John's Trilogy, Part 4

When I emerged upstairs, unable to shake the guilty feeling, and slightly
uncomfortable because of the dampness I'd created down below, Coach was
looking for me.  He immediately caught my eye and winked, and I could see
him give me the "thumbs up," gesture.

In moments I was horny again.  My eyes bored into the back of his head: I
sat only a few rows behind him.  When there was a shuffle, I found I could
move up directly behind him.  The rest of the team sat alongside him on the
bench.  There wasn't a one of them, besides Phil, who was out on the court,
who did anything for me.  But I was jealous of them, all-the-same, for they
had the wherewithal to be "Coach's boys."  I mean, they at least could ACT
it, and I was drawn and quartered by my own dirty inclinations!

In a moment or two, and making it seem as innocent as anything could be,
the tip of my knee touched Coach's very firm flank.  Bleacher seats made
that happen all the time.  Still, I knew that he immediately knew who it
was.  Without seeming to notice in any way, he sat more upright, shoved
himself back, the net effect which was to increase the contact between his
body and mine. The heat of him flooded my knee and quickly became the only
thing my mind could focus upon. He turned to give pointers to the guys
sitting on the bench with him, or to yell onto the court, but each time he
returned to a tight contact.

The game was finally over, and he stood up for the last time and turned to
me, for the first time. He had guys all around him, but his eyes quickly
and quietly found mine, giving me just one prolonged look, but a ream of
feelings passed between us in a flash.  His eyes said "we're in this
together, now, like it or not, we're in it."

He didn't tell me to meet him afterwards, and I was incredibly
disappointed.  I was so pent up that I knew I had to find release.  I
waited until the stands had cleared out.  Actually, I knew that I had to
call my mom to pick me up, and I couldn't wait too long, which increased my
sensation of frustration.  As I finally picked myself up, dejectedly,
knowing not what else to do, Coach emerged from the locker room entrance.
He walked quickly across to where I sat.

"I can't stay," he said, as an apology.

"I know."

"It's a bummer.  'Cause that's exactly what I WANT to do!"

"Yeah, me too."

"Your mom coming to pick you up?"

"I've got to call her."

He quickly came to a conclusion, one I knew that he thought was wrong, but
as unavoidable as rain.  "Want a ride?"

"Sure."  Yeah!

"I have to get back home quickly," he babbled nervously.  I could see that
he'd donned faded but ultra-clean blue jeans, and finally I liked what he
was wearing.

We got into his car, which was an old VW station wagon, which shuddered and
thundered as he shot it into gear.  It's muffler wasn't all that good,
either.

I bit my lip and then decided to ask him directly.  "You still have my
thing on?"

"Of course."  He said, looking quickly at me with a look of pure desire.
"I may never take it off."

"Yuck," I said, laughing.  "We'd better figure out how to do an exchange
every once and awhile."

"Yeah, maybe you're right."

"You cum in mine?"

"I did." I admitted.  I thought I'd feel ashamed.  Instead, I said it with
a grin, almost boastfully.

"Can I have it back, then?"

"Like, now?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Uh, I don't know..."  the thought of being in Coach's car, nude below the
waist, seemed a bit risky to me.  But my urgency to get some kind of relief
drove me on.  I quickly leaned over and kicked off my shoes, and pulled my
jeans down.  The smell of the cum-soiled strap pervaded the car instantly.

"You really did, didn't you?" Coach laughed.

"Big time."

"You going to give it to me, or what?"  Coach prompted.

I realized that if I took it off, I'd be nude in front of him for the first
time.  More than that, I would be displaying my erection to him.  It was
exactly what I wanted to do.  I pulled my jeans down and off my feet and
the jockstrap came soon after.  I sat on the seat, nude, and made no
attempt to cover myself.  My cock stood upright like a miniature flagpole
in my lap.  While I was much smaller than him, there was no denying that I
was quite capably large.  (In another couple of years, I'd grow to be
bigger yet, nearly as big as he was then).

Coach slowed the car and looked over at my lap, his gaze driven to look
back every few seconds. "You have quite a big piece of equipment there,
John."

"Not anything like somebody else I saw tonight, and you weren't even half
hard, yet!"

"I'm older, too."

"Yeah, but even among adults (I can't believe I said that!), I'll bet
you're huge."

"I'm big, I think.  Yeah, bigger'n most.  Did you like what you saw?"

"Yeah." I said simply, but I don't think either of us missed the quiet
force of my answer.

Coach cleared his throat, nervously.  "You'd better put something on.  I
mean, anybody pull us over, we'd both be dead meat."

"You want me to?"

"No."

I sat there, then, and finally, sensing that Coach was silently encouraging
me to do it, I reached down and began to stroke myself.  Coach found a pull
off, one that led behind a thicket of low set brush, and shut the motor
off.  The lights inside died with the motor, and he grumbled, then flipped
the overhead map light on.

Coach sat staring at what I was doing.  I knew he wanted to touch me.  He
reached into his own lap, and grasped himself through his jeans.  I could
see the shape of him, then, and he was so big.

'You could take off your pants, too," I suggested.

"NO!" was all he said.  "That would be a disaster.  But would you go ahead
and do it for me?"

I did, I stroked myself first slowly and with long easy strokes, watching
his eyes on me the whole time.  Coach lifted my (really his) jockstrap to
his nose and inhaled deeply as his hand moved in his own lap.

"Can you do it that way?" I asked him, "I mean, through your clothes and
all?"

"I don't know." he confessed.

"Then take them off, please?" I asked him.  I wanted, NEEDED, to see him
again!  "Please," I repeated.

"No, I can't.  It's not right!"

"You want me to stop, then?"  I don't think I could have anyway.

But fortunately, he cleared his throat and said, "no, don't."

I looked across at him, his eyes darting between my hand moving on my rigid
cock, and my own eyes.  I tried to hold it off, stopping occasionally to
catch my breath and to let the wave of sensations settle before stroking
anew.  The feelings started deep in my buttocls and flooded forward, until
my balls were alive in electric orgasm.  I came, hard, squirting a huge
load into my waiting palm.

