Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:39:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Virtual Insanity <virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com>
Subject: Summer of Change 6B

Okay, this is not a story with a whole lot of sex.  Some will come in here
and there, but it is not the central theme.  It's a story about love
between men and self-acceptance, kinda like all of my stories are.

If you're under 18 or 21 or whatever, be aware that in some odd corner of
the universe, you could possbly be breaking the law.

If you like anything of mine, please e-mail me at
virtualinsanity78@yahoo.com and I will be very grateful to you and a lot
more likely to write faster updates. If you don't like what I write, keep
it to yourself. :-)

Sorry this one took so long, but I am still writing!!!

IMPORTANT!!!  This story includes excerpts of Paul & Morgan's memoir, which
I will separate from the rest of the story with asteriks like the one's
below.  If this is confusing, e-mail me and let me know and I will try to
figure something else out!

Join my group!  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/storiesvi/
***************************************************************************
				     Part Six

	I didn't know what to say.  What could I say? It wasn't as if I had
a whole lot of options in front of me.  I stared at Skit for a long moment
as he stood there in the doorway, his pink hair all over the place, the
black sweater like a second skin over his tight chest, his lips quivering
ever so slightly and the baggy pants making him look like a two-year-old in
his older brother's jeans.  He looked so vulnerable and my heart...my heart
was doing funny things inside of my chest. Panic swept over me and I
started to get mad as hell.  When I am backed into a corner, I don't try to
think things out, I fight my way out.

	"I'm not gonna be your fucking boyfriend, Skit," I told him,
snapping the drawing pad shut.

	Skit's hands went to his elbows, a protective stance.

	"I didn't ask you to be," Skit informed me, which only made me
madder.

	"Good, well stop stalking me," I said, waving the pad around
angrily as I talked.  His expression became incredulous as he came further
into the room.  Even at my meanest, he was ready to go toe to toe with me.
I knew guys on the football team who would turn the other way if I so much
as looked at them odd.

	"I am not stalking you." Skit exclaimed angrily.  "I stopped
staring at you on May 16th, when you did your Neanderthal routine in the
gym.  I can't help it that we both work here.  I've been trying to stay out
of your way and as for what I draw, this is a free fucking country and you
can't dictate to me what I put on a sketchpad."

	I stopped talking when he walked closer to me.  He had never come
so close to me since that time in the gym.  The top of my head started to
tingle and burn.  Skit held out his hand.

	"Give me my sketchpad," he demanded and I held it away from him.
He came closer.

	"I'm not sure I should give it back to you, you might show
someone," I said uncertainly.

	"I started drawing you over ten months ago and I haven't shown
anyone a single drawing," Skit said and reached for the sketchpad, his
chest brushing my forearm.  "Why would I start now?"

	He was so close to me that I could smell the cologne he wore, an
airy, tangy scent that I had smelled before.  I couldn't help it.  I
started staring at him silently.  The perfect shape of his pink lips, the
huge, doe-like blue eyes, the creamy, flawless skin.  I wondered for an
aching moment if he felt as soft as he looked.  I reached up and ran my
hand across the side of his face. He stopped straining for the sketchpad
and stared at me.  His eyes dilated and became dark.  I ran the tips of my
fingers down his left cheek.  He was soft...so soft, even softer than I had
imagined.  I moved my hand shakily down until it reached the edge of his
turtleneck.

	"What I don't understand is how you can be supposedly so wrapped up
in me and then come in here with hickeys all over your neck," I told him, a
little roughly.  He moved so that my hand fell away from his neck.

	"You said it," he informed me briskly.  "You're not gonna be my
fucking boyfriend.  So, somebody has to."

	I stared him straight in the eyes.

	"I just don't understand how you can go around telling someone
they're beautiful and then hooking up with someone else," I said,
illogically.  I didn't know what I was saying...or how to say what I wanted
to say.  I needed to shut up.

	"You know that if you even gave me half a chance, I'd -," he began,
but looked away quickly, swallowing hard and fast.  He looked back at me,
his eyes hard.

	"Don't play around with me, Eric," he said brutally.  "I can't
handle it if you do that, okay?"

	His mixture of vulnerability and strength got to me.

	"I'm not playing with you," I told him.  "I swear, I'm not.  I
don't know what I'm doing.  I don't even know what the hell I'm saying."

	I stopped talking before I made a total jackass of myself and we
stood there for a minute, looking at each other and then we were closer.  I
don't know if I moved or he moved, but his lips were less than an inch away
from mine and I could only acknowledge one fact to myself.  I wanted to
kiss him.  I definitely wanted to kiss another guy.

