricket. You stand there in the deep for two hours doing fuck all. Then one catch comes your way. It's the most important catch in the whole match, and it's coming you way. Bombing down from the sky like an Exocet missile. You're underneath it. You're meant to catch it. You know you won't. You know it will bend your fingers, bruise your fingers, maybe even break your fingers, but you will not catch that mean little red leather ball. So you do what any sensible tennis player does; you chicken out at the last second; move your hand away; and watch the ball slam into your fucking big toe! My face falls. "Okay, half an hour in the nets, and half an hour on the courts. Deal?" "Deal." That leaves a spare half hour. Maths isn't Eric's strong point, but it's mine. Two half hours equal one hour. Which leaves a spare half hour before the school grounds close. Mmmmm..." My erection, wilting a few seonds ago, takes heart and perks up again. I glance at Eric's crotch. He's wilted, too. Now it's only like a small elephant trunk. And just sooooo kissable. You want to kneel down and... Oh, for fuck's sake, Cameron, is that ALL you ever think of? It wasn't 'all' I ever thought of. That would be ridiculous. But I'd thought of a lot since I was 11 years old. Exactly 11 years old come to think of it. It was a Tuesday afternoon. After school I hadn't gone home. I'd forgotten my key and there was no chance that a window had been left open. Mum was fed up of my scrambling through the kitchen window because "Sorry, mum, I forgot my key." I used to wear the bloody thing on a string around my neck, but these were my last few weeks of junior school. I was bound for Bruce Academy for the Sons of Gentle Folk, and I was fucked if I was going to wear my doorkey on a string round my neck. That was kids' stuff. I took myself to Steve's. Steve was a friend of my brother's, not a mate like George or Dougal, but a friend who'd give me house room till my brother got home around half past four. I guessed Steve would be home because Steve didn't go to school much. His mum was dead and his father was a drunk who didn't give a shit where Steve was most of the time. So it was to Steve's I headed, and I was right - Steve was home. He was smoking as usual, the ciggy between his lips bouncing as he spoke, the smoke making his left eye squint. Steve was a rocker, a greaser, his thick black hair piled high on his head and sleeked back with Brylcream. Steve was 13, maybe 14. He looked like a younger version of Elvis Presley, younger and rougher. He wore a lot of denim and a battered black leather jacket that ended about four inches above his arse. We sat and rabbited on about nothing much in particular, Steve's 45s dropping onto the turntable with 2 and a half minute regularity, and Elvis launching forth with equal predictability. I was no Elvis fan. I admit he was good, but he just wasn't me. To be honest, I wasn't really into music though some of the young guys appearing on TV were really cute. Hey, where did that come from? Guys, not much more than boys, cute! I caught myself blushing. It's strange how you often can't remember how something started. You remember what happened, but not how it started. How the hell did I end up dancing with Steve to Elvis on that threadbare carpet in his darkened living room. I remember the smell, Brylcream and whisky. Steve often stole his father's whisky. More than once he'd been battered for it, but I suppose if you live in a smelly hole like that with no mum and a drunk for a dad, you've got to find something to get you through the days, and the nights. When it happened, it wasn't Elvis. It was Procul Harum. It was 'Whiter Shade of Pale'. The song was like nits racing through my junior school. Everybody got a dose. The fuckin' song had been 'Top of the Pops' for weeks. It was never off the radio. I thought it was a bit of a dirge, and the lyrics didn't make any sense whatsoever, but the whole thing had a hypnotic effect. You sort of went into a trance and hummed or whispered the words along with the melody as if they were full of meaning, full of significance, when you knew in your heart they didn't mean jack-shit. 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was the last 45 in the bunch, so the needle would reach the end of the track, lift, move back, drop, and start from the beginning. I don't know when it happened. I just realised that my head was leaning into Steve's shoulder, my eyes closed, my nose full of the heady smell of whisky and Brylcream, and that his hand was in the pocket of my school shorts. Yes, it was summer term, and we were in the obligatory corduroy shorts. I fuckin' hated them and was seceretly thrilled to know I'd be in grey flannel trousers by the end of August. For one thing, I've got a round little bum, a bit like split peach, and those shorts didn't half show it off. I suppose I should've got a new pair at the start of the year, but mum was convinced I could "get another year out of them" even though they were a bit tight last August, let alone this June! So, the melody wound round us, my head on Steve's shoulder, my eyes closed, my nose full of his smells, and his hand deep in right hand pocket of my corduroy short. Fuck it! He'd have to choose that pocket, the one with the big hole in it, a very big hole, and bigger now that his fingers were through the hole, up the side of my y-fronts, playing with my very stiff, very hard, birthday penis. I was paralysed as much by my own lust as by terror. And I was scared, not because I was afraid of what Steven might do, but because I didn't want to admit how much I was enjoying it. Enjoying 'it', but what the fuck was the 'it' that I was enjoying? I'd never experienced feelings like this, pleasure like this in my life. You'll have to take my word for it, but I hadn't the faintest idea what was happening to me, especially what was happening 'down there', down there in the Forbidden Lands. For Christ's sake, I had a mother who made her boys sleep with their hands ABOVE the blankets, so I knew 'playing with myself' was wrong, but she'd never given any instruction about another person playing with my 'down there'. And I'd heard my brother and his mates pass comments, remarks I knew were 'dirty', but I couldn't quite figure out what was dirty about them. I knew I wasn't going to pee. Believe me, I knew when I was going to pee, and this just wasn't that about-to-piss feeling. This was in a different league altogether. For a start, peeing didn't make my tummy flutter like this. Peeing didn't make my legs tremble. Peeing didn't make my little scrotum tighten. Peeing didn't make my limbs tighten and my bum-hole clench then loosen like this. Whatever this was, it wasn't peeing. I wanted to push Steve away. I wanted to pull him even tighter. I wanted to raise my face and bury into the hollow of his neck. I wanted to pull his buttocks so that he pushed right into me. And I did. I wanted to feel that hot thing of his burn even hotter against my groin. I wanted to slip my hand round and feel its length, its hardness, its sheer alive-ness. I wanted to... I wanted to... And we danced on, a kind of staggering dance, into his father's bedroom, where the curtains were always drawn, where I was backed against the double bed, where I fell backwards onto the bed with Steve full length on top of me. I kept my eyes tightly shut, keep out the truth, keep out the reality, keep out the shame of my pleasure. I felt my snake-belt chink open. I felt my shorts being pulled down to my knees, followed by my Y-fronts... and followed by... his mouth closing over my hard, hot stiff. If I hadn't been so sick with desire I might have been stunned, shocked. I might have resisted, but I didn't because all I wanted was more, more, more... whatever was causing these sensations made me it even more. I felt Steve naked against me, or at least naked from the waist down. How the fuck had he managed that? And he was clambering up my skinny body, knees on either side, and I felt him and tasted him against my lips. "You don't have to," he whispered. "Not if you don't want to." Oh, but I wanted to. My eyes fluttered open, and there it was, that thick dark sausage with the purple head, knocking at my lips. And I'll never know how I knew what to do, but I did. I opened my mouth just enough to let the head slide in, and I sucked on the head, whirled round the head with my lips, slid a hand down the shaft till I felt the hair brush against me, worked the shaft, let it slide in deeper until around four inches were inside, and sucked and suckled the shaft as if I'd done it all my life. I let my free hand feel his arse, squeeze his buttocks, let it slide into the hot dangerous, unknown territory in the depths of his crack. Above me, out of sight, on another planet, Steve moaned and groaned, as he gently fucked my mouth. I worked that one out. I wasn't stupid. I knew that men and women fucked. I wasn't entirely sure how they did it but it was something like this. I took my hand away from Steve's cock. He was entirely capable of what he needed to do without my help, and using both hands, I pulled his buttocks widely apart. Don't ask me why I did that. I don't know. It just seemed the right thing to do, pull them apart, loosen, let them come together, then pull them apart again. Establish the same rhythm as his hot hard-on pushing and pulling into and out of my mouth. Speed with him, slow with him. That's it: quick, quick, slow - then quick, quick and quicker - then so quick that he was losing control. Fuck it. Take it easy. You'll choke me. Pinch his arse hard, he'll get the message. Fuck, what's that! It's hot, and it's salty, and it's slimey, and it's spurting, and it's hitting the back of my throat, again and again, and over it goes. Hardly a taste because it's all going over so quickly. Fuck, my mouth's full. It's overflow time. Taste it now. Salty? Cameron? Both, and so fuckin' much of it. And Steve's cock's gone now. And his open mouth is against my open mouth. And he's tasting himself, taking himself back, and his tongue is halfway down my throat. I'll show the fucker. I can give as good as I get - well, almost. See me, feel me, touch me, heal me. "Your turn now," he murmurs as he slides down my body and takes me in his mouth again. I'm slipping and sliding between his lips, down his throat, and I feel the sensations build again. Yes, this is it. Do it. Do it. But he doesn't because he slips further down my body, gets an arms under the backs of my knees, and heaves my legs up over my head until I can feel my skinny knee caps brush against my ears. What the fuck? But his fingers are working my penis, and the sensations sweep everything but my need to explode. His tongue is licking my balls. He takes one in his mouth, sucks, releases it, takes the other and then suck some more. Then his mouth is going lower, deeper - he can't be going there! But he is! He is sucking my shit hole, licking it, kissing it, pressing against my hole with the tip of his tongue. I should be ashamed but I'm not. I like it, I love it, I want him in deeper. I want his tongue deep inside me as I ...... explode! There's no cum but my body thrashes around the bed like a trout granddad has got on the end of his line. Coloured lights pop in my head, behind my eyelids. I realise his long, thick middle finger is right up arse, and I'm bearing down on it because I want more...more... more... Steve and I never had sex again. Not because he didn't want it. Not because I didn't want it. But he was a friend of my brother. He knew Iain would kill him if he ever found out what he'd done to his little brother. And when I say 'kill', I literally mean kill. Even at that age I knew, and my brother's friends knew that Iain was capable of killing someone. Best not to play too close to home. I was certain Iain would kill Steve if he found out, and I wasn't completely certain he wouldn't kill me. And the funny thing is Iain would be convinced he was killing me for MY sake, for my OWN good, to stop me becoming a homo. Too late, brother dear, someone had opened Pandora's Box, and I couldn't resist diving headfirst in. I'm not sure how true that is. I'm sure I'd've got there eventually but Alan Aitken certainly helped me speed things up. And this was strange because Alan and I had been friends since we were four or five years old. In fact, I can't remember a time when Alan wasn't around. Alan was cute. It's not a word I like much, but 'cute' is the best word I can think of to describe Alan. Ever since I can remember women liked to ruffle Alan's curly glossy black hair; women were charmed by his impish good looks, the bow mouth, the sparkling black eyes. I've never met anyone else with genuinely 'black' eyes but Alan's were. Sometimes you thought they were the deepest of purples, but closer inspection revealed, yep, genuinely black, set against the purest of white. upturned nose, the bridge spattered with freckles, the high cheekbones, the dimples when he smiled, and Alan smiled most of the time. His family was well-off; they lived on the top floor of a... I'm not sure what to call it. If I write tenement, you'll get totally the wrong idea. Poor folks lived in tenements; the Aitkens were anything but poor. You might find it odd that Alan and I even attended the same junior school, but that was because... wait for it... Alan's dad was a chimney sweep. Well, he'd started out as a chimney sweep, but in a few years had built a chimney-sweeping empire that had a monopoly over the whole city. There were few chimneys in our city, a city whose skyline was punctuated by chimney stacks, that were not swept regularly by Aitken & Son. The 'Son' was Alan though he hadn't, as far as I know, had that much contact with a sooty chimney yet. The Aitkens never forgot their roots, never moved out of our district, and got on with everybody like a house on fire - maybe that's not the best image for a chimney-sweeping business - with everybody. And Alan and I had become instant friends from the moment we pulled on our floral pinafores at nursery. I've just noticed I've been writing in the past tense. Fair enough, but Alan is still very much part of my life though not so much of my sex life nowadays because Alan has got a man, a real, live, grown-up, with a deep voice, big muscles, and a cock like.... But I'm not going into Alan's private life here. That wouldn't be fair. Maybe I will later, but not now, not right at this minute. Alan Aitken... What happened was this. After Steve, after the unexpected introduction to the delights that lay beween my legs, I was hungry for more. My hand was okay, my fingers were even better, but I wanted more, I wanted someone else's flesh, male flesh, pressed up against my flesh. I wanted a hot hard penis against my lips, I wanted to feel the tip of a fat cock bouncing against the back of my throat, I wanted to exchange the taste of semen with another mouth, I wanted to... but with whom, and when, and where, and how? The answer came from the most unexpected person - Alan. I spent lots of time at Alan's. We'd both passed the 11+, both pulled on our new blazers and long flannels, both caught the bus to Bruce Academy, both ended up