Coach groaned and stiffened, his legs ramming down against the floorboards
as his bottom came up off the seat.  He stroked himself more rapidly,
settled down again in the seat.  He looked across at me, then with eyes
heavy-lidded, filled with lust so palpable that I knew he was right on the
edge, and grabbed my hand, the one with my spunk still pooling in it.

He held it to his mouth, and I felt his tongue lapping.  His breathing
became really heavy, then, and he lurched up again, and groaned loudly.  I
could tell, then, that he'd done it.

He groaned yet again, and leaned his head back, his eyes closed, one big
hand clutching his forehead.  Then, after a few moments had gone by, he
started the engine again, and put the noisy car in gear.

"I can't believe what I've just done," he said.  "I thought this could
never happen to me..."

"It's not THAT awful, is it?" I asked, perplexed and hurt that he'd reacted
so negatively, for not only had I found it intensely satisfying, the best
climax of my life, I felt that some wonderful threshold had been gained
between us.

"No, I mean yes.  I mean, no, it was one of the BEST pieces of sex I ever
had, can you believe it? Jacking off with a student in the car?  But, it's
so damned wrong, so dangerous."

"You are absolutely safe, always, with me.  You KNOW that!"

"Of course."  He smiled, then, and looked at me, and I saw another thing in
his eyes.  Genuine affection.  Maybe more than that.  Maybe something like
love, though now I realized I had little concept of that, none at all
really.  "You're terrific, John, and as sexy as God ever created.  You are
the best looking young man in the whole school.  And you don't even have a
clue.  Which is why you're so damn cool."

"Me?" I said in amazement.  That thought had rarely crossed my mind, never
in reference to a man looking at me, and even as I heard it and my heart
leapt for joy simply because HE said it, I didn't believe him.  It would be
years before I learned from others that what he said was at least partially
true.  I was a good looking man, and far from my coffee colored skin being
a detraction, it added immeasurably to my looks.

"Yes, YOU, John!"  He reiterated.  "AND, you taste good, too."  He laughed,
then, and drove off.

"Wearin' a wet jockstrap is a bore, isn't it?" I finally threw back at him,
more than halfway home.

"Not when it was yours...." he said, grinning back, all of a sudden light
and joking again, the old Coach I knew before.

"Come on.  You said it didn't do anything for you."

"I was wrong."

"What are we going to do, now?" I asked him, just as the car entered my
home driveway.  The lights were on, as I knew they'd be.  Mom would be
waiting up for my call.  By now, she might be worried.  More likely, she'd
be sitting there doing transcriptions, too tired to notice the time.

"What do you mean?"

"What's next?" I meant.

"Nothing. We can't do anything to each other..." he said, "It's just a
threshold that shouldn't be crossed."

"I thought we already had."

"Not technically."  He said, "we haven't touched each other..."  But I knew
he was wrong.  What was his tongue in my palm if not touching me?

I got out, reluctantly, wanting him to touch me in some way, knowing that I
wanted him to hold me tight, that he was what I'd been looking for all
along.  When the emotional and the sexual get bound up together, the result
is so powerful everything else fades into insignificance.

The next days were difficult for me, and I thought even more so for him.  I
looked at him constantly, telling myself not to, that it was a giveaway and
very dangerous for him, for me.  I would jerk my eyes away, and just as
quickly, the next time I thought about it, they were on him again.  He knew
it, of course, and returned my looks sometimes, and I yet I knew fought
with himself even more desperately.

"I have something of yours," he said to me as I was leaving his classroom.

"Oh?" I blushed slightly.

"You coming to the game tonight?"

"Yeah."

"Hope you can sit close again..."

"I'll be there early."  I said.  My mother must have wondered at my
newfound interest in sports, or else she thought it was about time.  She
never said.  I wore my best pair of jeans, and looked at myself incessantly
in the mirror.  Did I look that good?  I couldn't see it, and yet, I began
to sense that Coach had been right. I had my own driver's license now, and
my Mom wanted me drive to the car this evening to save her a double trip.
Which, I knew, would preclude me riding back with Coach, but she didn't
have the energy to take me, and I had no excuse to turn down the offer.

I sat in the same seat, and we repeated the touching of the previous game.
Coach strove to seem to ignore my presence, my knee and calf touching his
flank and then, unwisely, perhaps, both of my knees holding him, my legs
spread widely behind him.  I looked at the game intensively, as though I
cared what was happening out there (I couldn't have told you who was
scoring!)  All that filled my mind was between my legs!  (Well, yeah,
that's accurate!)

When the game was over (we lost again!) the guys gathered around, sullen
and dejected and Coach gave them a few words of encouragement, then watched
them file out.  Several of the parents game up to give him a few words of
empty-sounding boosterism (hell hath no fury like that for a small-town's
losing coach).  I felt for him, knowing that it was tough having a losing
season, that he felt responsible, was trying his hardest. I felt that I
"knew" it was not his fault.  The team just didn't "have it."

When the hubbub died down, Coach turned to me, then, and smiled his cagey
half-smile, his big lean jaw twisting slightly in an endearing way, and
said, "need a ride home?"

"I, uh, had to take the car this evening."  I said, hoping he'd come up
with an alternative.

"I see.  I wish we could get together."

"Me, too.  A lot."

"I haven't thought about anything else."

"Me, either."

"My life is too busy, too structured." he said, his frustration evident.
"I don't have a spare minute to call my own, and anything I can think of
would look funny."

"Yeah."

"I wish I had some more of your good stuff..."  he said softly, in an
intimate tone that I loved.  "It was the highlight of my week."

"Mine, too.  But I never tasted you!  Not fair!"

"Oh, I'll bet that could be remedied.  You sure you want to?"

"I'm sure..." I said.  Sure as spring followed winter.

"Could you take a brief ride with me?  Shit, that doesn't look good.  I
know, could we maybe meet someplace?"

"Maybe where we were before?"

"Okay," Stephen said, and shot out a big-bonded wrist, looking at his
watch, a battered, paint-stained Timex.  "Say, in 20 minutes."