	The sound of someone at the door broke us apart.  I shot about
twenty feet across the room and Skit turned to look at the door.  Drew
stood there, staring at us.

	"Shit," Drew said, with a laugh.  He ran his hands through his dark
hair quickly, his eyes bouncing between me and Skit quickly.  He laughed
again and then whirled on Skit.

	"Is this the guy?" he said, gesturing at me with his thumb.  Skit
nodded and Drew laughed again.  First of all, I don't like being laughed
at.  Second of all, Drew was really not my favorite person in the world at
that moment, there were hickeys on Skit's neck to remind me of that.

	"God, you know how to pick 'em," Drew said, with a laugh and that
was it.  I didn't know how to deal with whatever it was that was going on
between Skit and me, but I had no problem getting angry.  So, I charged
across the room and picked Drew up by his throat.  I pressed my finger hard
against his windpipe until he sputtered.

	"What's so fucking funny, kid?" I asked him and he looked down at
me, his eyes wide and panicky.

	"Eric," Skit's voice was soft, compelling and making me ashamed of
my behavior, ashamed of the one thing I had always been proud of, my
ability to intimidate anybody that stepped in my way.  I dropped Drew and
he crumbled in a coughing heap on the floor.  I looked at Skit.  His eyes
were locked on me, asking me a question I didn't even have the answer to.

	Fuck it.  I was out of there.  I walked out of the room. I paced
back and forth in front of the door for a second before I grabbed my keys
out of my pocket and headed purposefully down the hall.  To hell with all
of it, I was going home.  I had not had a single, fucking problem until I
set foot in the gay antique shop.  So, maybe being there was my problem.

	I was at the door when Morgan stopped me.  He took one look at me
and grimaced, looking away quickly and then back.

	"So, you leaving early?" he asked, then plowed on.  "Fine.  But
don't forget this."  He handed me another manila folder. This one was
thicker than any of the others.  Fucking great.  I walked out of the door.

	"See ya tomorrow," Morgan called after me.  Yeah, right.

				           ***

	I sat on the edge of a bench in Mulick Park, watching Mike and a
bunch of guys playing basketball.  I was supposed to be playing, too, but
my heart wasn't in it.  I mean, what had happened earlier shook me up and
it was like life was not going to give me the time I needed to sort it all
out in my head and make it right.

	The truth of the matter was, I didn't exactly know how to make it
right.  I had almost kissed the guy.  If that asshole Drew hadn't come in
when he did, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have kissed
Skit...and to make it all worse, I probably would have liked it.

	I honestly never had a fucking gay thought in my head before I went
to the gay antique shop and it was bugging the hell out of me.  People
can't make you gay, it's like a proven fact, but if they weren't making me
gay, then I was gay all along and that made no sense.

	So, I hadn't dated a lot of girls, but that was because I got shy
and didn't know what to say around them.  If anybody knows me, they know I
like to feel in control and with girls, I never do, so that's why I avoid
them...  plus, I've never thought about guys like that.  A bunch of
bouncing dicks doesn't even make me horny.  Sure I admire a nice set of
pecs and abs, but just from a weightlifting stance.

	I tried to think about Mike, buck naked and hard...nothing
happened.

	I tried to think about Cindi Patterson, one of the hottest girls in
my class, buck naked and bouncing around...nothing.

	This shit was so fucking lame.  I really was screwed up in the
brain.  I put my head down and stared at the dark concrete underneath my
feet.  Maybe I had some kind of sexual dysfunction.  I started thinking
about Skit...his skin, the way his pants hung on his hips and the shy tilt
his chin always took whenever I was anywhere around.  My heart started
pounding...and my dick started stirring.

	Well, at least I could get a hard on.  Viagra at the age of
seventeen really would have been a fucking tragedy.

	I sat there, scuffing my toe on the ground and allowing myself the
freedom to think about Skit.  I let out a shaky sigh.  There was something
about him...there always had been.  Even when he was staring at me in the
halls at school, it really hadn't bothered me all that much.  If I was
honest, I kind of liked it until the guys started in on me about it.

	What I had done to him in the gym had made me more shaken up than
anything else ever had.  Honestly, if Deneghy hadn't stepped in when she
did, I might have started bawling right there.  With a kind of backward
clarity, I saw what Deneghy had been doing.  She saw how shaky I was about
what had gone on in the gym and figured that I needed a little guidance.
When she couldn't get me to open up to her on my own, she must have figured
that spending the summer at the gay antique shop might help me out.  I
wonder if she had known that Skit would be there?  Maybe I could e-mail her
and talk to her about it.  God knows, I couldn't think of a single other
person that I could talk to.

	When I looked up, Mike was standing over me, squinting down at me
and dripping sweat every where.