in the same Form Class, and in the same classes for most subjects. Alan is very bright, but I'm brighter; at least I usually come top of the class while Alan trails in second or third. It's a rivalry we both love. After school we often go to his home. His mum makes tea, and there's iced buns or scones with real dairy cream. We stay at the table, get our homework done - Alan's crap at Latin, my Geography is erratic - swap tales of the day, then retire to Alan's room for half an hour. I was going to write bedroom because there's a bed in it; a fucking double bed! For one person. Not even a grown-up person: just Alan! But it's a lot more than just a bedroom. Alan Aitken's bedroom is bigger than our living room. Fuck it! And he's got great stuff. Like a real hifi set. His own TV. Toys galore. And a fuckin' full size snooker table! I kid you not. His own full size snooker table. We were on the bed. Laughing and joking. I was looking at Alan. His eyes were sparkling. That curly hair needed cutting. The sun had brought out his freckles. I was listening to his voice; it hadn't even started to break; it tinkled through the scales. We were stretched out on our backs, heads on the same double-size pillow, looking at Alan's collection of model aeroplanes; he was explaining the comparative merits of the Spitfire and the Hurricane. My head was turned to him. I couldn't take my eyes away from his face. And then it happened... so slowly that I wasn't aware of it until it was too late. A fuckin' erection! It's a funny thing but at 11 and a half I had more or less the same size of dick as I do now that I'm 16. About six inches long and quite thick. Not quite true -my dick's seven inches now, and it is thick. But at 11 and a half it was embarrassingly big for my age. I hadn't realised that until we started having showers after P.E. at the Bruce Academy. Like I said, I'd got used to the stares and the cheeky comments, and the furtive stare, and, of course, I'd been relieved when Eric Murray revealed his ten inches of thick ivory flesh. That had silenced all of us. But there I was, lying on Alan's double bed, with an erection like a milkbottle, outlined underneath the thin grey flannel of my school trousers. I wished it to go down. I concentrated on the merits of the Spitfire and Hurricane. I tried desperately not to look down at my tummy and below, nor to look into Alan's eyes. Maybe he wouldn't notice. Maybe he wouldn't say anything. Maybe Batman could beat Superman in a fair contest. Alan's hand slid down my chest, down my belly, down to my belly button, where his fingers grasped my hard-on and measured out its inches. I lay there paralysed, stricken into silence. "Shit, Max, you've got a big one. Where the fuck did you get that? I've seen it in the showers, but, fuck me, you and Eric Murray make a right pair." As he spoke, he continued to tweak and measure, tweak and measure out its length from root to tip between his thumb and finger. I tried to speak. My voice box betrayed me, and whatever I was going to say, escaped as a strangled screech. Alan laughed. "Let me see it." I said nothing. I didn't trust my voice to get anything meaningful out. But I didn't push his hand away. I lay there on the verge of wishing and hoping... "Let me see it." Was that a note of exasperation in Alan's voice? "Look, fair's fair. You show me yours and I'll..." Alan started to laugh again. I couldn't see what was funny. He reached down, unzipped himself with a flourish, fumbled into his underpants, and fished out his own erection. Fuck it! His own erection was as hard as mine. Not as long, not as thick, but definitely as hard. And it was pretty. Lovely. Beautiful. A four-inch column of ivory. The foreskin pulled back to reveal the shapely purple head, wet and slick with what I've learned is called pre-cum. "Can I?" I mumbled. "Be my guest," my childhood friend laughed. "But wait a sec." Alan reached down and pulled his trousers wide upon, wriggled his bum up, and pushed trousers and underpants down to his knees, then turned to me and did the same. "What about your mum?" I whispered though my blushes. "Are you deaf as well as dumb?" he giggled. "Didn't you hear the door close about 10 minutes ago. She's gone round to Auntie May's. Back around 6. That gives us... mmmm... nearly an hour." Alan pulled my hard-on away from my body. A little kiss to start with." He leaned over me and kissed the head of my penis. Aw, fuck it, lots of kisses to start with." His pursed lips ran the length of my erection, up and down, up and down, his lips open to edge the shaft between his lips. He stopped a moment, looked up at me, eyes glazed, and whispered, "Whatever you want to do, just do it. I'll like it. Fuck it, I love it." I understand the meaning of '69' now but I didn't then. It took me about five minutes to discover the position. Was I the first? Probably not, in my wilder moments I like to think so. Only joking. Two naked 11-year-olds lying side by side on a double bed. Their fingers clasped round each other's erections. Their heads bobbing on their other's stiffies. Mouths sliding the down until lips are pressed on each other's naked pubis. The sweet liquid of precum already in their throats. Fingers of each free hand manipulating hairless scrotums. Giving and taking in unison, in harmony. Instinctly matching rhythms. So difficult to concentrate. Is it the pleasure of fullness in the mouth? Is it the pleasure of the other's mouth seeking to absorb the other's fullness. The naked limbs are twisted in such beauty no sculptor could ever match. Not only the sights but the smells. Cameron perspiration. Milk and honey. The untainted smell of immature semen. It was hard to focus on sucking Alan when my own senses were so overwhelmed. The touch of his naked skin was overwhelming in itself. The sight of every vein, every curve of his scrotum, the pink of his shaft, the curve of the head, the little eye that demanded to be probed with a tongue tip. So much. So much. And always so much more. I felt my legs pushed wider, felt Alan's head burrow between them, felt his hot tongue lick my scrotum, his lips single out each testicle to find its shape, assess its weight. To take one, then both, then the little sac into his mouth. For a moment I panicked. Could there be any great exposure than this? With one little clamp of those little white teeth my balls would be gone. What could I tell my mother? I was an adept little liar but it would be hard to wriggle my way out of this one. I sighed and copied Alan, my mouth opening wide to take in his own little sac. Then I knew what it meant. That I could snap off the sac, his balls, and swallow them in a single gulp. And the possibility felt wonderful. He trusted me so much. Trusted me with the family jewels. Trusted me with so much of his future. If my mouth hadn't been so full, I would have laughed. Then he was gone. Deeper. Lower. Into the unmentionable. My legs pushed wide apart by his insistent head. I felt his thick hair brush and tickle the inside of my thighs. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Fuck it. He did. His tongue was deep between my buttocks, circling the dirty place, the place you had to wipe clean three times, the place no one ever talked about, and certainly not in relation to what was happening, not in relation to... sex. How could there be any pleasure in this? Ah, but there was. The image, even then, was incredibly erotic. My cock pulsed even harder. I couldn't keep the image out of my mind. It was wrong, it was wicked, it was wonderful. Alan's tongue circled closer and closer to... What should I think of it as? My bum hole. My arse hole. My anus. Shit, I'd hardly ever seen my own bum hole, and here was Alan getting a close-up in Cinemascope. I had seen it a couple of times... when I'd lain on my bed at home, my legs hooked high by my elbows, a mirror strategically placed. Why had I done that? I've no idea. Just my insatiable curiosity, and an urge even then to be drawn to wards the taboo, the forbidden. And the tip of Alan's tongue touched me there. Right on the centre spot. The tip ran the small length again and again. Tiny pressures, increasing with each run. My mouth took his cock in again. My lips swirled around it. I sucked just the head, released it, and then took in the whole shaft again. There was no music in the room but I felt a singing in my ears. Thanks, Bowie. "Whatever you want to do,just do it. I'll like it. Fuck it, I'll love it." Had Alan really mean that - WHATEVER I wanted? Just do it. Now my head was between his legs. He splayed them wide, giving me the access I desired. It was dark in there. I wanted to see. I heaved his arse, his legs around, a little rudely, a little uncermenoniously, until he was facing the bedlamp. The light focused where I wanted it. There it was. The centre of the known Universe. And I was about to go there, to boldly go where... o for fuck's sake, not Star Trek. Beam me in, Scotty! Valleys, sand dunes of silk skin ran towards the centre. Creamy ivory darkened to a darker centre. The eye of the Universe. The gateway to all and everything. Cream gave way to a light flush of brown, to a slightly serrated edge, to a pucker, to a rosebud that asked to be kissed. ! A rosebud by any other name. A rosebud is a rosebud is a rosebud. I closed my eyes, slid out the tip of my tongue, the serpent about to enter Eden. Bang! "Alan! Max! I'm home. Tea'll be ready in five minutes." A light rap at the door. "Scones and cream. Real cream. Dairy cream." Shit! We unhooked ourselves and shot off that bed like bats out of Hell. A scramble of clothes. When I got home, I found I was in Alan's underpants! We dressed as if our lives depended on it; they probably did. Alan snagged his dick in his zip. Hopped around in agony. I knelt and unsnagged it. Gave it a little kissie to make better. Then neither of us could stop giggling. "Boys! Boys!" We made final adjustments to our semi-hard cocks, emerged from the bedroom, crossed the lounge, and entered nonchalantly into the kitchen. I assume Alan was nonchalant; he looked nonchalant; I was terrified. "Come on, boys, it's on the table. Sit down and tuck in. Auntie May wasn't in, so I got us a treat for tea... "Max, you look a little pale. Alan, you look a little flushed. I hope you boys aren't coming down with something. You don't want to be in bed for the rest of the week, do you?" Alan fell from his chair, laughing, his mouth crammed with scone and dairy cram. "Oh, Alan, you are a silly. Thank goodness Max has a lot more sense. You're lucky to have a friend like Max. You could learn a lot from him." Alan was doubled up in helpless laughter, tears streaming from his eyes. I tried but I couldn't help it; I joined in the laughter. Then Mrs Aitken joined in, too. As she pulled herself together, she smiled. "I don't know what's made you two so happy, but whatever it is, it's doing you a power of good." And it was. And it did. Believe me, Mrs Aitken, it did. Eric and I wander up Carnegie Avenue after school. It's 3.30 but it's still warm, the sun casting stark shadows. The school sports grounds lie between Carnegie Avenue and the Cairny Hill. To go home Eric branches off to the right and the right side of town; I branch off to the left, cross the hill, and go home on the wrong side of town. The sports grounds are first class, donated by a wealthy merchant who had three sons educated at Bruce Academy for the Sons of Gentlefolk. The grounds stretch over a few acres, the pavilion, tennis courts and cricket square at the Carnegie end, the rugby and soccer pitches at the Cairny end. There's a full time groudsman but he never shows up until 15 minutes before closing time; that depends on the time of the year. We stroll into the pavilion. There's a handful of boys there already. Mostly senior, mostly tennis players. We dump our bags and change, Eric into cricket, me into tennis whites. We must look a little incongruous but nobody pays much attention to a couple of juniors like us - even though we're already playing for the Under-15's (Eric, cricket; me, tennis). We wander out to the nets where Eric becomes brisk and business-like. He's going to bowl to me in the nets. Like fuck he is! I'm not going stand there while the fastest bowler in the school aims chunks of leather at my most delicate parts, even though I've got a cup on, and pads that reach up to my waist. I sigh in relief when Eric announces he's going to use a practice bowl and that he'll only bowl spin. Even I can get bat to ball with spin; well, either that or I can get the fuck out of the way. Eric bowls me first ball, and second, and third. "For fuck's sake, keep the bat straight, Cameron. And stop hopping about." Keeping a straight bat is indescribably boring, but the sight of Eric running in, head tilted back, hair caught by the lightest of breezes, crotch bulging (it's his cup) is compensation enough. I knuckle down it and start stroking the ball back to him. "Stroke it for Eric." "Stroke it for Eric." "Stroke it for Eric." I'm in dreamland when a ball hits a crack, rises sharply and whacks me right where cup meets flesh. Fuck it that hurt! I yelp like a cissy, drop to the floor, and start rubbing high inside my right leg. Eric trots up and flops down beside me. "Okay?" "What the fuck do you mean 'Okay?'" I howl. "Of course I'm not okay. You might not have a love life, but I have, and you might have ruined it, you mutha..." I don't complete the sentence because Eric's mother died when he was five years old. I don't know the details. I know he lives with his father and elder brother. I know they are a monied family. But that's about it. "Oh, come off it, Max..." (Max. I like that.) "...it'll sting a bit but it'll pass in a couple of minutes. See..." See what? See Eric's long, thick fingers slide down the inside of my thigh. "There?" "Down a bit." "There?" "Over a bit." "There." I sigh, "There, yes, right there." Those thick fingers begin a gentle massage, a gentle caress, and the pain drifts away as I take leave of my senses. It's me who strokes Eric, not Eric who strokes me. I suddenly realise I'm getting a bitch of a hard-on, and it's cramped in the cricket cup. A pleasure it is not. I try to keep the frown off my face, but Eric catches it and bursts out laughing. "You're hopeless, Cameron." "Don't you mean incorrigible, Murray." "Nope, hopeless. Come on. Get off your arse. You still owe me 25 minutes." And the 25 minutes are the most pleasurable I will ever have in relation to cricket. Manfully, if ineptly, I knuckle down and give Eric full value. He gets me out around 2 balls every over no matter how well I defend. That pleases him and causes me no pain. My turn comes soon. It's strange. Eric is definitely the best cricketer our school ever had. He is, maybe, the best rugby player we've ever had. But on the tennis court he's crap. Make that capital letters: CRAP. He tries his best. In sports Eric always tries his best. But even though I set the ball up for him, even though I keep it mostly on his forehand, even though I set up dolly smashes at the net for him, he manages to look clumsy and inept. But he does try. My God, how he tries. So I begin to drive the ball