I was there 10 minutes early.  My cock was hard and I was having trouble
resisting beating off just from the excitement of knowing Coach was coming
here, and there'd be some kind of sex, at least. I was sure.

Coach climbed into my car.  It was bigger, an aging Buick, but big as an
old sedan could be.  He said, softly, "Hello."  My heart sang with
happiness.  It was a lover's "hello," at least it felt that way to me.

"How long can you stay?" I asked, wanting to know the limits of our island
of pleasure.

"I think my wife would ask questions if I were longer than an hour.  I told
her I had some stuff to get done at school.  I hate lying to her."

"Bummer," I said, but our eyes were on each other.  She was there, and I
was here.  And I took him all in.  He was wide and slender, blond
everywhere, I think, and slightly red-bearded when he hadn't closely
shaved.  His nose was strong and straight, and his mouth thin-lipped.  He
had a narrow waist and slender boy hips, I thought, and those huge feet and
hands which I liked so much.  All-in-all, I thought, he was perfect.  How
had I never realized it those first two years?  Compared to him, Phil was a
schoolchild.

"I don't know what we can do," he said, "'cause I'm so uptight."

"Because of my being a student, you mean?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Or because I'm male?"

"No, that's the part I like, silly..."

"Does it matter that I'm a 'consenting' male?  I mean, I could write it on
a piece of paper and sign it..."

"It doesn't matter.  I don't think the school board would give a fig."

"Why don't we just tell the school board to get fucked?"

"I like the way you talk!" Stephen suddenly laughed, and the heaviness in
the car lifted a bit.

"And I like the way you look!"

"You do?"

"Of course, you're perfect.  Your wife tells you that all the time, I'll
bet.  She should."

"Hah!  She tells me she never sees me, the kids are growing up without a
father, and all that.  She's probably right.  And since I've met you, I
mean in the last few weeks, the sex hasn't even been all that great!"

"Why not?" I asked, pleased beyond measure, though, at his words.

"My mind has, shall we say, been distracted."

"Have you been with a man, er, boy, you know, male before?"  I asked him.

"Not really."

"Never?"

"No.  But I've thought about it, dreamed about it, more than I care to
admit.  You've had more experience than I have in this."

"Can you believe it?"  I said, somewhere between pleased and guilty, but
getting more and more turned on by his presence in the seat beside me.

I squinched myself closer to him.  He shied.

"Are you going to hit me if I touch you?"

"It just would be, uh, I don't think that I could stop, if you..."

It was too late for him.  I'd crossed the seat, then, and had one hand on
his thigh, the other on his shoulder.  His eyes and mine were boring into
each other.  A deep sigh came from his throat.  I sensed, then, that all of
his walls had been breached.

"I, uh..." was all he said before his mouth closed on mine.  A strange
kiss, harder than any of the girls I'd kissed, and when we hugged, his
whiskers felt strange against my smoother face.  We kissed drily for a
while, then, while one of his hands, (so big!  I kept wondering at their
size), came across and held my chest, where its heat seared my brain.  In a
moment, his mouth had come slightly open, and his breath was cascading off
my face.  Then, it happened.  His tongue touched my lips and I opened my
mouth.  He came inside my mouth then, his tongue long and big and so warm
and wet, and tasting strangely and faintly like he'd been chewing Dentine.
He pushed my tongue around and explored all of my mouth.  I surrendered
completely, opening my mouth widely, letting him, wanting him, to be there.
His saliva filled my own mouth, and I swallowed it greedily.  I could think
of nothing I wanted more than this.  Our kiss held, lasted minute after
minute, and finally I had the temerity to probe his mouth gently.  He
opened up immediately and retracted his own tongue and I felt another man's
mouth for the first time, feeling his teeth, his tongue.

"Ah, shit," he said, breaking away.  "I like kissing you better than
anybody I've ever kissed."  He went back to it, greedily.  My hand was on
his chest, where I could feel his heart beating a mile a minute.  I reached
the bottom of his sweatshirt, and lifted it, my hand slipping upwards onto
his bare skin.  The effect on him was like nothing I'd ever encountered.
It drove him into a kind of sexual frenzy.  He tore at my own t-shirt and
lifted it, his hand searching my nipples and sliding up and down across my
chest and belly.  His breath was so intense, now, that he had to breathe
through his mouth, too, saliva catching at the corners of our joined lips.

We broke, then, after many more minutes of frantic kissing and
skin-touching.  My hand rested on his flat, hard stomach, just at the top
of his jeans where no belt lurked.  His was just beneath my waistband, but
had delved no further south.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"  he asked me, finally, softly.

"Oh, yes!" I breathed back at him, wanting his lips on mine, wanting to
spend the rest of my life in his arms, his tongue filling my mouth.

He kissed me gently, again, and I felt his hand slip beneath the top of my
jeans.  I sucked in my stomach, which even though flat filled my rather
tight jeans.  I could feel the intense heat of his hand, and my mind was in
overtime, focused on the sense of him, the touch of him, knowing that now I
wanted him to touch me, hold me, more than I wanted anything in this life.
More than his tongue, though I had that, too.

His hand slipped down, down slightly, and touched the top of my rock hard
cock.  My jeans were too tight.  He removed his hand, then, and grappled to
loose the snap at the top of my Levi's.  He couldn't get it past the
tightness and I did it for him.  I ran my fly down, and his hand suddenly
had freer access.

His breath was now a torrent, his hand delving deeply.  He held my cock and
then dipped lower, holding my balls in the palm of his hand.  The heat made
me dizzy.  I thought that if he moved his hand I'd come.

But instead, he removed his hand, and my mind railed at the loss.  I never
wanted to be any other way again.  I thought that my life would hereafter
be right ONLY if his hand was down the front of my pants.

But he moved himself and unfastened his own pants, and I realized he wanted
me to touch him.  I was being invited.  I felt his silky skin, dipped
lower, felt his jockstrap, dug underneath the wide waistband and beneath
its pouch.  Oh, oh, oh!  He was incredible.  IT was incredible.  He was so
big, so firm and yet so soft, and I could feel the mammoth head of him, the
deep ridge around the top, the gaping piss slit, and the heavy veins that
ran down his shaft.  The skin on the top of his cock was the most
miraculous skin I'd ever touched.