	"What's wrong with you?" Mike asked, digging around in his duffel
bag until he rooted out a sports drink.  He started downing it immediately.

	"I don't feel good," I told him.  He wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand.

	"Come on, I'll give you a ride home," he said, slinging his bag
over his shoulder.

	"Nah, I'm gonna sit here for awhile," I told him quietly.  He
paused and looked at me hard.

	"You sure you okay, man?" he asked.  "I can stick around and talk
if you want?"

	"Nope, just don't feel good," I told him.  He nodded, knowing that
it was pretty much useless to try to get me to talk if I didn't want to.

	"See ya tomorrow," he called as he walked off and I waved him away,
giving a couple of the guys dirty looks when they glanced my way on their
way out of the park.  They didn't know me and they were scared of me and I
liked it that way.

	I sat there with the sun beating down on my back for a long time
before I decided to read what Paul and Morgan had written.  It was an
escape from my mind at least.
*******************************************************************************************
Paul & Morgan 5

Paul:

	It was four years before Morgan ever spoke to me again.  Can you
believe that?  In that one afternoon, he fulfilled every pre-adolescent
fantasy I'd ever had and then he dropped me and my family.  I guess he and
Ryan were still friends, but they did more hanging out at his place than
mine.  I saw him from time to time, but he was normally going in the
opposite direction and if he wasn't, then he didn't even acknowledge that I
existed by saying hello or anything.

	At the time, I felt like my life was over.  The first year, I kept
hoping that he would start talking to me again.  I rode my bike all over
the neighborhood in the mornings when I delivered my papers, hoping to
catch him jogging again, thinking that maybe he would ask me back into his
backyard garden, but it never happened.

	The next year, the anger set in. I started high school and Morgan
was a senior there...dating girls.  He was one of the most popular guys in
the school, playing football and baseball and always driving a new girl
around in his car.  Ryan went off to college that year , since he was a
year ahead and Morgan rarely came near my house.  >From time to time, I'd
see him speaking to my sister Louisa in the halls at school, but he never
even looked in my direction.  My anger resulted in a bunch of disciplinary
notices for ditching classes and repeated threats to keep me back one year,
which I knew they would never do because I was smarter than sin.

	Skipping school just made things easier all around.  I wouldn't
have to hear about or see Morgan at all and I could usually get through my
day okay.  I knew that I wouldn't have to worry much about it in another
few months because Morgan would be graduating and going off to college like
my brother had.  Then, even the glimpses into his life that I had would be
gone and I could get on with my life.  Somehow, this depressed me even
more.

	Sure enough, Morgan went off to State where my brother had gone.  I
figured that I would see little if anything else of him and tried to tell
myself that was a good thing, but I was never really convinced.  I would
rather be that boy in the garden, holding a handful of Morgan's spunk, even
if it meant that I was being manipulated or misused.  At least then I was
near him.

	I knew that was a pathetic attitude to have and I told myself to
get over it.  Which I really did try to put forth an effort to do.  I
started having sex with Sammy.  It was something that I didn't really have
to think about.  He was there and he never turned away from me.

				       *** Morgan:

	When I turned nineteen, I had an epiphany.  My whole life, I was
doing what other people wanted me to do.  I lived the life that other
people wanted me to live.  I went to State because it was expected of me.
I dated Kelly Hendricks because she was always around and everybody seemed
to think it was a good idea.  I quit messing around with Paul because I
figured that was what other people would say was the right thing to do.

	God, no one should ever have a person under their complete and
total power, not when that person is a twelve-year-old kid with his heart
on his sleeve...and big, blue eyes professing their love for you every time
you turn a corner.  I wasn't man enough not to take advantage of that in
the beginning, but when I stood outside of that fence and stared Ryan in
the eye, the guilt ate away at me.

	That was his little brother back there, tucked away behind the
leaves, crouching where I had left him, covered in my sperm.  I couldn't be
the heartless guy, but there was one thing that everyone told me was even
more wrong than two guys screwing around...and that was two guys caring
about each other.  So, I tucked the feelings right along with the lust away
in the back of my mind and I promised myself and I made a silent promise to
Paul that I was gonna leave him the hell alone...and I did.

	I did.

	Until the summer he turned sixteen.  He sprouted up over the
winter, I guess. I didn't spend a lot of time at home.  Ryan was always
trying to drag me back home with him for weekends or holidays, but I
started working part time in a local canteen to pay tuition expenses and to
give my friends and parents a valid reason for staying away from home.  By
the second summer of college, though, I was homesick and when the guy who
owned the canteen decided to scale back his business to go fight in the
war, I really had no excuse for staying away.  Ryan and I drove his trasher
the four hour trip home.