from side to side, hitting his baseline more often than not, pulling him into the net and then lobbing the ball casually over him so that he has to turn and scamper back to the baseline. He never gets it back, of course, a little topspin makes sure of that. Am I being cruel? No, just cunning. If he runs enough, if he's sweaty enough (and Eric sweats easily), Eric will need a shower, and me (we!) might just have a shower before we head home. Cunning or what? But I'm foiled... because those senior bastards have used up the last of the hot water amd left us nothing but lukewarm dribbles. I go back and check the water, just in case, but no luck. Nope, the seniors have gone and the last of the hot water with them. BUT (and it's a capital letters 'but') when I come out of the shower area, Eric is stretched full length along one of the benches. Eyes closed. Face redly flushed. Shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Crotch bulging. And that's no cup. I squeeze down on the bench just behind his head. I'm not quite sure what to do. If I get this wrong, I could end up with a black eye, a bleeding nose, and worse. That's easily explained at home, but I don't want to go into school tomorrow and find that I'm a... a what? ... "a fucking queer". I AM a fucking queer. My bum chums know I'm a fucking queer. But that doesn't mean I want it broadcast around the school. Better play safe. Better safe than sorry. Fuck it. I've never played safe in my life, and at 13 years of age it's a little late to start. I run my finger tips over Eric's forehead. I flick back the thick damp hair. He sighs. He murmurs "Yeah". What I really want to do is lean over and kiss him on the forehead, but that would be pushing things too far, too quickly. I run my fingers across his cheeks. Down his throat. Across the top part of his chest. He murmurs "Yeah". Not the most articulate of reponses but it will do for me. I shift my position so I'm squeezed alongside him. Actually I'm perched on my left buttock, and if Eric shifts suddenly I'll fall on my arse. Ah well, what's life for if it's not for falling on your arse now and again? My fingers slide across his stomach. Wow, he's got one of those six-packs. I'm not that sure what a six-pack is, but if it means a strong, flat, muscly stomach, Eric's got one, and I'm fingering it. His belly button's an innie. I wonder what it would feel like to kiss it. Eric willing, I may get my chance today. Fucking hell, the bulge at his crotch is... bulgier. In class, Eric would reach down and straighten it out. That duty seems to be in my hands today. I say a silent prayer and face the moment of truth. "It's now or never." Elvis is absolutely fucking spot on: it IS now or never, and I decide on now. I finger the clasp on Eric's cricket flannels. I flick the clasp open. I wait for the punch in the face. Nothing. I find the little zip and slowly, agonisingly slowly, edge it down. Down, down, down, until there can be no more down. Using both hands, thumbs and index fingers, I spread his pants open, tug his shirt flaps away, and there it is. No, there IT is, curled like sleeping python under the 100% pure cotton Y-front. The python is awake. It is stretching for the sun. I watch it elongate, then extend my fingertips to help turn it round to face due north. Shit, I knew it was BIG; I never suspected it was this big. It's long but it's also thick. It is genuinely ten inches long, and it's as thick as the span of any three of my fingers put together. try that and you'll see what I mean. Suddenly the head pokes out above the elastic. That's strong elastic; it takes a lot of poking to get past that. There, Mister Python, you've found the sun at last. I notice that Eric has raised his bum off the bench. The penny drops. There is a God after all. I reach over him and gently ease his underpants down to his knees, revealing... it is beautiful, it's truly beautiful. In size, shape, texture, colour, and... yes, sniff sniff... smell, it is truly beautiful. A thing of beauty may be a boy forever, but his erection is a thing of beauty right now. I reach and take hold of it, my fingers unable to meet around it girth. I begin to gently jack him off. He'll let me do this, but will he let me kiss it. I'm desperate to kiss it. "I'll cum if you do that," he whispers. (I'm proud because I taught him that word - 'cum'.) So what? I want him to cum. I'm desperate to make him, see him cum. "It'll make a real mess when I cum." (Pause) "I don't want to make a mess of my shirt or my whites." (Pause - then the penny clunks off the floor.) Cum - mess - bless you, Eric, bless you. I lean forward and almost say "Ah". I let three, four inches of Eric's thick shaft slide into my mouth. I'm amazed I can stretch my lips wide enough to take a few inches in. I suck him hard. I want to taste him as much as I can. See me. Feel me. Touch me. Fuck me. I manipulate the base of his shaft, then gently jack it as I suck. Oh this is going to be wonderful. "Oh, oh, oh..." Eric's bum jerks straight off the bench. His cock is driven to the back of my throat. It's probably tickling my tonsils. And he's cumming! Squirt after squirt splats against the back of my throat. I'm struggling, gagging, fighting to get it all over, to get it all down the back of my throat, and not onto Eric's whites, and not into my eyes. Splurt, squirt, splat! Who would've thought the young man to have so much semen in him? And now in me. I gag, I cough, my eyes stream, but little hero that I am, I take it all, or almost all of it. A little escapes to my lips - a little sweet, a little bland, but it will do. It contains Eric's babies, or at least his potential babies, or at least 50%, genetically speaking, of Eric's babies, and millions of them are swimming in my tummy. I wonder if they've got there yet. I wonder how surprised they feel when they look around and finding no door marked EGGS-IT, or even ARSE-IT. Actually, I think all this later that night as I lie in bed and relive Eric's first blow-job (that's the correct expression, isn't it?) Eric's embarrassed now. He sits up, swings his legs round, pulls up his underpants, fastens his trousers, and now he sits there looking at me. His eyes are a little glazed. He's blushing. I know he wants to tell me something. I can't help because I don't know what it is he wants to tell me. He is pointing at me, at my face. Now it's me that's blushing. Why doesn't he just come out with it? "On your face, your lips." "What? What?!" "Me," he laughs. I raise my finger to my lips. I feel it - a big gob of Eric. I can't help laughing. I scoop it with my right index finger and slurp it into my mouth. "There, happy now," I ask. "Yes, happy now," he replies. "But I'm sorry." "Sorry for what?" "You know. Then ten-second thing. But I'll do better next time." Next time! My heart leaps. "Hey," says Eric. "It's only ten past five. Want to come to my house for tea?" "For tea?" "Yes," he laughs. "Just for tea. My brother'll be there. You'll like him. Come on." And off we go. No guilt, no shame, no remorse, no regrets, no recriminations. Just two boys, hungry, and wanting their tea. Anyway, there'll be a next time, so don't be greedy. I suppose my seduction of Eric would have moved faster if I hadn't been so distracted by sex and by love. Blame the sex on Alan. It wasn't that I had sex with Alan. I did but far less often than I might have anticipated after that first encounter. Two things made sex with Alan infrequent. First, I didn't fancy him much and he fancied me even less. Don't get me wrong. We liked each other, and, as far as boys are able, we probably loved each other. But we'd been together so long it was a bit like having sex with your brother. I don't know if nature makes a sort of taboo about that, but Alan and I had been together for so long, since we were about four years old, nursery, junior school, now secondary school, that it just didn't feel right. I can't speak for Alan but I couldn't get those images out of my mind; all those years when we were little kids, down on the beach, for example, making sandcastles, squealing and running when the water lapped over our sandals. I just couldn't match that with the times we lay head-to-toe sucking each other off. But Alan was... How can I put it? Alan was a voracious little predator who enjoyed sex simply because it was there, and, above all, he enjoyed having sex with boys who were or seemed to be unattainable. And since I'd spent most of my life going along with Alan, I went right along with that, too, and loved every inch of it. Take Liam Marshall. And in the end we took Liam Marshall. Liam was beautiful, ridiculously, absurdly beautiful. He was in our Year, the third, he was tall, willowy, thick blond hair, blue blues, with the face of a China doll that somehow managed to be more boy than girl. He was sweet and kind, he was gentle and considerate, he was polite and helpful, he was... just about everything wholesome and good. And Alan wanted him. It was the card school that did it. Alan and I had always played cards. We usually played 21, vingt-et-un, but Alan also knew how to play poker. He taught me and we introduced the game as a lunch-time entertainment. We played for pennies, and we won a lot of pennies. On a good day, we'd play for sixpences, and we won a lot of sixpences. When someone ran out of money, he could play with his lunch tickets. Lunch tickets were worth were worth 12 pence or 1 shilling each, no mean sum in those days. Alan would advance the credit, win the lunch tickets, and then sell them back at half price. He didn't mind waiting a few days for the payment. Bruce Academy was a grammar school, and there was honour amongst boys. Better starve than be known as someone who reneged on their debts. So Alan was a good player, and he was also a cheat. Probably the most bare-faced cheat I've ever known. His deck of cards, actually he had three decks, were marked, professionally marked. Even when Alan showed me the markings, I coould find them again seconds later. But Alan could whiz through a deck calling out each card almost as fast as he could deal them; and he could deal them fast. Liam lost off his lunch tickets. In fact, he lost two weeks' worth of lunch tickets at one session. Liam Marshall wasn't perfect; he was a compulsive gambler. Worse than that, he couldn't afford to gamble. Liam's dad was dead, or at least gone. It wasn't done to ask personal questions. We'd met his mum. One look at her and you knew where Liam got his looks. She was all woman, and he was all boy. So losing his lunch money was no joke for Liam. In fact, it was a disaster. No one would ever mention it, but Liam's blazer was second-hand, his grey flannels too short, his tie frayed, and he had two white shirts. You knew which was which by the ink splats. "God, you are an idiot, Liam. I told you to stop playing when you lost this week's dinner tickets. It's only Monday. But you went on and on, and what happened? You've lost next week's as well." We were standing in the toilets on the top floor, the third floor, where no one went unless you had serious business to negotiate. I'd had Raymond suck me off a couple of times, four times to be exact, up there in the 'Gods' but the place was spooky. None of the classrooms on the third floor were used, and there were vague stories about a suicide, a murder, Mary Queen of Scots, and a headless horseman. I could never quite fathom what the hell a horseman, headless or otherwise, was doing on the top floor of a boys' grammar school, but History is full of weird stories and even weirder characters. "Could you let me have...? I mean, you know I'll..." Liam's big blue eyes brimmed with tears. I choked and felt like handing over my lunch tickets for the week. After all, my pocket was stuffed with them. Alan and I had already divided up the day's spoils. "Well, I would," said Alan. "Remember I did try to get you to stop playing." Yeh, Alan, right, Alan. Deal someone a hand with a straight run in it, and then try to persuade them to fold. I think not. "And if it was only one week... well, I might... but two weeks. No, Liam, no can do. Everyone would think I was losing my touch. We've got to play by the rules, and stick by the rules. After all, we are Bruce boys." I turned away for a moment, blushing on behalf of Alan. "I understand that, Alan. Honestly I do. But I can't go home. I can't tell mum..." He choked, he couldn't go on. A single teardrop hung from those thick eyelashes. I wanted to stick out my tongue and lick it away. "Well, we could always trade, I suppose," murmured Alan, making it sound like a concession dragged from the depths of his soul. Hope springs eternal, and at that moment it sprang into the heart of Liam Marshall. "I've got some Dinky cars," he said brightly. "I collect them, but you can have the best ones, the best three, no, four, if..." "Liam, Liam..." Alan cut him off. "Do I look like the kind of man who collects fucking Dinky cars?" Man! Fucking man! I felt like kicking Alan Aitken's sweet arse. "No, I don't think you've got any thing I really want except... naw, naw, forget it." You might as well tell a man dying of thirst not to bother about that mirage on the horizon. "What? What?" asked Liam, not quite frantically, but not far from it. "No, no, don't even think about it Just forget it." "What? What? Anything, Alan. Anything. Just name it." Alan didn't name it. He stepped forward and felt it. Liam stepped back. His eyes widened. He looked down at his crotch, probably expecting Alan's hand to be still there. It was. Liam looked at Alan. Alan stood there smiling. "I've heard about you," Liam said. "Oh, and what have you heard?" asked Alan sweetly. "I--I--I've heard that you like, that you do...stuff." "What have you heard? What is it that I do?" A couple of weeks before I'd seen the film 'The Jungle Book'. There was a bit in it when the snake was trying to hypnotise the boy. "Trust in me... trust in me-e-e-e-." For the life of me, I couldn't get that image out of my head. "Look, Liam, I said to forget it. I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do. I know you'd like it, but if you don't want to, fine, let's just get downstairs. There's twenty minutes to the bell. I've got time for another card school." Liam stood there. Alan stood there. I stood there. Baby, baby, can't you hear our hearts beat? "What would I have to do?" Liam's voice was tiny. "You wouldn't have to do anything. We do everything. You stand there and enjoy it." Alan stepped forward and ran his fingers against the thin grey flannel. "All of them, Liam. You can all of the lunch tickets back. Fifteen minutes, that's all." As he spoke, Alan ran the back of his fingers up and down the front of Liam's crotch. Liam said nothing. He looked at me. He ran that little pink tongue of his his across those pink lips. I shrugged my shoulders, gently. He turned and faced Alan. Alan kept eye-contact as he found Liam's zip and began to edge it downwards. He stepped forward. Liam stepped backwards into me. I put my arms round his waist. He smelled like freshly-baked bread. I wanted to kiss the nape of his neck. I touched my lips to the nape of his neck. Alan kept his eyes on Liam's. "Get