Stephen groaned deeply in the back of his throat, the way he did when he
was sexually aroused beyond going back.  He lifted his hips off the seat
and invited my hand to dip further.  I did.  I felt his testicles for the
first time.  They were twice as large as my own, I felt, nearly as big as
hens' eggs, surely the stuff of a superman.  (To this day, I never found
anybody with larger ones, or even close).

We held each other in our hands, then, gently probing, feeling, and then,
stroking.  Slowly at first. Coach's thighs began jumping, almost in an
involuntary thrusting motion.  He grabbed the back of my neck with his
right and, his left stroking me synchronously to his own received strokes.
My mouth was tilted up and I received his tongue.  He made that deep sound
again, and his breath rushed into my own mouth.  I loved feeling it, and I
suddenly wanted his AIR inside me as well.  I pressed my lips to him, and
inhaled.  He sensed what I was doing and blew, then, grunting with
pleasure.

"Uhhh!" he shouted past my lips, the force of air suddenly pushed out of
him as his body spasmed, and his powerful thighs thrust him up off the
seat.  I felt the wet engulf my hand, coating the inside of his jockstrap
and his own balls.  I lifted my hand from inside his jock and brought it up
to see and to smell.

I dipped my hand and let the wet drip down into his hand, still working on
me.  Stephen immediately got the drift and went back to his own cock to
garner more of the slick warm-smelling substance and came back, this time
slick and wet and now stroked me in a different way. The sensation was so
intense and so pleasurable that I had to grab his hand.

"Don't!" I said, "do it slowly.  "I want to feel this good for the rest of
my life."

Stephen looked in my eyes, deeply, then, as his hand moved up and down,
slowly, slowly, in wetness created inside his own body.  The slickened
sensation was more intense than I could stand, almost.  I threw my head
back and yelled.  "Yes!"

Stephen laughed softly and moved his head so that he could see what his
hand was doing.  That seemed to trigger some other threshold for him, and
suddenly something else happened, something which was so wonderful that all
the rest fled into distant memory.  I felt the warm mouth of him on me,
holding the tip of me, and the wetness, the sublime pressure of it, sent me
the rest of the way.  Something deep and incredible built in the back of my
skull, went down my spine, leaving me feeling that I was a tiny man
attached to a colossal penis, where everything was focused, every detail of
my life, all my sensations.  And that accepting mouth, warm beyond reason,
smooth, that tongue moving on the ridge underneath my cock.  Oh,
yeah.....yeah!!!!  I came in huge squirts, again and again and again.
Coach's mouth tightened on my cock, and I could hear him sucking hard.  I
don't think he spilled a drop.  He finally came up.

He grinned at me, inches away from my face.  "You tasted FANTASTIC!"  He
said.  "Better than I ever thought it could taste.  Of course, other than
my own, I've never tasted anybody."  I realized that I'd still not tasted
his.  Now, in the first moments post-orgasm, I didn't feel the need. Later,
I wished I had tasted him.

We parted, and the next days at school were more agonizing than ever.  I
lived for the next moment when I could catch sight of him, and my eyes were
glued to him when he was in the same room.  He started wearing tight blue
jeans.  In our school, only the coach (maybe not really even him) could get
away with that.  He filled those jeans like a latter-day Calvin Klein ad.
And he suddenly came to school with a high-topped leather pair of shoes,
and for the first time I thought he'd turned from "nearly" to all-the-way
perfect.

He looked away from me so much that I knew it was conscious, and it had the
same effect on me as though he'd been staring AT me, for I knew that he was
thinking about me when he had to look everywhere else!  When his eyes did
brush across mine, the effect was like electricity running through my
brain.  My legs would get shaky, my heart beat rapidly, and a kind of slow
sexual burn would travel down the topside of my cock and fill my balls.

We managed to rendezvous after each game, then, and I learned to give
Stephen's big cock as much pleasure as he gave mine.  I tasted him fully,
took his seed into my own body.  I walked around feeling complete, and
wonderful.  This big, incredible looking hunk of a wonderful man was mine!
I'm ashamed, now, that I felt so possessive: no person "owns" another, but
in those heady days, I felt that Stephen had committed to me fully.

Things at school got a little tricky, then, and I claim full blame for it:
I lost my reserve around Coach.  I laughed, joked, and acted giddy like a
schoolgirl in love whenever I could tell that he'd see me.  When we were
alone, he cautioned me, but I could tell that he was in some strange way
pleased, and it was that, probably, which led me to taking increasing
risks. He seemed unable to resist my attentions, either.

After his class with us, I waited until the rest of the kids had filed out
of the room.  I stood by Coach's desk and looked carefully at the door
until it seemed there was nobody.  Then I reached over and touched Coach's
shoulder.  That was the first, then it was a quick kiss on the lips, and
then it was my hand in his lap, where I found the magnificent organ
extending itself to greet me. I tried to reach past the waistband of his
jeans, to touch his skin, and he finally backed away.

"We can't do this!  Not here!" He said to me.  "Not that I don't want you
to!"

I think I wanted Coach, regardless of what it did to his career, family,
reputation; I thought the two of us, if caught, maybe, would be forced to
acknowledge to the world we were a couple, would "go away and live together
forever," in happiness and perpetual lust.  I'll probably never forgive
myself for what I did to him, as it turned out.

Soon after that, he planned a hike with his kid, he said, and concocted
some story that he told his wife about why it'd be cool if I came along.
To tell you the truth, I wanted no sharing of my big wonderful man at all,
but I couldn't any more resist him than he could me.  So, I showed up at
his house, Saturday morning.  He greeted me at the door, his wife, Janet,
was behind him.  She looked me over, up and down, in a strange way that
made me wonder what she already knew (or suspected) about me.  She was
friendly, but there was an undercurrent that made me uneasy.

Then there was Josh, his 10 year old son.  And behind Josh, Lisa, a
lookalike 8 year old.  Jeez, Coach must have started having kids when he
was my age!  (That wasn't quite true, he was 18 when he had Josh).

