Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 13:52:25 +0000
From: Java Biscuit <javabiscuit@hotmail.com>
Subject: Willow, chapter one

This is a story involving teen/boy, adult/youth, male/male graphic
sex and not intended for reading by minors. If you are underage,
or this type of material is illegal where you live, please stop now,
and go read something else! This is a completely fantasized story
meant only for the purpose of pleasurable reading. It's not meant
to encourage unsafe, unprotected sex, or to condone sex with
minors. These people are not real.

Feedback: javabiscuit@hotmail.com

Willow ~ chapter one

by Biscuit


I pretty much knew I could swing either way by the time I
was seventeen. I was dating a girl I liked that spring but I
was about to swing hard in the other direction. It happened
almost every May or June. Like the needle of a compass, I'd
be homing in on the boy who was the secret north of my life.
A boy I dreamed about all winter long.

It was May in Standishport and the town was about to explode
into summer. Our sleepy seaport home was about to jump
from a town of ten thousand to sixty thousand. The year-round
population of fishermen, artists and regular folk was about to
bulk up with tourists and summer people, a lot of them gay
guys. One of those gay guys was my grandfather, my mom's
dad. We lived in his house on the bay all year long. He was
there from July through the middle of September and the
odd weekend here and there in the off season.

My dad died before I was born, before he ever married my
mom. But I was close to both of my grandfathers, so you
could say that I was luckier than most guys who don't have
a dad around. My mom's dad wrote for a newspaper in New
York. I only saw him in the summertime but I was crazy
about him, Jonathan Sterns.

My dad's dad I saw a lot. He was a fishing boat captain with
three boats, the Belle Yvette, named after my grandmother,
who also died before I was born, the Bonnie Prince, named
for my dad, and the Little Tom, his newest boat, named
for me. Thomas Arthur Sterns Whaite. Even though she
never married my dad, she gave me his last name on my
birth certificate and nobody ever said I wasn't his. My
grandfather says I am, and that's what counts.

It freaked my mom out when he named a boat after me.
That whole summer she was sure I was going to die. Bad
things come in threes, she kept saying. Considering both
the other boat's namesakes were dead, she thought I was a
goner for sure. I wasn't scared, I was proud. After all,
you could also say, third time's a charm. And anything
that Manny Whaite did was okay by me. I worshipped
him.

The real thing about the month of May was Willow, or
William, as he'd started wanting to be called. Every year
I was scared to death that he and Leon, the guy he called
his dad, wouldn't show up. Some years they didn't. You
couldn't count on Leon, though Willow had to.

The very first time I saw the kid, he couldn't have been
more than seven years old. I thought he was even younger.
Hard to tell with him, he's so tiny. He doesn't even know
for sure, himself, how old he is. To me he looked like he
was four or five. He says he was nine. The thing about
Willow is, he always wants to be thought of as old, wise
and generally grown up. He's never been to real school,
maybe a stretch here and there. But he reads constantly,
things I wouldn't pick up unless somebody put a gun to
my head. I think he's been acting like a grown up his
whole life.

I was only eleven when I met him, and I believe, no
matter what he says, that he was seven, if not younger.

We live in a part of town called the Point, where it
narrows down to a long spit with houses built right smack
on the water. Our house is one of the biggest, built by my
Grandfather before a lot of the regulations that keep things
smaller even existed. He's been coming to this house for
thirty years, since before he married my grandmother.

Just beyond our house is a stretch where there are about
twenty little bitty cottages that hardly look big enough for
anybody to live in from the outside. Inside they're not so
bad. Leon owns one of them, and usually he comes for
the summer, but not always, which is why I'm a nervous
wreck in May. He makes a living, more or less, selling
things at flea markets. All kinds of junk, but mainly
imported beads and shit he gets from his sister. She has
a business in a place he calls the bead district, in New
York. His and Willow's real home is Leon's van.