his belt, Max." My hands round Liam's waist wandered and found the clip of his snake-belt. I flicked it open. Alan had lowered his zip and was now edging the flaps of his school trousers apart. I could hear Liam's breathing. His head tilted back a bit. I knew where Alan's searching fingers were now. Liam's Y-fronts slid to his knees. "Hey, Liam, that's nice." I looked down Liam's front. He was fully erect. His erection was hot and hard, and suprisingly brown against the pale ivory of his skin. His stiffy was about 4 inches long. Not in my league. Definitely not in Eric's but he could give Alan a run for his money. I watched Alan's index finger and thumb make a circle as he pulled the foreskin back from the head of Liam's penis. I watched as Alan raised Liam's surprisingly floppy sac. A little moan escaped from Liam's pink lips. Maybe I was the only one who heard it. Alan was working his hard-on, and I knew how expert Alan was with hard-ons. He could make me moan when he set his mind to it. Alan pulled the erection towards him, let it go, and the three of us watched it boing healthily back into an upright position. Three or four times Alan did that: boing, boing, boing. I could feel Liam started to grind his arse against my crotch. The grinding gave me an erection. I wonder if he felt it pushing against his crack. I know what I wanted to do: drop my trousers, drop my underpants, and feel my naked skin against his. Fit my hard up-standing penis into the beautiful crack and feel its warmth all around me. Wait a minute. I just read that last bit again. You see, I had to take a break to get my Latin homework done, and the break lasted two days. So now I've come back. I've read that last bit again, and it reads like... Porno! And it's not meant to read like porno. This isn't mean to be pornography. It's just meant to be a record of what happened. I'm just telling it like it is and like it was. It's true that I'd like to be a writer some day, a full time writer, making my living out of writing. And it's true I'm trying to make sure there's some literary merit in my wrting, especially in this writing, because it's definitely not meant to be pornography. I can't help it if other people find it exciting, or sexy, or erotic, or any of these things. For me it's a record of the way it was and the way we were, and I feel I've got to write it down before it all sort of disappears in the sands of time (that's a metaphor). In a couple of minutes Liam shuddered and gasped, his head falling back to rest on my chest. I slid down his body, knelt and prised the cheeks of his arse apart. By now you'll have guessed I'm crazy about bottoms, bums, backsides, holes with tiny lips, anuses and what lies beyong the puckered openings. Why? I haven't the faintest fucking idea. I just do and I accept it. It turned out Liam Marshall really enjoyed the experience in the third floor toilets. Alan got his sex, Liam got his lunchtickets back, and I got a real friend. It turned out Liam really liked me, but he was a bit shy, and he thought I was 'out of his league', so to speak. Dumb ass! LOL I got to know his body, especially his anus and rectum, far better than he ever would, and I probably loved it more than he ever would. In fact, I ended up having more sex with Liam than Alan did because Alan was becoming more and more preoccupied with his MAN-friend, and men as friends were certainly out of my league. And anyway, I was in pursuit of Eric Murray, and I'd have got there a lot sooner if I hadn't... even now I get a bit embarrassed admitting it - if I hadn't... FALLEN IN LOVE. R. Leslie Morrison. That was his name. That is his name. R. Leslie Morrison. The R stands for Robert, but he uses Leslie as his first name. Why? I don't know. I've never asked him. Life is full of little mysteries. You can go around solving them, or pretending you've solved them, or just accept them. I just accept them. R. Leslie Morrison. A First Year, and I, a Third Year, fell head-over-heels. Actually, Leslie was the one who nearly fell-head-over heels, literally, and I was there to catch him when he fell. Friday, 3.30, the end of school, and the end of the school week. For some reason, lost in the mists of time, I had to go down to the City Centre. I guess I was on an errand for mum, otherwise I'd never dream of going into the City centre during the week because that meant taking a second bus home. But that day into the City Centre, diving on for what to me was the 'wrong' school bus, going in the 'wrong' direction, I went. As ever the school buses were packed, riotous and uproarious. I usually had no difficulty scrambling onto the bus and parking my cute backside onto the lap of whatever 6th Year would have me, and quite a few would. We'd sit there as the bus trudged it way up Carnegie Avenue, me grinding my bottom into the older boy's lap, feeling him harden beneath me. God, what a little tart I was. But it was all in good fun, and, no, I would not get off the bus early and let a Sxith Former walk me across the Cairny Park. I valued what was left of my virginity. But the City centre bus was alien territory, and I ended up in pack of younger boys crammed onto the platform. I was just thinking "Fuck this for a month of Sundays", when I raised my head and found myself looking into a pair of impossibly beautiful eyes - grey, fringed with heavy lashes. B-ring, b-ring went the strings of my heart. That was the sound of the departure bell but to me... I let my gaze scan the face that held those beautiful eyes. It couldn't possibly live up to them. But it did and more. The clear skin, the cheekbones, the straight little nose, not too little, the clearly defined but not too full lips, the small ears, the freckles across the bridge of the nose, the longish neck, the fringe of ash brown hair straight-cut across the clear forehead. I lowered my gaze to take in the broad shoulders, the slim torso that slid hipless into the school trousers. The bus jolted along, and I was happily thrown into the bearer of those beautiful eyes. The platform was packed, dangerously packed, we couldn't have separated if we'd wanted to. I mumbled a 'sorry', and realised I was apologising to a First Year - unheard of! I knew it was a First Year because we all wore ties to signify the Year we were in. This was a First Year - tall, elegant, beautiful, but, nevertheless, a First Year; and I was a member of the mightily-feared bunch of nutters in the Third. "It's okay. It's always like this." The vision spoke. The vision could speak. And the vision was speaking to me. "Is it?" I managed to reply. "I usually take the Muirton bus." There it was: Muirton. The most unsalubrious sector of our fair metropolis, and I'd just admitted to coming from there. "I know," he said. It took a few moments for the reply to sink in. It took a few moments for anything to sink in. With each jolt, I was thrown into contact with this mysterious First Year sprog and you know what the 'nearness of you' does to the brain - scrambled eggs. "How do you know that?" "I watch you play tennis." Full alert. Full alert. Note the use of the present tense: watch, not watched. Not the past tense signalling a single, fortuitious occasion, but the present tense signalling a delightful continuity. (Told you I want to be a writer.) "You 'watch' me." The boy blushed. Not much. Just enough to make the skin at his colour glow. Just enough to make me want to reach forward, pop out my tongue, and... "On Tuesdays. When the Lower school does sports together. I mean, we don't get to play with you..." (Play with me! Play with me!) "...but we're all at Eliot Road together. I love tennis; my mum teaches me." The last was offered as justification for watching me. Fair enough. "You're very good." "Thanks..." It was my turn to pink up a little. "Hey, this isn't fair. You know my name, but I don't know yours." I'd jumped the gun a little because he hadn't said he knew my name. "It's Leslie," he said. "It's Leslie Morrison. Actually, it's R. Leslie Morrison." "Leslie?" I couldn't keep the note of surprise out my voice. I knew the name 'Leslie' existed, but (a) I thought it was a girl's name, and (b) I'd never in my life met anyone called 'Leslie', and (c) I knew it was a helluva posh name. Leslie was akin to Eric; wrong side the tracks for me. The conversation didn't happen in a vacuum. The bus continued to bounce along the cobblestones of the Perth Road; boys were hurtled against each other like marbles in a sardine can; boys jumped off without paying; the conductor hurled abuse at them; and Leslie and I held onto each other, laughing between exchanges as if we did this every day. The bus swung into the City Centre as if the driver was desparate to disgorge each and every passenger. "My stop," said Leslie. "Mine, too," I lied. Not a huge lie. This was only one-stop early. I wasn't THAT desperate. But I was curious to see what Leslie did next. He jumped down from the platform; I jumped after him. He swung his school bag over his shoulder; I had none to swing. If you were still carrying a bag in Third Year, you were a fucking nonentity. Bags indicated willingness, and the Third Year were rarely willing about anything other than avoiding work and having a good time. We strolled along the High Street. Only about 500 yards. Leslie stopped. "I live here." Live where? There was nowhere to live. This was smack in the middle of the City Centre. Nobody but nobody lived 'here'. "Here," he said, pointing at the Bank of Royal Scotland. "The fucking bank of fucking Royal Scotland?" "Not 'in' it. Above it. Up there." Leslie pointed to the top storey of the five-storey building. "We've got a place up there." Pause. "My mum and my little sister and me." What is it about me? Why do I keep falling in love with people who have no dads, or only a dad, or an absent dad. Maybe it's because I never had a father myself. Hold on, I'm not claiming Immaculate Conception; I know who the fuck my dad was; or at least I take my mother's word for it. I refrained from asking where, if anywhere, Leslie's father was, but, to tell the truth, I hadn't the slighest interest. It was Leslie I loved, not his mother, father, or little sister - him! Loved? I don't know. Is there such a thing as love-at-first-sight. All I knew right from the start was I wanted to spend time with Leslie. I enjoyed his company. I loved his smile, I drowned in his eyes. I... "I'd better be going." Was that a note of reluctance in his voice? I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky. "Oh, yeh, sure. See you again," I said, and he was gone, skipping up the marble steps of a door at the side of the bank. He turned, smiled, waved and was gone. I strolled across the High Street towards the bus stance where I'd find the bus to take me the long way home. The afternoon sky was blue, the sparrows were twittering, the diesel fumes were Coty L'Aimant, my mother's favourite perfume. I sat upstairs and watched the world go by in rainbows of many colours. I worked out the hours and minutes till I'd have the chance to see Leslie again -a long long wait till Monday but I had his image engraved in my heart and all I had to do was turn my gaze inwards to see him. Where was Eric in all this? I don't know. On Monday when I got to school - late - Eric squeezed up against me during Period 2. "Tell me about the weekend. Touch me if you want to." Funny thing was I didn't want to. Well, I did and I didn't. I certainly didn't want to use use my imagination to conjure up erotic images. I had no need of them. I had R. Leslie Morrison. Well, I would have after school when I planned once again to take the double trip home. I sat there stroking Eric's thigh in a desultory fashion. I glanced at his crotch. He had a BIG one, an erection fit to break a plate, but try as I might, I couldn't muster much enthusiasm. "What's wrong?" "What?" I whispered back. "What's up? What's wrong with you?" "Nothing. Just thinking, that's all." "For fuck's sake, you get me all worked up, and then you sit there doing nothing about it." The note of exasperation in Eric's voice broke into my reverie. "Well... mmm... well... my cat, it's my cat, it got run over at the weekend. We buried it in the backyard." "Your cat? Your fucking cat!" "Yes, our cat. Her name is - was Lucky. I'll tell you about her if you want." Even to myself I sounded moronic. "No, forget it. Hey," Eric went on, as if were an afterthought, "what about coming up to the Sports Ground after school? A bit of cricket, a bit of tennis, a bit of..." Eric grinned. "You know a bit of..." "Sorry, no can do. Got to go into town. Doing something for mum. Maybe on Wednesday." Maybe on Wednesday. That was to Eric Murray, the No. 1 pin-up, heart-throb, dick-throb in the entire school, and there I was saying I'd help him out on Wednesday - maybe. I felt his cock deflate beneath my finger-tips. I gave it a couple of strokes for luck, but my heart wasn't in it, and I think Eric knew it. Funny thing was, he put his arm round my shoulder, in open class, and gave me a squeeze. Then he whispered, "Your cat really was Lucky - to have you." For a moment I wondered what I'd call Lucky if Eric ever got round to visiting out house. I decided on Blackie, but I knew Lucky would have ignored the name with disdain. I sighed and dreamed on. Emil and His Detectives were on the bus, and the bus metamorphosed into our school bus, and Emil was Leslie, and I was the naughty man, and Emil/Leslie was in hot pursuit of him/me. I should be so lucky - lucky, lucky, lucky. That sounded like a song. I don't know if it was, but it should be. The day wandered aimlessly on as if 3.30 was an ever-receding mirage, but at last the bell went and we were all charging up the ramp and out of school. I headed for the wrong bus again and leapt on at a single bound. My eyes swept the seats and the aisle - no Leslie, no fucking Leslie! Maybe upstairs! I bounded upstairs: no luck. No luck and no Leslie - shit and damnation. And the bus was moving off. I bounded downstairs. The bus was moving off - and there was Leslie, running helter-skelter for the bus. Shit, the bus was gathering speed. I stood on the packed platform. I tried to reach the bell, impossible through the wedge of bodies, and still Leslie was running, tie askew, blazer open and flapping, leather bag bouncing off his back. He'd never make it. But he tried. And he did - almost. His left hand grabbed the upright rail and held on. But the bus was moving fast now, so fast that Leslie was lifted right off his feet, and his legs went up into the air. He couldn't hold on for long, but if he let go, he'd go crashing into the road where other buses were barreling along behind us. I grabbed his wrist with both hands, jammed my right foot against the bottom of the rail, and held on. I'd hold on forever if I had to. I didn't have to hold on forever, it only felt like it. I held on around 500 yards until the bus reached its first stop. It slowed down. Leslie found his feet, ran along behind the bus, and jumped aboard just before it stopped. He was grinning at me. The fucking idiot was grinning at me. "What the fuck are you grinning for, you idiot?" I shouted at him. He didn't reply. He