Josh was one of those kids you occasionally see: nearly whitish blond hair,
piercing blue eyes, a beautiful narrow face which combined the best
features of his dad (his strong straight nose) and mother (her beautiful
mouth and gloriously white teeth), in an way which improved upon them both.
Josh would have made a beautiful girl (except his sister did that better),
and yet he wasn't effeminate, either.  (Maybe 'cause 10 year-olds were
supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the mix between boyhood and
manhood) But, I had no feeling for him other than it would be more fun, by
far, if Coach and I could take a hike together, alone.  I had no doubt we'd
fall down in the bushes someplace and suck each other's cocks for
hours. So, in that sense, I didn't like Josh.  Though he seemed polite
enough, and friendly.

Coach wore his most faded pair of jeans, and a pair of heretofore unseen
Timberland boots, tall and light tan and huge and I re-invented my boot
fetish all over again.  I started off fully aroused, and it grew painful
after a few hours.

It was the most frustrating day of all, for we hiked a long distance,
aggressively, and nothing sexual seemed possible.  At one point, Josh ran
off to the side to look at the stream cascading downhill, and to play in
the small waterfall, and I felt I could talk to Stephen safely.

"I'm so frustrated I could spit," I said to him, "you look so good, I wish
I could EAT you!  In fact, that's exactly what I wish I could DO to you,
right now." I moved to approach him, but he waved me off.

He nodded back, as though to say that he acknowledged what I was saying,
but he wanted to add something else: "See Josh there, he's my son.  I love
him.  I don't want to do anything to hurt him."  Suddenly, I knew why he'd
invited me to this hike: he was trying to convince himself and me that he
had more to lose than gain by staying with me.  Or, maybe, that I'd depart
in good graciousness, taking the decision from him.

"It doesn't hurt him, does it?"  I wanted to act dense.  I could do a good
job of it at times.

"It really could.  If he found out about us?  I mean, it's not cool,
right?"

"I guess not..." I said, grudgingly and sadly having to agree.  Josh seemed
like a good fellow, albeit a luckier one than I'd been at a similar stage
of life.  He had a loving father, and a really big wonderful one.  I'd
never had that!  And I was both bitter and jealous.

We lapsed into silence, while I looked at his crotch, which was filled out
with the shape of a very erect penis.  I knew he was on the edge of giving
up to me.  I just stared at him---really 'it'---and said nothing.  I
thought I knew he'd give up.  I was right.

"But let me figure something out..." Stephen said, whispering in his
hottest "dirty" voice, which sent my cock from hardness into pulsing
quickness.  Seeing it, Coach laughed and reached across with one huge hand,
after first being sure that his kid wasn't looking, and grasped me through
my jeans.

"What size jeans do you wear?"  Coach asked me.

"Oh, I think 34 waist, and what 32 long, I can't remember."  Coach had me
stand up and turn around.

"I wear the same size, you know," he said softly.  "We could do that thing
we used to do, that was so hot."

I looked curious.  I wanted to suck Coach's dick, could 'taste him' almost,
but at that point in the afternoon, any sexual activity at all, even an old
one, was stimulating in the extreme.

"We could trade jeans, and what's underneath...."  He whispered this like
he was whispering in my ear, "let's fuck!"

"Wouldn't Josh notice?"  I asked him back.

"I don't think so.  I mean, kids don't notice things like that..."

This was a new gambit, and one which I was willing to try.

"Josh, stay put, okay?  John and I are going to the other side of that
thicket to take a leak...."

"Okay," he yelled back, not interested.

We raced around and in an instant he and I had our boots and shoes off and
jeans down and off.  I looked at him, fiercely erect behind his Jockeys,
and wanted so much more!

"Stephen," I said, "Let me suck you!"  I toppled onto my knees and tried to
capture his penis in my mouth, even through the cloth.  He danced back, and
grinned wickedly, then whipped off his undershorts, big white Jockey's, and
threw them into my face.  But he wouldn't let me touch him.  We could have,
I realized, but Josh's presence kept him from it.

In moments, we'd put ourselves back together, and we returned to Josh,
sharing a clandestine secret which would keep us on our sexual randiest the
rest of the afternoon.  Wearing Stephen's clothes was like BEING him.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together, and it was fun, though so
frustrating that I could hardly bear it, and finally my cock got painful
from its persistent firmness.  I vowed that the next time Josh wandered
ahead, I would grab Stephen and "feel" him.

That happened a couple of times in the afternoon, as I rushed up behind
Stephen, put my arms around him and grasped his genitals with both hands,
pulling his buttocks back into my own.  I could tell that I nearly sent him
into a swoon.  The second time, he bent slightly forward and rubbed his
buttocks against my engorged cock.  That was the first hint that there was
a new realm to be explored.

The next game came, another loss for our team.  Stephen obviously felt his
job was in jeopardy now, from the losing streak if nothing else.  He was
looking a bit haggard, his eyes lighting up briefly only when he looked at
me.  After the game, we met at the clearing halfway to my house.

"Things are getting kinda rough," he said to me, hugging me tightly and
kissing me on the lips.  I was instantly ready for sex, but wanted to be
held and touched, as well.  "I think that it may be difficult for me to
keep my job here next year."

That sobered me up like ice cold water.  The possibility that Coach would
not be around awakened the old dread and abandonment.  I felt panicky,
which led me, if anything, to new heights of sexual aggressiveness with
him.  I wanted to be all over him, and I wanted him all over me.  I pulled
his head to my lips again, and we shared tongues while my hands were
delving at his waist, trying to unleash his jeans.

"No, stop!" he said, pulling back away from me.  "We have to talk...."

"Can we talk after?" I asked him, wiping my wet mouth with one hand. My
other hand had never stopped caressing his genital mound, where his
firmness was startling. Talking to a man who is trying not to be
distracted, while his organ leads him into bliss, is a kind of power that I
relished having over Coach.

"No, we need to talk now."