Leon's not most people's idea of a good guy. He was the
kind of gay guy a lot of other gay guys wish didn't exist.
A kind of a boy lover, though he did like grown up guys
too. But Willow was his boy. That was their big secret.
And I kept it. Partly, because I liked Leon okay, but
mostly because I loved Willow. He thought he'd be lost
if anything happened to Leon.

I don't like to think that Willow loved him, but he did.
He's loyal. He believes that Leon was a good man. It's
fucked up, but true. I might have thought he was okay
but it wasn't going to keep me from stealing his boy
from him. No way. Every year I fantasized that Willow
would stay with me, not leave with Leon.

It was because of Sprinkles, my neighbor's dog, that I
got to meet Willow in the first place. It was one of the
first mornings with no school and I was out walking the
beach with Sprinkles. He was sort of a Black Lab and
some other things, a dog that would chase sticks in the
water until his mouth was bloody, if you'd let him. Not
warm enough yet for swimming, but still good to be out
on the sand, getting my feet wet as the tide went out,
knowing I didn't have to go to school. We had only spent
one winter in Standishport then and I hadn't really made
any friends yet. The kids at school were coming around
slowly, not sure how to think of me, since I hadn't grown
up there and I was living in a neighborhood that was
mostly summer people. There were only a few other
houses along the spit where you'd see any lights on in
the winter.

Sprinkles was like my best friend and I was walking with
him, both him and me with our eyes open for any kind of
stick I could throw.

Willow was just about the only other speck on the beach
that morning, except for the gulls. He was unlucky enough
to have a stick in his hand, that he was using to draw
pictures in the sand.

Sprinkles was young but big. He didn't mean to hurt him,
but a stick was a stick, and he knocked Willow flat, then
he did a kind of jumping dance around him, kicking sand
and landing his big wet paws right on top of him.

The dog looked at me like I was nuts when I ran to the
kid instead of to him to get the stick. I was panicked,
scared I'd let something bad happen by not putting the
dog on his leash like I was supposed to.

"Jesus, are you okay, kid?" I was calling out as I got
near him. He was lying there not moving, covered with
sand and looking up at me with his eyes rounded. I
didn't know he was embarrassed, I thought he was
hurt.

Mainly, I was just staring. I know Willow hates to be
stereotyped as a China doll, but for the life of me, I
can't think of a better description. He was the prettiest,
most perfect thing I'd ever seen in my life. To me, he
was hardly real with his long black eyes and feathery
brows, his rosy mouth like a bee had stung his lips. His
skin was a pale caramel, like candy melted down with
milk. I wanted to touch him, so bad. All he had on was
a pair of baggy flannel pajama pants, like he'd come
straight out from bed to play on the beach. I reached
down and picked him up, putting my hands in his warm
little armpits. His big coal eyes flashed at me and he
blushed as I started wiping wet sand off of him.

Sprinkles couldn't stand that I wasn't playing yet and
started jumping around me, wagging his head with the
prize stick.

To keep him from knocking the boy over again, I ran
a few steps for the dog to chase me and grabbed the
stick out of his mouth.

"Sorry," I said to him, "he won't let me give it back
right now." I turned and threw it with all my might
at the water. Sprinkles took off.

When I turned around the kid had taken off. Then I
heard someone laughing and looked up. That's when I
got my first look at Leon. Not an easy guy to figure
out at first glance. He's got this hair that's silver but
he's young, well younger than you'd think at first. And
he wears it long like a mane. When you first see him
you feel confused about how old he is. And his beard's
just as silvery gray. He's a big guy, real big. Maybe six
foot three or four, and he's the type who seems like he
was born muscled up. I've never known him to do any
kind of exercise or working out. There's a layer of
soft flesh on top of it, but the guy is like a mountain of
muscle. And his bare chest was matted up with that
same silver hair.

He was up on the cottage deck, holding the kid on his
arm and I guess that was the first time I was jealous of
Leon, but it wouldn't be the last.

"It's okay," he yelled down, "keep the stick kid."
Then he headed inside with the boy.

I started haunting that stretch of beach, just waiting
and hoping for another glimpse of the little boy.