couldn't. He hung on to me, gasping for breath. "You could have caught the second bus," I stormed. He held on to me and grinned. "I know," he said. "I know." "Well, why the fuck didn't you?" "Because... because..." He got enough air in his lungs to get it out. "Because YOU weren't on the second bus. You were on THIS bus." The funny thing was - have you noticed there's a lot of funny things in my life? It's probably much the same in your life, in everybody's life - The funny thing was that all of this was said at the top of my voice and with what was left of his while we were surrounded by other boys on the platform of the city-bound bus, and it didn't seem to matter at all. The only thing that mattered was that he'd made it, I'd made it, we'd made it together. By the time we'd got to Leslie's stop arrangements were finalised. Tennis, together, next Saturday morning. We could've managed Wednesday but I wouldn't do that to Eric. We stopped outside Leslie's door, that weird entrance into the flat above the Bank. "I'd say come up but..." "It's okay," I interrupted not sure I could face any kind of rejection. Did Leslie read my face. "But I've got to go and collect my little sister from nursery. Mum works in the bank till half past four. Come in and say 'hello'. She'll like you... I do," he added with a shy smile. It was my turn to decline the invitation, but in my case it was fear - fear that Mrs Morrison would take one look at my face and know instantly that I was in love with her son. "Thanks, but I've got to..." My pause gave Leslie his chance. "You've got to come and collect my sister with me. Only if you've got time. Only if you want to." We strolled down Union Street towards the harbour. We didn't say much. We didn't need to. At one point we caught each other's eye and burst into laughter. Leslie's little sister was as sweet as him, and as daft as my own little sister. It was difficult to leave them, but I'd be an hour late home at least, and questions might be asked. Not that my mum didn't trust me; she just liked to know where her kids were. Good parents do, don't they? On Wednesday afternoon, after school, after cricket, after tennis, in the showers Eric sucked my cock. Put that way it sounds brief, perfunctory, a matter of routine, but it was anything but that. I made no move towards Eric though I had to admire the hose swinging between his legs. But in the showers he put those strong arms round me, pulled me into him, chest to chest, groin to groin, trembling knees to trembling knees. Then he dropped to those trembling knees and took me in his mouth. I knew thiswasn't easy for Eric. I knew what a commitment this was. Eric, the man-boy of our Year, was on his knees sucking on my erection, sliding the skin all the way back from the head, running the head against his lips, his cheeks, then taking me deep again. I couldn't help it. I pumped my hips against his face, my hands pulling his face into me, I saw him squatting on those muscled legs, his cricketer's arse muscly and solid. I tried to warn him. "Eric, I'm gonna, I gonna," but he only pulls me in tighter - and I'm gone. I'm spurting and squirting into him. My hips are bouncing uncontrollably. I feel his lips flatten my pubic hair. I try to draw back, but he won't let me go. It's over now, sensitive, too sensitive, but still he holds, still he pulls me in. "Eric, for fuck's sake. Le'go." And those big dreamy eyes are gazing up at me. He looks dazed. His lips are puffy. He is Adonis, he is the young Alexander, the splendid Achilles, and he is on his knees before me, me, his little lover. "It's my turn. Let me." And we are sitting on the warm wet floor of the shower room, face to face, legs splayed apart so I can sit between his, and his erection is like a small tree trunk, and I'm holding it with both hands, my fingers and thumbs meeting round it girth. I want to suck it, but I want to see it more. I want to see Eric cum; I want to see the semen shooting from this hot column of flesh; I want to look into his eyes; I want him looking into my eyes, as he spurts and squirts across my chest, my belly, my already-erect-again cock. And that's how it happens. Not ten seconds. But certainly not ten minutes. And Eric shudders and shakes as I work the shaft. Then leans back on both hands to watch himself erupt over me. And I go with my instincts. I catch some up with my middle finger and bring it to my mouth. Lick it, suck it, take it all in, then lean forward so that Eric can share himself with me again. Then we laugh. He hauls me to my feet. And we shower again in the last of the warm water, the last of the soap suds, the last moments of another first time. And we wander across the fields to Eric's home. And I have tea with Eric, and his brother David, and his Dad who is early home from work. And it's so unusual for me to be in the company of other boys and men; my own life is full of women. And David and Dad like me. I'm sparkling. I'm funny but a little serious at the same time. Exaggeration comes easy to me. I'm not a liar but I'm a story-teller, and that's highly-prized in Scotland. As I go, Mr Murray ruffles my hair and says, "You're welcome any time, son, any time," and I go home to face the music as glowing as the rosy sinking sun. Life would have been so simple if it'd been Eric and only Eric. But that night I jerked off to images of Eric, then fell asleep with Leslie's name on my lips. Saturday morning and Leslie sent another forehand whistling past me. Cheeky bugger! This will not stand. I pepper his backhand. I assault his backhand. No matter what he hits to me, I get it back on his backhand, his weaker side, his weak side. Bravely he stands up to the pressure for all of fifteen minutes, and that's a long time, but then I force him wide on the backhand and then slice wide to his forehand. "Get that, you little fucker," I whisper to myself. None of this is personal, but nobody belts forehands past me with impunity - not if they have a weakness I can exploit they don't. I'm clinical, vicious and relentless, and when my point has been proved, I call him to the net. "Hey, you're not bad at all," I grin, "but we've got to do something about that backhand. Where'd you get it?" Leslie, still panting a little, confesses he'd inherited it from his mother who'd taught him for a couple of years. Prepare to be disinherited. "Right," I said, "for the next half hour, I'm putting every shot into your backhand. Not away from your backhand, 'on to' your backhand. They'll be easy to get, but it's pointless to get them unless you get them right. We'll start with sliced returns, they're the easy ones. Next week we'll get onto topspin returns, they're far more difficult to learn, but if you haven't got a decent topspin, you're fucked, technically speaking." We both laugh and get on with it. Leslie picks things up quickly. I put myself into a training trance and the kind of rhythm that turns you into a metronome. Feet in place, racket back early, follow through. Easy - not. At least not until you've done it a million times and you don't think about it any more. You may be wondering, or you may not, how a little shit from the wrong side of town ended up a decent tennis player. It was the wall what done it. The factory wall on one of the many factories on the Industrial Estate that ran just behind the council estate where we lived. I found a wall with a long white stripe about 3 feet high, got my auntie's wooden racket, and stood there, sometimes for three hours at a time, banging my one and only tennis ball back and forwards off the wall. I don't know if there's any such thing as a 'natural' at a sport, but hitting the ball against the wall seemed to be just what I should be doing. The fact that it got me out of cricket was a bonus I never anticipated. It was Leslie who gave in first. "Hey, Max, can we have a break? I'm knackered." I tut. The word 'knackered' was out of bounds in my family. I'm not sure why, but it was further beyond the pale than 'fucked' or 'fucking', not that I'd ever use any 'bad language' in front of mum. "No breaks," I call. "That's it for this morning. You're okay. You can play -a bit," I tell Leslie who beams. "What now then?" he asks. "Let's get changed and wander down the Blackie. What about a milkshake at Delanzo's?" Delanzo's milkshakes are an extension of his Italian icecream, the best in the world. In the pavilion we strip off, fold our tennis whites and stick them in our tennis bags, school bags actually. Like me, Leslie is naked but for his underwear and tennis socks. I wear baggy Y-fronts; Leslie wears a tight cotton slip. God, he is slim, not skinny, just slim, and his chest is fuller and deeper than you might expect, his shoulders are butterfly wings, his tummy absolutely flat, his skin ivory pale, his nipples are surprisingly brown, like brown ten pence pieces. His cotton slip shows the outline of his penis, not erect, surely not erect, but pushed up vertically against his pubic bone, his balls round like encased ping pong balls beneath. I can hear his breathing. I see his damp hair strung across his forehead, I step forward and with my left hand push the hair from his eyes. I know that I can reach down with my right hand and run my finger tip the length of his penis. I know he will harden quickly. He is blushing now but he doesn't step back. We stand there looking at each other. He reaches out to me and runs his fingers through the thick dark wavy hair on my head. He waits. I wait. The world waits breathlessly. "You're hot," I hear myself say. "The quicker we get those milkshakes the better... and get your jeans on. Anybody'd think you have a hard-on." "Well, you do," he smiles back. I look down and find I have! Whoops! "Come on, we both need that milkshake," I laugh. You've probably noticed by now that I'm a little weird. Don't worry. You won't offend me if you think that. I realised I'm a little weird a long time ago. For example, guess who my hero is? No, it's not a sportsman, nor an astronaut, nor even a fucking train driver. I've never wanted to be a train driver. I can't imagine any boy in his right mind wanting to be a train driver. I wouldn't have minded being William Wallace or even Robert the Bruce at a push, but they're not really 'heroes' of mine. No, my hero is none other than Robert Louis Stevenson - R.L. Stevenson, author of 'Kidnapped' and 'Treasure Island' and other novels that set my heart racing when I was a kid. "Ahhhhrrr, Jim lad, drop them breeches, and see how I like 'ee." It wasn't only R.L.'s novels that set me on fire, it was his life. How he stood up to his father and refused to become a lawyer or an engineer; he had decided to become a writer and nothing was going to stand in his way, not ill health, not poverty, not being disowned, nothing. How he crept around the dark streets of Edinburgh Old Town having sex with whomever he pleased. How, half dead with consumption, he crossed America by train to be with the person he loved even if that person was forbidden to him. How he bought a boat and, taking all the people he loved, including his mum, he sailed the Pacific until he settled on Samoa, fought for its people, wrote more brilliant novels, and then one day fell down dead - just like that. The sailor home from the sea, the hunter home from the hill. That was the life for me. My favourite R.L.S. wasn't the boys' adventure novels but the long short story he called Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The story of a man with a split personality. No, not that. Really it was two men with completely different personalities sharing the same body. That's what I was turning into: a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde though I don't think my nasty side was really nasty, but two me's there definitely were. I'm not talking about the two boys that made up me: the boy who sat happily at home, head over his Latin homework, construing one daft sentence after the other; and the boy who knelt in the toilets trying to lick the juices out of Liam Marshall's rectum. No, no. There was nothing exceptional in that. Most boys are two boys: the boy for home consumption, and the boy out in the streets with his mates. It's strange but the further I drifted away from Eric, the harder he pursued me. And not just for the sex. I ended up having tea at the Murrays regularly after every Wednesday practice, and then on every Saturday afternoon after I'd sit and watched Eric cracking a cricket ball round Hamilton Road, taking 'Man of the Match' more often than not. My Saturday mornings were taken up by my own matches, tennis. Leslie got into the habit of turning up for these matches. He was completely accepted by the Under-15s because it was obvious he could be a heck of a player if he ever got his backhand grooved, and it fell to me to groove his backhand. After every match, we'd catch the bus to the city centre, to Leslie's home where his mum fed us burgers and chips and Coke. I always felt a bit rotten not being able to spend the afternoon with Leslie and/or his family, but it was tacitly accepted that a First Year couldn't sit and watch U-15 cricket matches without having a damned good reason. Being with me couldn't supply that reason. Leslie also had a couple of hours' tennis practice with me every Tuesday after school. It wasn't too difficult to juggle these commitments. What was difficult was to move from the affection and lust I had for Eric to the love, and, yes, lust, I felt for Leslie. Wow, this has got awfully serious, and it wasn't like that at all. It was just so damned busy, and so damned exhausting. I hardly ever tossed myself off before going to sleep; my head hit the pillow and I was dead to the world - the dreamless sleep of the damned. And there was an added complication. Alan's MAN-friend wanted to 'meet' me. I wasn't entirely sure what 'meeting' the MAN would involve, but knowing Alan, it would be scary, thrillingly scary. There were very few men in my life. My dad had mysteriously disappeared almost before I knew him, and his disappearance was not a question we could broach with mum. She had her private life; we had ours. Whole areas were off-limits to both sides. To tell the truth, I was quite scared of men, terrified, whether it was the postman, milkman, or a policeman come to report our mischievous behaviour, or even the rentman. I'd vanish into the bedroom until the intruder disappeared. It took me sometime to get used to Mr Murray putting his hand on my shoulder or ruffling my hair, though to be strictly honest there was something sexually arousing about the touch or scent of a man. But to actually meet a man who saw a boy as sexually desirable was something different. I avoided Alan's invitations. I hemmed and hawed, found excuses, invented excuses, and for the first time in all our years together simply lied to Alan. It didn't work, of course. In the end Alan simply tricked me into the encounter. Like many of my friends, I was obsessed by snooker. There were three snooker halls within fifteen minutes' walking distance of the school, and you could find up to two dozen Bruce boys frequenting these 'dens of iniquity' during the last period on any day of the week. Bruce Academy