"Are you telling me that we're going to have to stop?"  I blurted out, for
I feared that if I let him talk, that was what he was going to say, and I
didn't feel I could survive if he said that to me.  In my whole life, Coach
was the only guy who ever treated me, really, like I were important, and
good, and wanted, even loved.

"I don't know.  I know that I can't think about anything else, that you
fill my head every waking moment.  I wait all week long for this one hour
we are together.  It's driving me crazy.  I don't think I'm doing a good
job coaching anymore, and the record would show it."

"You have a bunch of losers on the team.  Surely that's not your fault..."
I protested.

He laughed, a dry cynical laugh, then.  "Well, that may well be true...
But, it usually doesn't make much difference, ultimately. That's just the
way the cookie crumbles..."

My mind was in a real panic, and I increased the rapidity of movements
against his cock.  This time, he let me reach through his jean's fly, hold
him through his Jockey's.  The warm firm length of him amazed me as much
then as it had the very first time I felt him.

"Ah, shit, you make it hard to concentrate..." he grinned then, and I felt
that our crisis had past.  I didn't want to think of anything past the next
hour.  He stretched himself out in the car: I noticed that he was wearing
his big Timberlands again.  I ran one of my hands up and down his legs.

"I like it when you wear your big boots.  It makes you so much more like
the stud you really are!"

"Yeah, I know.  You wrote it all down, once, remember?  It was what started
this whole thing..."

"Yeah, the best thing that's ever happened to me, and all because of a
stupid accident."

"Well, yeah, if you believe in accidents," Stephen grinned.  He unpopped
his top button and my hand was inside his jeans and rubbing him up and
down.

I found something else, something else tubular, in his front pocket.  I
giggled, and said, "What's this?"  I fished it out.  It was a tube of
Vaseline.

"I wondered...." Stephen started.  "When we were taking our hike, and you
came up behind me, I couldn't help but feel how wonderful it felt."

"You mean, my cock there between your butt cheeks?"

"Yeah.  You ever think about, uh, like doing more than what we've been
doing?"

"All the time..." I said, but in truth it'd only started with the hike.
"Do you think we COULD do it that way?"

"I want to try.  I want you inside me down there."

Coach removed my hand from his crotch, then, and opened his door and got
out.  He pushed his jeans and his undershorts down.  I could see him in the
overhead light of the car.  His cock stood out like an arm.  I knew it like
my own, I thought, and loved it better.

His jeans, though, were tight, and the band of them around his legs made
everything seem impossible.  "Shit," he said, "I shouldn't have worn the
boots. What a bother to take 'em off!  And it's freezing out here!"

He sat back down on the car seat and bent to undo them. In a moment he was
out of them and out of his jeans, as well.  I pushed my own down and
crawled out of them.  It was decidedly chilly inside the car, too.
Finally, I sat on the passenger's side, and pushed the recliner lever: the
seat gave way with a thump and both of us sprawled, with elbows and knees
akimbo, trying to avoid impaling each other on one of the knobs instead of
the correct anatomical item!  Stephen gave out a giant peal of laughter.

"Aren't we silly?" he said, barely controlling his laughter.  I was hurt.
This was not 'silly' by any stretch in my book: I wanted to connect to him
in the major remaining way.

"It's not silly!" I protested, pouted, really.

"Of course not, I didn't mean what we wanted to do.  It's just 'silly' the
way two supposedly grown men can trap themselves into a car seat thinking
they can conveniently do things which were never meant for a car seat!
'Course, I guess we men been doing it for as long as there WERE car
seats..."

Any hurt I'd had was more than erased by his acclamation that we were two
'grown' men!'  And by the sensation of his cold buttocks' flesh pressed
against my mid-section.  My cock was wedged between our bodies, and I was
striving to back up far enough to get enough room to straighten it out
between us so that it could do some good.  Coach's knee struck one of the
door latches and he swore.

"Fuck!" he yelled, now having a happy time, and I was glad at least the
tone had changed for the lighter.  "I'm freezin' my butt.  You'd better
start making some heat here, and fast!"

The truth was, we were both shivering from a combination of cold, and
sexual excitement, probably.  I should have left the car heater running,
but I'd been spoiled of the idea for my whole life as my mother told me
about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning because they were running
their car in a parked position.  Besides, I didn't much trust the Buick.

"What are we gonna do?" I asked Stephen.  "I want to try this so bad!"

"Me too," he said, and pushed his butt back again until our bodies were
tightly plastered together.  He shivered and pulled my arm across and
around him.  I grasped his cock, which had never grown flaccid, despite the
cold and our laughing.

"Shit," he expostulated, finally.  "I've GOT to have this!  Do you have any
money?"

"Money?"  I was clueless.  What did he need money for?"

"For a motel, silly..."

"Oh.  I have about five dollars.  That made me feel flush, but I realized
it wouldn't pay for a motel, even then.  The idea of renting a motel room I
found singularly terrifying, anyway.

"I've only got $10." Coach said, and I could tell from the tenseness in his
body that he was thinking, hard, about alternatives.  "We'll have to go
back to the school, at least it's heated..."

We drove back there, my excitement rising: part terror and part frustrated
libido so intense that my body was literally shaking in a wild "cold chill"
that had nothing to do with how cold it was, even though it really was
bitterly cold.

Coach parked near the gym door, and fished a key out of his pocket.  We
sneaked into the darkened hallway when only the "EXIT" light cast eery
glows around everything.  There was a powerful lingering smell of old jock
sweat in the air.  Coach led me by one hand through the darkened corridor
until we were at the very door of the locker room.  Another key had us
inside and he twisted the lock again.

With the door behind us, and a trifle warmer, Coach bent over slightly and
sealed his lips against mine, my back pushed hard against the door.  His
knee pushed between my own, and raised until he brought pressure against my
own engorged cock and balls.  He suddenly gave up my mouth, and knelt in
the semi-darkness, and quickly loosed my jeans and pushed them toward the
floor.  He pulled my jockeys down right after that and engulfed my cock in
his tight warm mouth.  Ah, shit.  After the buildup of tension, the
sensation there was so suddenly intense that I felt on the verge of
cumming.  I didn't want to, not this way.  I was fixed on doing it the
OTHER, newer way.  I wanted to be in Coach's ass, that newest and most
Promised Land.  I suddenly believed, but with all the fervor I could create
that once I'd owned Coach in this way, he'd never be able to leave me.

