Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 17:53:06 -0500 (EST)
From: landgrave@iname.com
Subject: Now-2 (t/t)

Disclaimer

The story you are about to read may contain scenes depicting sex between
teenage boys.  The boys, if they're lucky, may enjoy themselves, and if
you keep reading, you may too.  If that sort of thing is against your
principles, maybe you should look around for some new ones.  You might
think there ought to be a law against this, and chances are there already
is.  The law will have more or less the same kind of reality as the story
does, except that whether you believe in it or not, it could get you into
trouble.  You're on your own there.  Try not to be unduly paranoid, though,
because that spoils the fun.


**********************************************************************

We touched down briefly at Starfuck's for the helmet and some gum, and
then buzzed over onto the freeway.

I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling at that point.  I had a
sort of panicked feeling of happiness.  Maybe it wasn't real, maybe I
didn't know what I was doing anymore.  Even though I'd been dreaming
about this moment for months, the rational part of me never expected it
to come true.

If I could have frozen that moment in time, I think I would have.  The
future was a blank page, and I didn't really want to turn the page I was
on.

I wanted him, but I was so nervous I couldn't finish the thought.

When we got inside, I just grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him
toward me.  His chin hit my lip a little harder than I would have liked,
but I ignored it and sucked his mouth into mine.  I couldn't even
describe what he tasted like.  I was so wound up I knocked him back
against the door while I slipped my hands under his T-shirt and up his
sides.  I felt his nipples with my thumbs.  Then I pulled my mouth out
of his and crouched down and slipped my head and shoulders up under his
T-shirt as far as I could until one side of my face was on his chest.
I could hear his heart pounding in my ear.  I ran my tongue as far
around his nipple as it would reach.  We were hugging each other so hard
I had to remind myself to breathe.  Some of the seams on his T-shirt
were giving out, but who cared.  Then he slowly started to slide his back
down the door until we were on the floor.

I was tangled up in his shirt and his lap.  I started to shake uncontrol-
lably as I tipped us over on our sides.  I didn't know if I was laughing
or trying not to cry, probably it was a little bit of both. He was mine
now.  I couldn't have put my guard back up even if I wanted to, and I
didn't.  The main thing I felt wasn't even how much I wanted him anymore,
it was just relief.  All of a sudden this huge weight I had been carrying
around for as long as I could remember was gone, and at any moment I
would float up into the stratosphere.

I finally rolled away from him and lay there on my back looking up at
the ceiling.  He reached over and ran his fingers into my hair.  Then
he traced a line from my forehead down the bridge of my nose and over
my lip.  I took one of his fingers between my teeth and held it there.
Then I really started laughing.

He rolled over closer and looked down at me.

'That bad, huh?'

'Nah, not *that* bad ... I was hoping for a little more tongue, though. '

He stuck it out at me.

'Yeah, that's it  ... now put that thing away before someone gets hurt.'

He smiled at that, but it was kind of a faraway smile.  He wasn't
looking at me, he was looking out the sliding glass door on the other
end of the room.  There was a little green strip of grass out there,
and a white picket fence.  The fence was so short it would only have
kept out a badly handicapped toy poodle, but I knew it stood for
something, and it was something I'd never had.  I'd never lived inside
a white picket fence, and I wasn't sure what that was like.  Outside
of school, my world and Eric's were pretty far apart.  I had never
thought much about it.  I wanted to be closer to him, but I wasn't
sure where that was.

Then I pushed that thought about as far away from me as it would go,
and tried to enjoy what I had.  I reached over and grabbed him and
pulled him down on me, and then rolled over on top of him.  I had him
pinned for a minute, and he just lay there looking up at me.  Suddenly
his eyes weren't all that far away.  They were focused on me.  I didn't
know what he was thinking, but I knew I trusted him.  He'd never let me
down before.  I already depended on him almost as much as I depended on
Jake.

'So, Eric ... what did you wanna do now?'