was very strict about somethings - "don't piss on the toilet seats" - and remarkably lax about others - Period 6 registration. During Period 6 each day, we were in tutor groups; half the time the tutor didn't turn up, and half the time half the boys didn't turn up; the trick was to synchronise both halves! I was addicted to snooker, but I didn't have much chance to play because of my commitments to Leslie, Eric, and to my school work. I wasn't a 'swot' but I'd always been at the top or near the top in my classes and I wasn't about to sacrifice that. So when Alan suggested we skip Friday Period 6 and start the weekend early by playing snooker at his home, I didn't think twice. David, or Dave, was already there. I didn't need an introduction. We got into Alan's house - his mum was at Auntie May's - dumped our stuff in the lounge (we had a living room; the Aitkens had a lounge) and raced each other for the bedroom. The first I saw of Dave was his arse bent over the snooker table. I didn't recognise him at once, not yet being on speaking terms with his arse, but as soon as he turned round I knew it was him, David, Dave, the MAN Alan claimed he loved and who loved him. "Max meet Dave. Dave meet Max." Dave beamed and his smile lit up the room. Alan hadn't lied. The man was seriously handsome. Somewhere between 20 and 30. I'm no good at ages. Tallish and well-builtish. Shaggy brown hair, needing a trim. Strong eyebrows, a favourite of mine. Brown eyes that smiled. Hell, I know eyes can't smile, but they can add to a smile. A generous mouth with little laughter lines. Five o'clock shadow even though it was only 10 to 3. White socks, light denim jeans and a Celtic football shirt - at least he wasn't a blue-nosed Rangers' bastard. He stretched out his hand to me. Automatically, I raised mine. Bruce Academy is strict about etiquette. He took my hand. His grip was strong but not oppressive. His skin was warm and dry. Mine was damp. "Hi, Max. Nice to meet you at last. Alan's told me lots about you. He wasn't fibbing." I tried for nonchalance but it came out as a squeaked "Same to you," though that didn't make much sense. "Here," said Dave, "have my cue. You two have a game. I'll just lie back and watch you. Just get yourselves warmed up." An alarm bell went off in my head. What the hell were we warming up for? Dave took a few steps and let himself fall backwards onto the bed. "If you need any help," he added, "just whistle. You know how to whistle don't you. Just put your lips together, and... blow." Alan smirked at me. "That's what Dave calls a blow-job." I must have looked nonplussed because Alan frowned and added, "I'll explain later, dummy." He kicked off his school shoes and booted them into a corner; I followed suit. The carpet pile was thick below our feet. We'd been playing for about 10 minutes and I was just finding rhythm and concentration when Alan called: "Show me how to play left-handed again, Dave?" Dave swung himself from the bed. I admired how fluent his movement was, and wondered for a moment if he played tennis. He stood behind Alan who leant on the left side of the snooker table holding the cue awkwardly. Dave slipped one arm round Alan's waist, the other arm helped steady and sight the cue. His face was very close to Alan's and I couldn't help feel a twinge of jealousy. The boy half turned and smiled at the man; the man returned the smile, leaned forward and kissed the boy gently on the lips. My treacherous penis twitched into life. I knew Dave was murmuring in Alan's ear. I couldn't make out what he was saying. Then I saw his hand move inside my friend's white school shirt and I knew he was stroking my friend's chest and tummy. I saw Alan's eyes close in slow delight and guessed Dave was concentrating on his nipples; Alan's nipples were ultra-sensitive; we had a standing joke you could get anything from Alan as long as you stroked his nipples. I watched Dave's free hand slip lower, then heard a familiar click, the click of a school 'snake' belt snapping open, followed by the long slow sigh of Alan's zip being lowered. Dave pressed against Alan from behind and I saw the bulge at the front of his jeans press into the crack of Alan's buttocks. Surreptitiously, I hoped, I worked my lengthening penis from the horizontal to the vertical. "Fuck snooker," I heard Alan whisper. Alan took small steps backwards, moving Dave backwards with him. As the boy moved, his grey school flannels slid down to his knees, then down to his ankles. He giggled as they backed towards the bed. The sight was erotic and comical. I wondered if they remembered I was in the room. I pretended to concentrate on the snooker but worked the white to the other side of the table so that the bed was in my line of sight. I watched man and boy tumble backwards onto the double bed. "Hey, Max. Come and join us if you get bored with the snooker." That was Dave. "Fuck the snooker," added Alan. "Come on, Max. This is a lot more fun." I mumbled something about needing to practise and bent my head over the table. I could still see what was going on - a wrestling match, boy giggling, man laughing, as they wrestled each other's clothes off until both only wore underpants. Both wore slips, both had obvious erections. Although Dave was quite young, he really was a man. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep, his nipples intimidatingly big, and he had hair on his chest. Not lots of it, but there was fine black hair, and just below his belly button a thin line of dark hair widened into a delta that fanned out below his underwear. And he had hair on his balls, his big balls. I hadn't seen that yet but I knew from the dark hair on his legs, and the dark hairs sticking out from the bottom of his slip that he had really hairy balls. I'd never seen hairy balls. Some of the older boys at school, the Sixth Formers, had hair on their chests but I'd never noticed hairy balls, possibly because I hadn't observed that closely. Dave raised his hands and entwined them behind his head. Hairy armpits! Seriously hairy armpits. A man's armpits. I'd noticed a few hairs in Eric's armpits; actually I'd licked them a few times. I knew there were dark shadows in my own armpits, but nothing like Dave's. Nothing like the thick forests of hair that hung glossily down in each armpit. Alan's looked pale and vulnerable against the strength of the man. He looked much younger than his 13 years. He reminded me of when we were 11 and just beginning secondary school. He lay there, stretching along Dave's body, chest to chest, so that he could reach up and exchange kisses and nibbles. I watched as he chewed at Dave's lips, actually chewed on them, then slid his face down to the man's chest. I saw his pink lips close round the brown nub of Dave's right nipple and chew on it. He looked for all the world like an over-grown infant suckling at his father's breast. I watched Dave's hands slide down Alan's back, under his slip, then wriggle the underwear over and down my friend's buttocks until they were palely and innocently exposed. Dave caught my eye. I blushed and looked studiously down at the snooker table, but I couldn't keep my eyes down; I had to look, watch, observe, and, I admit it, lick my lips. Alan's underwear was down at his knees. Dave caught my eye again, and this time he held me. He smiled and patted the side of the bed. I laid the cue against the table and moved to the bed. I sat down. I don't think Alan knew I was there. I could hear the sounds he was making, wet, smacking, gurgly sounds. My eyes moved to Dave's hands and my friend's buttocks. Using his big hands, Dave gently prised Alan's buttocks apart, then just as gently pressed them together again. He continued doing this - apart, closed, apart, closed, apart, closed... As he opened the boy's buttocks, his middle fingers slid closer and closer to the little pinky brown button at the centre until the tips of his fingers met right over the hole. It was very warm in the bedroom. The skin of Alan's buttocks was damp with sweat; his little hole looked moist. I watched as Dave held the boy's buttocks open and let his right middle finger tip move backwards and forwards over Alan's hole. I heard Alan sigh and watched his arse push up towards the invader. With a shock I realised this wasn't the first time for Alan, that he and Dave had done this lots of times before, and that it must feel good. I'd resisted Alan's assaults on my own most intimate place because all the old taboos were still in place. Now I was fascinated by my friend's little brown pucker, the little pink rose at the centre of his being. This spot was as much a part of him as any other part, and as such it deserved to be loved just as much as any other part. The frown on my face was one of concentration, not one of disapproval. Alan's little ring of muscle, the sphincter, seemed to surrender all at once, much as I surrendered my own prejiduce. Dave's finger slid in to the first knuckle. Gently he began finger-fucking my best friend. I'd seen my brother's mate Dougal finger-fucking Marie O'Doherty. I knew what Dave was doing. Surely he wasn't going to play stinky finger with Alan. Looking up, I realised Dave was gazing at me. I blushed furiously. He smiled in response, looked down at his handwork, looked up at me again, and nodded. I knew it was an invitation. Well, fuck it, Alan was my friend, too. Tentatively, I reached a hand and felt Alan's arse; it was smooth, satiny, warm, and rounded, almost like Marie O'Doherty's breasts. My brother let me cop a feel of them when he was in a particularly generous mood. My fingers were drawn inwards, but I snatched them away when they came into contact with Dave's hands. He said nothing, only smiled. Slowly I returned my hand and fingers until they lay the length of Dave's, my middle finger resting on his, the tip touching Alan's backdoor. Dave pulled his finger upwards. I winced but Alan only grunted. I saw the little space that had been created for me. Everything seemed dreamy, out of kilter, unreal. I slid my finger forwards and watched the tip slide into my friend's arse; bolder I pushed forward and was surprised when my finger, much slimmer, of course, than Dave's slid all the way in. It was an incredible sight. Dave's big man-finger and my slim boy-finger sliding in and out together of Alan Aitken's arse. I shifted a little on the bed, trying to get more comfortable. Dave looked at my crotch and smiled, and nodded. I took this for approval. I unzipped and hauled my aching cock into the open; it was stiff and hard, the foreskin already retracted, the head already slimy with pre-cum. Dave whistled; I took that as approval, too. I played with myself for a bit but couldn't resist beginning a steady wanking rhythm. It was stunningly erotic: Alan's pale, slim, boy's body, his buttocks high and curved, stretched along Dave's much stronger, darker man's body. Dave's middle finger, my middle finger aligned together stroking in and out of Alan's anus, the sphincter gripping tightly like a little hungry mouth. My trousers and underpants at my knees, my erection gripped by the fingers and thumb of my right hand, throbbing over my best friend's bare bottom. It was too much. I tried to hold back, believe me, I tried. Then it happened. The squirts, the spurts, the semen spitting onto Alan's backside. I didn't tried to avoid it; in fact, I pulled my shaft down and directed the semen onto Alan's hole, onto my fingers, onto Dave's fingers. Four, five, six spurts splattered into the valley between my friend's buttocks. I was mortified, ashamed. My desire and my cock collapsed almost immediately. One moment I was on fire with lust, the next all I wanted to do was get out of that room. The smell of sex was over-powering. I pulled up my underpants, scrambled from the bed, pulled up my trousers, zipped myself up, and couldn't find my shoes. Where the fuck had I kicked them? "They're under the bed." Who the fuck was that? "Max. Your shoes are under the bed." It was Dave. I didn't look at him. I dropped to my knees and peered under the bed. Yes, they were there! I grabbed them at hauled one on. It didn't fit. Shit, it must be Alan's. No. Alan's were over there. I realised I was cramming my right foot into my left shoe. Fuck it. I got my right shoe on my right foot, my left shoe on my left foot. I headed for the door. I couldn't resist turn for a last look. Alan was down Dave's body. Dave's underwear was round his ankles. Alan was holding Dave's stiff cock straight up. God, the man was big, big and hairy and brutal - and yes, yes, beautiful. His balls were huge; at least huge by any standard I knew. And, yes, they were big hairy balls. Alan was kissing, caressing, wanking the top half of Dave's shaft. Dave was sat up against the headboard, hands clasped behind his head, eyes closed. "Hey, Max, don't go," said Alan. "Dave's not going to hurt me. He's put it in me lots of times. And I want it 'cos I LIKE it!" "Sorry, got to go," I called, in what I thought was my most manly, my most assured voice though it probably leapt an octave. "Mum's expecting me." "You don't have to go, you know." That was Dave's voice. His eyes were open. He was smiling at me; his smiles felt like pats on the head. "Come on, baby, please don't go," he whispered. This baby went. I never saw Dave again. At least I never saw him in flagrante delicto (I'm actually pretty good at Latin.) I did have a hamburger or a pizza with Dave and Alan a few times, and he was always good fun to be with, and he never mentioned that time in Alan's bedroom. It turned out Dave was a solicitor, Alan's dad's business and family solicitor. That's how Alan met Dave. Alan told me they liked each other instantly. Alan explained how he had come on to Dave, not the other way round. How Dave had resisted his charms for ages but then had finally given in after Alan had persuaded him to come round for a bit of snooker. I knew how persuasive Alan could be. They are still together. It's been three years and they are still together. In fact, Alan says he's going to study Law at university though he wants to be a barrister rather than a solicitor. Alan will make it; he's a determined little bugger; whatever Alan wants, Alan usually gets. Alan wanted Dave, and he got him - little bugger. As for me, I had Eric and Leslie, and my summer exams, and that was more than enough to be getting on with. Summer was a cummin' in and we were all going cuckoo. We sat the examinations with the temperatures in the mid-80s. I felt I'd done well in the circumstances and, since the results wouldn't be known till late August, flung myself into a whirlpool of sport and romance. So buoyed up was I that I turned out for House cricket side and - wait for it - ran out Eric Murray! Fielding in the deep, and taking advantage of the only shade, a battered old elm tree, for miles around, my mind was on lower things when the inevitable red rocket came bombing out of the sky towards me. Eric had hit a belter, a certain six, and all I had to do was get out of its way. I panicked, flung up my hands to protect my face, and felt the vicious little leather bastard thwack into the palms of my hands. In a boys' own story, I'd