"No!" I said to him, somewhat loudly, I think.

"Why not? .... oh, I understand..."  He lifted his head from between my
thighs and stood up and we went on into his office, where he swept
everything off his desk with one huge sweep of his arm.  A grand gesture.
He hurriedly sat on the corner and unlaced and removed boots, socks, and
then pushed his own jeans and jock down.  His cock was barely visible in
the dim light, but I could smell him, and he smelled wonderful.

"Touch me there," he insisted, as he leaned over the desk.

I needed no second request: my fingers were running down the shallow crack
of his buttocks, until I found the firm pucker of him.  I pressed firmly,
foolishly, trying to gain an immediate entrance.  He shied away and hissed,
and then laughed at his reaction.

"Gentle!" he commanded me.

"Give me some of that stuff, then!" I said, wanting to be IN him, and
quickly.

Coach stood back up and retrieved his jeans and then fished out the
smallish tube.  I removed the cap and squeezed too much, I think, in the
dark, onto my index and middle finger.  I pushed Coach again: I wanted him
bent over the desk.  Coach reached over and did something which I didn't
expect: he flicked on the light.  His office was a dungeon, with no outside
window, and the light came on with the flickering intensity of too many
fluorescents, blinding us both.  I wondered why he wanted it, but he lay
back this time, on his desk, on his BACK.  He flung his knees widely apart,
his cock standing in the air like a kid's 12 inch ruler, his balls tucked
up underneath like a sack of gold nuggets.  I'd never thought I could reach
a man's asshole THIS way, and started to protest, but Coach silenced me.

"I want to SEE you!"

Okay, I thought, there must be a way.  I got up on the desk on my knees and
between his outstretched legs, so long, still tanned despite the season,
except for the band of ultra white which was his shorts' line and above.
With his cock like that, I thought that he wanted me to suck him, and my
mouth took the tip of his column inside my mouth.  He lurched and shuddered
then.  I realized that this was the first time we'd attempted any love
making other than in the incredibly convoluted confines of my car.  This
seemed entirely different.  But I still had two fingers full of grease.

He rolled his hips up and reach down and pulled his butt cheeks apart.  His
intent now seemed obvious.  Oh!  Yeah.  His butthole is right there.
Somehow, I never thought of it like that, not from the front.  I touched
his pucker, brown and crinkled and surrounded by a few blond hairs. Coach
hissed in excitement.

"Yeah!" he grunted to me.  "Put it IN me!"

I smeared grease around his anus, then, and touched him squarely.  His
sphincter (I didn't even know the term, then), clutched and panicked, then
relaxed suddenly, and the greased tip of my index finger slipped past the
first barrier.  Oh!  Incredible.  A man's muscle is so clutching, so tight!
And it was Coach's!

I sucked his penis back into my mouth and at the same time pushed my finger
forward, until his grunt was intense and I could tell that he'd reached a
new level of excitement.

"Ah, damn, yes!" he yelled at me.

I sucked him, my tongue finding that magic opening on the rounded smooth
top of his glans. His body jerked spasmodically, his asshole fluttering
madly.

I slowly thrust my finger inside him.  Feeling the confines of his dark
space, feeling his cock throbbing in utter thralldom to what was happening
in his backside.  It was the most intense pleasure I'd ever had to that
point.  Coach's whole frame was shuddering, his shoulders and arms had
raised off his desk, his eyes were clenched shut and his teeth were bared,
His grunting became nearly continuous with his breathing.

"Oh, damn!  That feels SO fantastic!" He proclaimed to nobody in
particular.

The sensations in my mouth and from my finger were so intense and joined
somewhere in the middle to a powerful sense of incredible mastery.  I was a
mere kid, but I was able to send this big powerful man into waves of such
obvious and intense sexual pleasure!  His body became mine-to-please, mine
to enjoy, his mind utterly controlled by what I did between his legs.  It's
hard to describe the sensations and the powerful thoughts that plunged
through my fevered brain, except that I never felt entirely powerless again
in my life.  And in that moment, at least, I'd become all powerful.

"Oh, fuck!" he screamed softly.  "I'm gonna cum!"  He squirted two quick
and huge jolts of semen, my mouth scrambling to miss no drop of him.  He
tasted strong, wonderful.  More waves of cum flooded my mouth, and his
asshole clinched my finger with each wave.  It was magic.  In a moment,
Coach shuddered and pushed my head away, suddenly post-orgasmic-sensitive
to any further touch.

"Whew!  I never HAD anything like that," he finally said, his cock still
standing partially upright, and me still as horny as I'd ever been. I still
had my finger in his back door, though, that much seemed to have escaped
his notice for a few minutes while he wound down.  But now he voluntarily
clinched his muscle in a quick Morse code and grinned at me.  "How was it
for you? Icky?"

"Oh, shit no!" I protested.  "It was the best thing I've done in my entire
life!"

"You're cool," Coach said, wriggling around again, and I could feel him
move down there.  I wondered if my finger was irritating him, but I knew
very strongly that I didn't want to remove it!

"Do I have to take my finger out?"  I asked, sensing that he was waiting
for me to do that.

"You don't want to?"

"I want my finger there forever...." I said, full of love and emotionally
attached to him in a way I'd never been to anybody before.

"Oh you DO!" he laughed and pushed his knees together so that they held my
arm tightly.  "Well, I GUESS I can let you do that for a little while
longer, if you WANT to!"  He was teasing me, and I could tell that suddenly
something else was happening.  His cock, a little less turgid moments
earlier, had become fully erect again.  "But, you COULD put something else
there instead, you know...."

I needed no second invitation.  My cock had been firm for hours, and I
fished for the tube of Vaseline, running another large strand down the top
of it.  I pushed his legs up and rolled his bottom up off the table,
seeking to get my cock aligned with the wonder-hole.