He rolled me off him and sat up.  Then he stood up and went into the
kitchen.  He came back a few seconds later and flipped on the TV and
tossed me a Pepsi-Coke.  I didn't quite catch it, and it rolled over
next to the sofa.  He followed it over there and then sat down and
patted the sofa cushion next to him.  I took the cue, but I didn't say
anything.  I sat down beside him, and he put his arm around me and
pulled me to him.  He rested his chin on top of my head.  He didn't
say anything right away either, and I suspected he was looking out the
window.  After a minute he started to rub his chin on my head.

'I want to do this,' he said softly.

We let a few lame videos go by without saying anything else.  I tried
to concentrate on the music as one lip-synching rock star after another
pretended to masturbate in a minefield of mirrors and strobe lights and
cameras.  Every once in a while, the kaleidoscope would crack, and a
little sliver of reality would slip into the frame like a shard of glass.
The rock star would walk away from the cameras and climb into a stretch
limo and disappear again into the world of accountants and tax shelters
and hedge funds.  A few seconds later, he'd be back crying crocodile
tears over his supermodel girlfriend.

I should have been happy just sitting there on the couch with him and
watching bogus videos while he held me against his chest.  It was more
or less what I'd been obsessing about for the last few months.  But I
still had my doubts; he hadn't blown them away.

I guess I expected a little more passion.  I didn't know much about it.
I knew what went where:  I had the basic pornographic knowledge of the
world down cold; but I didn't know what it was for.

Then he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride.  I don't know why, but
that just made everything right.  I was happy again.  It didn't have to
make sense to me, I knew what I wanted, and this was it.  He grabbed a
couple more cans of Pepsi-Coke, and we left the house and got back on
the bike.

We wound our way back out of the little cluster of mickey-mouse houses
and got on the freeway.  The traffic was starting to clot up, but it
didn't matter.  We didn't get off at Baker, we kept going and crept
right by the interchange on our way out of town.  As the traffic thinned
out on the far side of the suburbs, we began to pick up more and more
speed, and pretty soon the billboards going by were just a meaningless
blur of empty promises between one mile marker and the next.

An hour or so out of town, I was starving, so I made Eric pull over at
a truck-stop.  I had a caesar salad, a bowl of soup, a plate of fries,
a shake, and a piece of pie with some ice cream.  It wasn't anywhere
near as good as the diner on Baker, but I was so hungry I didn't care.
Eric was laughing his ass off at how much I ate while he picked at his
club sandwich.

We must have hung out there for a couple of hours.  The iced-tea lady
was about to pour it over our heads.  We didn't talk about anything in
particular.  I felt comfortable with him.  Nothing had really changed.
Or whatever had changed hadn't really changed anything.  I didn't try to
analyze it.

Around two o'clock, we settled up and headed back toward town.  When we
got there, Eric took the Baker exit and drove back to my house.  It was
more or less the time we usually got back from school.  He didn't shut
the bike off when we drove through the gate, so I got off the bike and
stood there for a moment.  I laid my arm across his shoulders and leaned
down and gave him a kiss.  There was a bit of a lag, but he responded
to it.  He smiled at me, and then he eased the bike around and drove back
out through the gate.

My mom wasn't home, as usual, so I went looking for the maid.  I found
her in my mom's bedroom watching television.  She was slumped down in a
chair with her feet stretched out as far as they would reach, which
wasn't quite all the way to the floor.  It didn't seem fair to disturb
her like that, so I walked back down the hall to my room without saying
hi, one of the few words I had reason to believe were part of her
vocabulary.

My dad was out of town, I think he'd been out of town for a couple of
weeks now.  I'd talked to him once by accident the week before when
the phone rang right after I'd ordered a pizza.  He was in Sydney or
something.  He wanted my mom to fax him some papers.  I left her a note,
but I'm pretty sure she ignored it.  She usually referred that kind of
request back to whichever pretty face was answering the phones at my
dad's office.  Eventually some wannabe officegirl would turn up at the
door and ask the way to my dad's study.  Some of them were pretty
tempting, and I can't say I'd never thought of taking one of them a
few doors further down the hall for a closer look.  But that was a long
time ago.  I was past that now.  It was even conceivable that I had a
boyfriend.  I made a mental note to ask Eric about that the next day.