have held on for a magnificent catch but real life is rarely so generous. The ball plopped at my feet. I picked it up. I looked to the cricket square and saw Eric ambling home for an easy four. Sighing, I picked up the ball and flung it back towards the end he was strolling towards. I'd forgotten about the tennis. I'd forgotten hours and hours of tennis day after day, week after week, month after month had strengthen my right arm abnormally. The ball curved against the blue in a low parabola, the standard y2 = 4ax, where 2a is the distance between focus and directrix (okay, I'm showing off). The ball soared towards the wicket. Then dropped plumb onto the bails. Eric stopped dead, a good three feet outside his crease, dropped his bat, pulled off his gloves, and saluted me - with his middle finger. Both sides fell about laughing. Eric saw the funny side and joined them. I stood there in the deep blushing aplogetically and wishing the ground would swallow me up. The match was on Friday. Mercifully there were no more inter-school matches, so we had Saturday afternoon free. "Why the hell can't we leave on Saturday morning? That'll give us the whole day. Why wait till Saturday lunchtime?" Eric wasn't best pleased, and I couldn't expain to him that Saturday mornings were sacrosanct. That Saturday morning was free but I'd promised it to Leslie. It was the last Saturday before the last week of school and I wasn't sure how much I'd see of Leslie during the summer. I knew Leslie and his family spent most of the summer in Montrose, only 10 miles away, but for me it might as well have been on another planet. Much as I loved Eric, and I did, oh how I did, I couldn't give up my last Saturday with Leslie. "Okay then, but we're leaving early. One o'clock, sharp. It'll take us about an hour and half to bike out to Inverbervie. You bring the sandwiches; I'll bring the drinks. And be ready, Max!" Eric turned to go, turned again, and grinned: "Great run out, you lucky wee shit," slung his cricket back over his broud shoulders and strode off home. I watched him go - what an arse! - then turned back to the tennis courts. I could get in half an hour's serving practice before bundling off to Alan's for tea. For a moment I wondered whether Dave might be there; I wasn't sure whether the prospect appealed or appalled. Saturday 10 minutes to 1, and there I stood in T-shirt and tight shorts, waiting for Eric, horribly self-conscious. I'd borrowed Iain's bike, a fucking racer. I hated bicycles at the best of times - terra firma for me, please - and there I was propping a 20-speed racer against a pair of tight silver Lycra shorts. I had the feeling everyone in the Square was hiding behind their curtains, peeping at me, giggling at my humiliation. Shit, what if a boy got a hard-on in these things! My cock stirred at the thought, and I switched my focus to the sandwiches I'd made. Peanut butter sandwiches, my favourite. Smooth peanut butter, not that crunchy stuff that sticks to your teeth and makes you feel you've got to brush them again and again. Eric raced round the corner, tilting his bike so far over, that I thought, hoped, he'd fall flat on that gorgeous arse of his. He braked within inches of my legs, throwing dust all over my freshly-washed cotton tennis socks. Prat! But I loved him even more for those little human weaknesses. Who was Eric trying to impress if not me? What the fuck was that noise? It was coming from the carry-bag fixed to the back of Eric's bike. What was that? Something about being a naughty boy and letting your knickers down. Got it. It was the Beatles. Googoo-goo-choo, or something like that. Must be one of those transistor radios. Fuckin' expensive. "Hi, sweetheart. Come on, let's get going." Sweetheart! Eric Murray had just called me 'sweetheart'! Then I remembered. That's what Mr Murray called his boys, and now I was 'sweetheart' to Eric. Off we peddled into the bright hot sunshine. We turned into the industrial state, deserted on a Saturday afternoon, and took the dual carriageway that led deep into the heart of the country. I was relieved that Eric took the official cycle track that ran just above the roadway proper. No cyclist I. And I wanted to concentrate on Eric's arse, those powerful thighs, and his curving back rather than be totally focussed on carwheels that whizzed by only inches from my unprotected legs. Have you ever had a perfect day? I've had a few perfect days, but few more perfect than that last Saturday of the school year. In the morning Leslie had been great fun, worked his ass off, and finally managed a dependable backhand, switching from low slice to kicking topspin just as I wanted it. If he worked at the same level during the next six months, he'd be a helluva player, and a helluva tennis partner. Okay, that's a little selfish I know, but the idea of spending time at my favourite sport with my favourite person... guilty flushed through me as I watched Eric peddling stoically on. Why couldn't I just love both of them equally? Maybe I did, but there was no way to test that. Maybe 'love' was a word in neither of their vocabularies. I sighed, bent my head, and peddled hard to keep up with Eric. Eric was right. Inverbervie was worth it. High grasses, burned golden by the unnatural summer sun, swished down to a river that still gurgled merrily with the freezing waters from the Grampians in the distance. Apart from the throaty bubbling river noises, all was still, even the birds stunned by the afternoon heat. It felt like Eric and I were the only ones left outdoors in Scotland; everyone else had fled to the shade of bars, pubs, restaurants and hotels. Our t-shirts hung on a bush. Shoes and socks were tucked in its shade. Eric lay flat on his back, not in the tickly grass, but on the tartan blanket he'd brought. I sat above him, drawing a blade of grass down his chest, sweeping it across his nipples, down over his muscly stomach, into his belly button, and then down across the crease marks the elastic had made across his waist. "That tickles." "I know. It's meant to." "Do something." "Do what?" "Kiss me." Kiss him! First it was 'sweetheart', and now Eric Murray, heart-throb supreme, was asking me to kiss him. Straight out. No beating about the bush. Kiss him. "Kiss you where?" I looked down at Eric's face. He was puckering up! Either that or he was going to spit at me. I leant down and put my lips cautiously against his. He grabbed the back of my head and pulled my lips tight against his. Yahoo! Within seconds we were crashing mouths, mashing lips, bruising skin. His tongue pushed against my lips. I surrendered and opened to him. My tongue was deep in his mouth. I tasted his saliva. Then his tongue was deep in my mouth, mixing his saliva with mine. I couldn't breathe. Who the fuck needs breath anyway? I felt my skin wet and hot against his; I felt our chests slide against themselves; I heard the popping of sweat bubbles. Then I was seriously short of breath. I pushed myself up on my arms. Eric dragged me back. I pushed away again. I looked down at Eric again. His eyes were closed. Beads of sweat hung from those thick eyelashes. "Kiss me." "Where?" "Anywhere. Everywhere." My eyes gulped in his powerful shoulders, that sculpted chest with its twin raised raisins, the flatness of his tummy, the little innie button, the narrow waist, the wide hips, the creasy crinkles where the elastic had been. I leaned across Eric and ran my lips across his chest. My tongue lapped at his nipples. I wasn't sure what he wanted but I knew what I wanted: to lick him, lap at him, chew him, drink him, swallow him, make him mine, and keep him forever - keep this moment, this hour, this day forever. The transistor tinkled in the background. I recognised the song: Hey, Jude. I made love to Eric Murray's body. There's no other way I can put it. I worshipped his body with my tongue, my lips, my eyes, my skin, my hands, my fingers... anything that could touch him I used to worship him. I reached his shorts. He raised his bum from the blanket. I eased down his shorts and his white cotton slip at the same time. His huge cock sprang into the Scottish sunshine. Na-na-na-na-na-na... Hey, Eric! I pressed its length, its girth against my face. Hot, sweaty, sticky - pure male incarnate. I circled my thumb and fingers to draw back the foreskin, revealing the thick purple head that asked to be kissed. I kissed it, then ran my lips the full ten inches of his shaft. Ten inches. It really was. I wonder if I'll ever see a cock like that again. I don't think I'll ever seen one like that on a 13-year-old boy again. I suppose on some boys it might look freakish; on Eric it looked perfect. The perfect cock for the perfect day, and they were both mine. I felt the shaft pulsate in my mouth. I wondered if Eric was going to shoot his load. Was this another ten-second wonder? No matter. We'd solved that problem by letting Eric cum whenever he was ready; then we'd go on for the second load, and the third when he was particularly horny. As far as Eric was concerned, I thought I had everything under control, there were no surprises left. I was wrong. "Just a minute. I want to get comfortable." I released Eric from the back of my throat and from my mouth. He surprised me by flipping onto his front. "I want to lie here and listen to the river," he said. "You do what you want," he added. Taken by surprise, I blurted out, "And what am I meant to be doing?" Eric looked back over his shoulder. He was smiling, but his smile was almost solemn. "You do whatever you want... and take those shorts off. You must be boiling in them. And they LOOK fuckin' silly." He lay back down, his head resting on his entwined fingers. Self-consciously, I struggled out of my Lycras, and sat there, listening to the river, wondering what I was meant to be doing. Then I looked down. My eyes ran the length of Eric's body, and I knew. I sat naked, cross-legged and leant down over Eric's naked length. I pressed my lips to the back of his neck. Shit, this was sexier than kissing his front. I reached for a thermos of raspberry pop and drizzled some down the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. I kissed and licked the sweet liquid away. "Mmmmmmmm..." That might have been me, but it was Eric. I let the cool liquid run down his shoulder blades to gather in the hollow of his lower back. I applied my lips again. I kept my hands away. Hot skin to hot skin was not needed on a day like this. Eric turned his face to the side. I poured some of the sweetness against his lips. I returned to his back and observed the way it fitted into the rounded curve of his buttocks. Those muscled buttocks with their big dimples on either side. Oh, things of beauty are a boy's buttocks forever. I wondered... "whatever you want". Oh well, all he could do was kill me. With my left hand I eased his left buttock away from its twin. Dare I? Dare I? Dare I? I dared. The dribble of raspberry pop ran into the cleft of his bum and collected at its sweet little centre. I wasn't afraid to admit it to myself. Boys' bottoms were beautiful. Maybe all bottoms are beautiful, but it was boys' bottoms that hypnotised me, mesmerised, enchanted and entranced me. "I can't let the raspberry juice stay there," I rationalised to myself. It'll just get sticky and uncomfortable. I lowered my face into Eric's buttocks, into the abyss between. I cast aside the thermos flask. This was a two-handed job. It was also terrifying. What if this was too much for Eric? What if he found it, found me disgusting and dirty? What if he sprang up, hit me, and cycled off home without me? He'd have to put some clothes on. That would give me time. Time for what? Time to beg for forgiveness. Time to promise him that I'd never never try anything like this again. Like this. The tip of my tongue touched his ring. Like this. The tip of my tongue pushed and probed his little back door. The tip of my tongue rubbed Eric's magic lamp. Open, open, sesame. Says me! I wasn't sure what I'd do once I got into the cave of wonders, but I'd figure out what to do once I got there. "Is that all you're going to do?" That was Eric's voice. Impatient. Urgent. "All...all..." Was that ALL I was going to do? "You won't hurt me, you know." Then added mysteriously: "Your dick's long but a wicket is much longer." What the fuck did he mean? Surely not. Oh, surely he didn't mean that. I remembered Dave and Alan. "He's not going to hurt me. And I LIKE it." Despite the heat, I was trembling. I looked down at myself. My erection was hot and hard. I waddled on my knees between Eric's legs. I moved them apart. I wasn't sure what to do next. Or even if that's what I was meant to be doing. Eric's hands came round behind him; he grasped his buttocks and pulled them apart. There could be no misunderstanding now. I pressed the tip of my finger against his sphincter. Hot, moist, giving. I ran the tip of my finger backwards and forwards, increasing the pressure. Nothing would give until it did. My finger was outside, and then it was in, straight to the second knuckle. I finger-fucked Eric. I hate that expression, finger-fucking, but only in relation to Eric. It was so much more than that. I heard him grunt. Was that intended as encouragement? I added a second finger. It took another five minutes before it slipped inside. I continued the sawing motion, staring intently as the little brown eye seemed to open wider. Then I tried for it. Pressing the head of my cock against where I imagined Eric's anus to be, I leaned forward, resting my weight on out-stretched arms. No luck. I was nowhere near it. I tried a third finger, and now Eric's grunts were closer to a steady moan. Tried my cock again. It stayed rock hard but I just couldn't get that initial entry. Come on, Max, think, think. You're a Bruce boy, trying to fuck another Bruce boy, by the banks of the Tay at Inverbervie. You're top of the class, so think, think. Peanut butter! No, that was ridiculous, outrageous, out of the question. But what the hell. I loved the feeling of my lips pressed against Eric's anus; I loved peanut butter; it was the perfect solution. And thank God, I used the smooth creamy kind. Thank goodness, I'd kept the peanut butter in its jar, intending to do the sandwiches at the last minute. Twisting like some circus contortionist, I managed to extract the jar from the carry-bag, twist the lid off, get out a great gob on my middle finger, and apply it to Eric's hole. If Eric knew what I was doing, he didn't let on. I tasted the peanut butter; it now had a sourish taste but was far from inedible. In fact, it was finger-licking good, so I licked it from my middle finger, then shoved another gob up Eric's bum. Then the delicate part. I looked around. No wasps - yet, but be quick. A huge gob in my right hand, grip my seven inches and run the butter up and down its length. The butter was already running in the heat. I leaned over Eric and whispered in his ear, "Help me." "I'll hold myself open as wide as I can," he whispered. Ah, teamwork, nothing like it! Eric held his buttocks wide apart. The creamy butter was frothing at his hole a a bit. I felt the head of my hard penis touch his hot spot; he held me in