	The first person we saw when we pulled into his driveway was Paul.
He was mowing the lawn in a pair of cutoff jeans shorts...and nothing else.
In those days, it wasn't every man's goal in life to have a massive chest
and biceps you couldn't fit your hand around.  Paul was a slender guy, tall
and long.  Every muscle he had was the home made variety, the kind you got
from working hard, which I guess he did, stocking groceries at Miller's
Market that summer. His blond hair was naturally highlighted and he had a
deep tan all over his back and shoulders...and his chest when he turned
around to see us driving up.  He held one hand over his eyes to shield the
sun away and squinted at us.  I sat in the car, while Ryan hopped out,
hauling his bags over a shoulder and heading for his front porch.  All I
could do was stare.

	Louisa came out and banged on my door, her blonde hair and blue
eyes a faded mockery of Paul's.

	"You planning to sit in there all day?" she asked and I grinned and
got out of the car.  Paul was mowing again, his back to me.  He didn't look
my way again.

				   ***

Paul:

	I just pretended that Morgan wasn't around.  It was easier that
way.  I went around doing normal things and acting as if Morgan hadn't
suddenly popped back into my life.  He was even hanging around the house
more, eating dinner and helping Ryan fix on his junky car.

	I went to work and came home and hid in our room.  It wasn't always
safe there.  With Ryan away at college, I wasn't used to sharing a room
with him and even less used to seeing Morgan sprawled across my bedroom
floor, watching tv.  I limited myself to times when they were not around
and spent the rest of my free time at Sammy's or outside.

	My mother told me that Ryan and Morgan were going to the lake with
my dad, Louisa and a couple of cousins on a Saturday afternoon.  I had
worked that morning and Sammy was no longer working at all, so I told him
to come over.  It had been awhile since we had had any free time at my
house, so I thought that it would be as good a time as any to mess around.

	When Morgan came in, we only had our shirts off and were kissing.
It could have been a lot worse, but even so, Morgan was hard to deal with.
He came silently into the room and started picking up Sammy's things.  I
had never told Sammy about what happened with Morgan when I was twelve.  I
never told anyone that.

	Morgan silently handed Sammy his things and opened the door.  Sammy
was frozen with fright as he jammed himself into his t-shirt, took his
things and jetted out.  I tried to be a lot calmer.  Morgan hadn't seen
much. If he'd been a few minutes later, he would have really gotten an
eyeful.

	I stood up and walked to my dresser.  I got a fresh t-shirt and was
pulling it over my head when Morgan turned me around and pressed me back
against the dresser.

	He started to kiss me, with the door open and all.  His hands were
trembling and he was so shaken that I don't even think he realized what he
was doing.  His kisses were gentle at first, then crushing and bruising.  I
didn't care, he was touching me and that was what mattered most to me.  He
drew blood before I even made a sound of dissent.

	"You're hurting...me," I told him uncertainly between kisses.  That
his emotions were fragile or tangled, I never even fathomed.  Morgan was
always in control.

	"Are you and...Samuel Pettigrew...an item?" he asked, against my
lips.  I shook my head, then nodded.

	"Are you?" he asked again.

	"Mmph...yes," I said, my lips still crushed.

	"Stop it," he said and pulled back away from me.  I followed him.

	"W-what?" I asked, uncertainly, my ears ringing with need.

	"Stop it...with Sammy," he demanded.  I was silent.  He kissed me
again, gentler this time, slower, so slowly that I could feel each movement
of his tongue as it glided against mine, it felt as if he were sucking my
soul out in infinitesimal breaths.

	"Okay?" he asked and I was almost unaware of what we were saying.
Almost.

	"Okay," I told him, nodding and he kissed me again.  It was never
even a choice.  I loved him.

				      ***

Morgan:

	The thing with Paul began in earnest.  Every free moment that
either of us had, we somehow managed to sneak in together.  In the woods on
the outskirts of town, in Paul's bedroom when Ryan got a summer job at a
small accounting firm, in the stock room of Miller's Market at five in the
morning, in the backseat of Ryan's car whenever he let me borrow it.

	It became even more urgent when we learned that instead of heading
back to State after the summer, I was being drafted to fight in the Vietnam
War. Almost every night, I held Paul in my arms and he welcomed me inside
of him.  At the peak of his orgasm, he would grab me and tell me how he
loved me.  I would wrap my arms around him and breathe him in, savoring
every second I had with him, too afraid to say the words.

	I knew that I would never say the words.  My being called up for
the war was providencial.  When I shipped out, I never planned to come
back.  I wanted to die in Vietnam.

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

Well, I've done my best.

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