I swam about thirty or forty laps before I completely lost count.  When
my stomach started to act up, I got out.  I walked back to the kitchen
and drank a glass of milk.  Then I ate a cup of yogurt.  Then a banana.
That seemed to help.  I tried to do some homework, but it was hopeless,
I couldn't focus on that.  I'd have to make something up in the morning.
I could usually wing it in class if the teacher would sell me a vowel.

I was really tired, but it was too early to go to sleep.  I don't know why
I did it, but around 7 or so I called Jake.  Usually I just waited until
he called me.  I hadn't talked to him outside of school for a couple of
days.  It was pretty obvious we were growing apart, but I didn't want to
admit that to myself.  I wasn't going to tell him about Eric, but I still
wanted to talk to him.  He was the only one who could convince me I wasn't
about to disappear.

His mom answered, and she asked me where I'd been.  It should have made me
sad, but it didn't.  I could tell she'd missed me.  I chatted with her for
a few minutes, and then she went to find Jake.  He was outside.  I could
hear the traffic in the street behind his house.

'Kevin! What's up?'

'Just the usual.  Nobody's home, and I don't wanna do homework.  What
about you?'

'I'm trying to finish this paper, but my jerk-off friends keep inter-
rupting me.'

'Yeah, you can thank me later.  So am I really your jerk-off friend?'

'Hey, I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it, Kevin.  Does this conversation
have a point or are you just leading me on?'

'I dunno.  I was feeling a little weird tonight.  I probably shouldn't
have called.'

'You want me to come over?'

'Yeah,' I said without thinking.  For some reason, I really wanted him
in my bed that night.  Nothing would ever happen -- nothing had ever
happened -- but I still wanted him there.  I probably wouldn't even touch
him by accident, but at least I could smell him.  I could feel his warmth
in the bedcovers.  That was all I really wanted from him.  I probably
wouldn't even get a hard-on out of it.  The little part of me that took
what it could get was dying to settle for that.  I tried to fight it off,
but I was just too weak.

'Ok, let me check with mom.'

Then I realized that if Jake slept over, his mom would pick us up for
school in the morning.  Anne had long ago lost faith in whatever arrange-
ments my mom might have made to get me to and from school every day.
Usually I'd have called Eric and told him not to stop by for me, but I
didn't feel I should do that after what had happened today, and I didn't
want Jake to pick up on that.  I wouldn't really have wanted Eric to know
that Jake had slept over, either, now that I thought about it.

'No, Jake, never mind man.  I'll just hang here on my own.  You go back
to whatever you were working on when I called.  I can jerk-off by myself,
buddy.'

'Alright.  You gonna be in school tomorrow?'

'Yeah, I gotta catch up.  I missed some test.  I hope I can find out what
it was on.'  He didn't say anything, but I had a feeling he had tried to
call my line during the day to see if I was sick.

After I'd hung up, I stared up at the ceiling for a while. I was pretty
confused.  Maybe I should have been happy, but I couldn't accept that.
I didn't really trust myself to be happy; I'd already fooled myself too
many times.

I thought I heard my mom come home, but I didn't feel up to seeing her,
so I played dead.  I let myself slide further and further into the illusion
of sleep until I wasn't pretending anymore.  I was on the bike, with my
arms wrapped around Eric's ribs.  We were leaning into the curve... and then
it all faded away ....

**********************************************************************

Thanks to all the people who mailed me their thoughts on the first part
of the story.  The next part is way different, and it should be posted
within a day or two of this one, so let me know what you think about it.
Any little peep out of you means something to me.  Jay