place as I leaned forward on my hands again. How could it be so easy now when it'd been so difficult only a few minutes ago. I felt Eric open up to me. I felt myself slide in. He was hot and tight, and I felt the friction against my shaft, but it wasn't difficult. I was in, all the way in, I felt my pubic bone against his buttocks and knew I was all the way in. Eric returned his hands to rest his head. I knew what to do. No lessons were needed. In one way or another, men had been doing this ever since they discovered the pleasures their bodies could give them. I raised myself on my hands, extracted my cock to its head, and then lowered myself to slide deep into Eric's arse. I could see us both as if I were having a near-life experience. I saw two boys, on a tartan blanket by the river, making love. The smaller boy above driving his penis again and again into the bigger boy below. I wanted this to last forever. I could feel, or imagined I felt, the walls of Eric's rectum take and hold my shaft, reluctant ever to release it. And as soon as the shaft was released, all it sought was the joy of that dark, warm, moist place again. But Nature has its own imperatives, and my hips began to speed up almost against my will. I found myself driving harder and deeper into Eric, the long thrusting became short little stabbing thrusts. I could hear my grunts and Eric's groans above the babble of the river, above the tinkle of whatever was playing on the radio. What was that song that mum wouldn't let us hear every time it came on the radio: Moi, je t'aime non plus. I was slamming into Eric now; I could hear my flesh slap hard against his. I wanted to slow down, make it last, but my body said "Fuck it! We're going for it." If I were a dog, I would have howled. Something exploded in me and out of me. I felt my body disintegrating into a million fragments. I felt as if I were shooting stars. For the first time in my life, I felt the sperm leave my balls, race the length of my urethra, and squirt into whatever awaited it in the wide wild world. I felt as if every pore in my body were open, every hair standing on end, my nakedness exposed for the Universe to see -and applaud. Of course, there were no words at the time. Nor even thoughts. Nor emotions. Only feeling. Naked, exposed feeling. I'd lost any sense of time. I was lying along Eric's back, my penis still inside him. "Hey, hey, Max." "What? Where?" "Hey, Max. Let's clean up in the river." "What? In the river? Okay." "Take your prick out first." "Your prick. It's up my arse. Take it out, please." Gently, slowly I raised my own arse up, felt my incredibly sensitive penis, still half hard withdraw, heard a kind of plop, and smelled for the first time the totally overwhelming smells of all-the-way sex. I rolled onto my side on the blanket. I felt arms go around me. Felt Eric's lips against my own. Opened my eyes. His eyes were an inch away. They were smiling. I told you eyes can smile. "Come on. Let's lie in the river." We lay in the river. The water was freezing. We lay side by side. The water was wonderful. "Eric, can I ask you something?" "'Course you can." "Today, when we came here, before we came here, I mean, did you know, did you know we were going to... you know..?" "Make love?" I was grateful for that. "Yes, make love." "No. At least I wasn't sure. I knew I wanted it, but I wasn't sure if you did. I was hoping for today, but, no, I wasn't sure." A thought struck me. "Eric... Eric, do you want me to do that for you?" Eric was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. "Me up you? What do you think?" I looked down Eric's body. Even in the freezing water his cock looked like a young python. "Well, maybe not. Not yet anyway." "I wonder," said Eric, "I wonder if girlfriends will like it, be able to take it, I mean. I guess they will. They're built for it, down front, I mean." Eric must have seen the look in my eyes. "Hey, Max, I'm not a homo. I'm gonna have girlfriends. I'm gonna fuck them. Then I'm gonna have a wife, and I'm gonna fuck her, and I'm gonna have kids, maybe a dozen of them." "But... but..." I wasn't sure how to put it. I was always the one with the words, but I just couldn't frame what I wanted to say. "But what am I doing here with you, doing this, you mean?" "Yes. I don't understand." Eric rolled over on top of me in the clear running water. He looked into my eyes. "Because it's YOU, you silly fucker, only because it's you." I felt his cock harden and lengthen against my belly, and I understood. Because it was me, only because it was me. That perfect day drifted into the perfect weekend, the perfect week and the perfect end to the school year. On Sunday afternoon Alan and I sat in the Aitken's private gardens, slurping noisily at giant knickerbocker glories, quaffing ice cold orange juice - Alan could squirt the stuff through the tiny gap between his two front teeth - and burping at each other as rudely we can could. Alan's mum and dad had wisely commandeered the shady side of the garden. "Well?" "Well what?" "What do you think of Dave?" "Oh, Dave's all right, I guess." "'All right?' Just fuckin' 'All right', you guess. You dumb piece of shit." Alan and I had an extensive range of endearments for each other. "David Marlow is more than 'all right'. David Marlow is gorgeous, and intelligent, and successful, and... fuckin' great at sex." "I'm not arguing," I replied. "I said he was 'all right', didn't I?" "Yeh, you did. But you said Dave's all right... but." "I didn't say 'but'." "You fuckin' well did." Alan scooped out a load of vanilla icecream and aimed his spoon at me. "Admit it. You fuckin' said 'but'." "I didn't actually use the word 'but'." "I know you didn't, smart arse, but it was there. I heard it. You don't have to say it for me to hear it. So come on. But what?" Icecream was running down the spoon, down Alan's wrist. Expertly he caught it with a flick of his tongue. I was reminded of a chamelon we'd seen on a nature programme at school. One flick and the dragonfly was gone. "Well... look... Dave's a nice guy, and he's good-looking, and he's your Dad's solicitor, so he must be bright. But, damn it, Alan, he's a man... and you're a boy. Isn't that a bit..." I hesitated to say the word. "... isn't that a bit pervy?" There it was out. "Yeh, it would be 'pervy'..." Alan tinged the word with a smile. "...if it wasn't me that wanted him first. If there's a perv at this table, it's me. Oh, yeh, and you. As a matter of fact," he drawled, "it was your finger up my bum, not just Alan's, yours, too. How's that for pervaciousness?" I blushed furiously. "Are you boys all right?" called Alan's mum across the garden. "Not too hot for you, is it?" "No, mum, we're just fine, thanks," Alan called back. "You don't care if Dave's older then?" I asked. "No, I don't. In fact, that's one of the reasons I like him. And we don't fuck like bunny rabbits all the time. A lot of the time, yes, but not ALL the time. Did you know that Dave is teaching me how to drive?" "A car?" "No, a scooter, you fuckin' idiot. Of course a car." "I didn't know that." "No, you wouldn't. Not since you get engaged to Eric The Wonderboy Murray. By the way, have you fucked him yet." I said nothing. "Well, good for you," Alan laughed. "That tight-ass has needed something up his bum for a long time. Imagine it being my little Max." Alan said that with exactly the same intonation his mum used. "And what about that kid in First Year? Don't think I haven't noticed? You must be shagging both of them. You're too shagged to help me out at school these days." All this was said with a friendly conspiratorial grin. Alan and I could never be lovers, but we'd always be friends. "Anyway, I do a lot more with Dave than you'd guess. I go fishing with him and dad every Saturday afternoon. You wouldn't know because you're never around. And he's taken me to the Law Courts three times. It's great, Max, really great. You should come along with us sometime, you really should." "Yes, but..." "Come on, spit it out." "Well, do you think a man should be going out with a boy?" Max laughed but it wasn't unkind. "Going out? Going out? I hardly think we're 'going out'. Dave likes my company; I like his. I can talk to him like I can't talk to anybody else -except maybe you. But we know it's not gonna last. At least I do. Listen, Dumbo. I'm 13, nearly 14. I like my life. I admit I'm dead lucky but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I don't know if I'm a homo, or anything like that, but if I am, so what?" He laughed. "Mum'll still love me anyway." He squirted some juice between his teeth. "And I met Dave. And I fancied him, and I put the moves on him, and he... loves it. And we're not hurting anybody. In fact, I think I've learned more about life, spending time with Dave, than I ever knew before. And, tell you something, Max, I'm gonna enjoy it while I've got it. I like the way he looks at me. I like the way he speaks to me. He pays attention to me, real attention, not like Dad, as if I was some afterthought, but real attention. You know something? I think we'd be just as happy together if there wasn't any sex, but there IS, and I like it that way." I hadn't heard Alan make a speech like that for years. In fact, I'd never heard him make a speech like that. He was serious, deadly serious. Them were his secret thoughts, and he'd shared them with me. Those two little boys in their pinafores in the nursery were growing up fast. "And what about you?" he asked. "What about me?!" "Is it Eric Murray or that kid in the First Year?" "Leslie." "Leslie?" "Leslie Morrison. That's his name. The First Year." My look warned Alan not to take the piss. "Well, is it Eric or Leslie?" I spooned some choc ice into my gob. "I don't know. I just don't know." "You poor fucker," he commiserated. Then added brightly, "Why not have both of them - together?" "That wouldn't work," I sighed. "Why not?" came the reply. "It nearly worked for me." "What do you mean?" "You and Dave. I nearly had you and Dave at the same time. That was my idea, you know, not Dave's, strictly mine." It was my turn to load the spoon and take aim. "Hey?" I asked. "Have you ever had a knickerbocker glory up your arse?" "No," laughed Alan, "but I bet you have. Between us, YOU're the Bum Boy." The ice cream caught him right between the eyes, and I nearly made it to the pool before he caught up with me, rugby-tackled, and sent us both splashing into the sparkling blue. *** "Montrose? With the Morrisons? For a fortnight?" My mother's arms were folded across her chest. This meant she'd take some convincing. But at least she'd met Leslie three times and liked him; she'd even met Mrs Morrison, once, in the supermarket, and they'd liked each other. They'd ended up in the coffee shop nattering like old hens while Leslie and I inspected the sports gear. "Well, it's only Montrose. That's not far away. But they're not taking you for nothing. Mrs Morrison works in the bank and she's got her husband's pension..." Mum knew more about the Morrisons than I did! "...but they're like us. They aren't made of money. "But she's getting the house for free and..." "You know! You know all about it!" I managed to blurt his out even though my mouth hung open. It isn't easy to do, try it. "Of course, I do. You don't think I'd let a son of mine go off with strangers. We settled things a couple of weeks ago. I was only waiting for you to ask, or not to ask, in case you had other plans. You don't have other plans, do you?" My face flushed, but one of the reasons I adored my mother was because she allowed us our secrets, the secret lives of teenage boys. That's not to say we had carte blanche to do what we liked; far from it. But she trusted us, and that trust extended to letting us have parts of our lives that were strictly our business. "One thing..." Ah, that note of caution. "Leslie's a bit younger than you." "Yeh, but he's taller than me. Nearly an inch." "That's not what I meant. What I mean is - take care of him." "I will, mum, I will." I grabbed her and whirled her round our small living room. We fell backwards onto the settee laughing. Of all the sounds in the world there are none more beautiful than the sound of a boy and his mother laughing. And in Montrose there was lots of laughter, not only between Leslie and his mother, but amongst the four of us. Mrs Morrison often took Marie shopping or to the beach leaving Leslie and me to find our own amusements - another intelligent mother - though I'm not sure how she would have reacted to find Leslie and I naked on the double bed, arms and legs entwined, hard-ons pressed against each other's bellies, and tongue slobbering saliva into each other's mouths. "What took you so long?" whispered Leslie while licking my ear. "What do you mean?" "I knew you fancied me for ages but it looked like you were never going to get round to doing anything." He laughed. "In the end I had to stand nearly naked in the changing room waiting for you to do something. Why didn't you?" "I was scared, I guess." "Scared? Of what?" "Scared that I'd freak you out, scared I'd chase you away, scared you'd think I was a perv or something like that. Leslie laughed again, then wiggled his tongue inside my ear. "Cut that out," I laughed. "It tickles." I paused. "It's gross." More laughter. "There's nothing about that's gross," he murmured. "I want to put my tongue inside every bit of you - like you do to me." I blushed. "Sorry 'bout that. I don't know why I love doing it so much. I try to stop myself... but I can't stop." "Don't stop. I like it. I love it. And I want to do it to you." "Mmmmm.....?" "I've got this kind of fantasy." "Tell me." "I want to push my tongue right up your bumhole, deep as I can go. I want to pull your hole wider and wider, so I can push my face inside you, right inside you. Then I'd wiggle until my whole head was inside. I'd have a look around. I bet it's warm and snug in there. Then I'd wiggle and wriggle till i got my whole body inside you. I'd fit my head into yours, my shoulders into yours, chest, hips, dick, balls. Arms, legs, feet until I was completely inside you... until we were two people but the same person. It's nuts, I know." I pulled Leslie into me. "No, it's not. That's exactly what I'd like to do to you." "May I please? May I?" The kiss on his lips was my answer. Leslie wriggled down my body, kissing every inch as he went. I raised my legs over my head. Got as comofrtable as I could. Felt his fingers pry me open. Felt his hot wet tongue laving my most private place. And surrendered myself, not to fantasy, but to the dream that had become a reality. Maybe I wasn't so different after all. *** This afternoon I was playing guitar and singing Leslie's favourite song, Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game... and these lyrics have stuck in my mind: So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty Before the last revolving year is through Four years from now, Eric and I will be twenty, and Leslie will be eighteen, and there's only one thing I know for certain: we'll have those new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty, and with a little luck and lots of love we'll still be sharing them.