We tried a few seconds to get this-and-that aligned; those hot stories
where things just slip together perfectly are a lot of bunk, I think, at
least when the recipient in question is still tight and, in this case,
nearly "virginal."

Finally, Coach ---Stephen--- rolled over and presented his ass in the air,
his head down, as I gathered myself behind him.  He reached behind and
directed my penis, until I was firmly lodged against his hole.  What seemed
like it 'should' readily go, so slippery and greasy as he was by then,
didn't happen so easily.  He grunted and pulled his already smallish
buttocks out of the way, and bore down and tried to get me inside.  I could
actually feel the tiny annulus of him opened up partially around the tip of
my cock, but it felt like a soft velvetted ring of steel which prevented
any further ingress.  He grunted in some discomfort.  "I want it," he said,
"but I never thought it could be this hard...."

I tried another tack, several other angles, with equally poor success.  I
pulled back away from him, his greasy hole at eye level, and as fascinating
to me as any other part of his body had ever been, more so maybe.  I took
one finger and easily ran it up (from this direction, down!) inside him.
Stephen groaned in exquisite pleasure.  I moved it around feeling his
prostate (then I had no clue what it was or what it was called) and this
seemed to give him some enhanced pleasure.

"Try two fingers," he said, and I did.  The second encountered the tough
ring, but slid through, with the feeling that my fingers might be
amputated.  And I could tell that they caused Stephen some pain.  But after
a bit, he relaxed, and his ring became accepting.  I realized that I could
try 3 as well, with much the same result.

"Okay," I said, "I'm going to try it again!"  Stephen hiked his rear end
even higher, and this time I had no problem directing my soft iron rod to
his hindermost entrance.  The ring was much wider, and with some pressure I
could feel it slipping over the top of my glans.  The effect was one of a
threshold, beyond which resistance disappeared.  Stephen hissed with
discomfort, and his body tensed, his buttocks going from soft to very hard,
as his body attempted to expel the intruder, against his wishes, maybe, but
involuntarily moving.

"Ah, you could win a trophy for carrying a stove-pipe between your legs!"
he grunted back to me. Kind words for any male, and perhaps this is the way
ANY penis feels the first time it has entered your body.  All I knew was
that the sense of connection I had to him had become more exquisite, more
central, than anything I'd thought of or dreamed before.  I was in Coach's
most intimate spot.  His whole life, my mind grasped, he'd probably sat in
some small stall somewhere, passing his BM's, nobody else but him knowing
or caring about this dark central piece of his body.  And now it was the
connection BETWEEN us, as much mine as his.  Coach's body, I felt, would
never ever be entirely his again.  But thoughts ceased as the sensations of
slick, smooth pressure over and around my entire cock flooded my mind, and
I sunk all the way down into his body.  My groin was mashed against the
bottom tip of his buttocks.  I pushed and cuddled the rest of my body
against his, trying to make every square inch of myself in contact with
him.

"Let's roll over," Stephen said to me softy.  "I can't SEE you.  I can only
FEEL you."

We grasped each other and clumsily rolled over onto one side, where it was
suddenly and dramatically better to have my whole front side in contact
with his back side, and the sensation ofpart of my body running strongly
and deeply between his butt cheeks and into his warm interior was so heady
that I could not pause a second before a single thrust tipped me over some
imaginary edge and I was pouring forth my cum, someplace where I would
never see it again.

"Ahhhhh!" I breathed heavily.

"Sheesh!  You came quickly!" Stephen said, from in front.  His anus
quivered around my penis, which did not soften.

"I think I can go again..." I said, knowing that I could.  I commenced long
slow movements, the urgency now gone, the thrusting sheer movements of
intense pleasure for us both.  Our bodies fit together warmly and
perfectly, I thought, surely as well as any male-to-female union.  God and
Nature couldn't have been TOO much against this union, considering how we
fit each other.  Coaches big feet rested on top of my own, another of the
unique and piquant sensations I was feeling.

Finally, Coach said that he wanted to lie on his back.  So we assumed this
position we'd started from, only this time entry was easy.  I lay firmly on
Stephen's stomach and chest, felt his muscles firm and warm against my own,
and, finally, as his eyes opened, we joined our spirits---something only
possible when eyes look deeply into eyes, and when a cock is all the way
inside another's body.  Stephen said nothing, never glanced away, just
carried my eyes with him as my penis slipped slowly back and forth, until
such sensations came that pushed me toward more and more rapid movements,
and finally I was in frantic motion inside him.  My second emission was
nearly as intense as the first, and when he sensed that I was about to cum,
Coach reached down between us and jacked himself a couple of times at most
before his own cock, amidst mad fluctuations of his anus, squirted anew
onto both of us.  In the throes of lovemaking, my climax washing over me, I
retrieved a strand of his essence and licked it greedily from my fingers.

We suddenly heard the sound that changed our lives: the unmistakable thud
of the outer door closing.  Coach let out a huge "Fuck!" and jumped up,
pushing me aside, and trying to pull his jeans up as he ran to the office
door.  His office, like so many designed with the same mentality, figured
that highschool coaches needed no privacy, and students SHOULD have no
privacy.  It entered upon the locker room with a large window, filled with
the strange kind of glass with the tiny wire enmeshed in it.  Coach had
turned his light on, but the outer locker room had remained dark.  We had
been on perfect display, a huge "TV" screen, as it were, to whatever viewer
had been there.  Now, however, there was nobody.  We both hoped against
hope that we'd hallucinated the sound.

Coach's next two days seemed terrible, just to watch, not that mine were
any good either.  We both couldn't sleep, and looked it.  His hair was
uncharacteristically rumpled, he had dark circles under his eyes, and he
wouldn't look at me.

And, finally, it ended.  On a dark Thursday morning, when the wind howled
and drove both rain and sleet furiously, he was gone.  The only explanation
that was given to us students was that Coach Andersen was "gone for
personal reasons, and won't be coming back."  The announcer, in person to
each of the classrooms, was a short, squat and extremely officious
principal, a man who seemed to take pleasure in knowing something he would
not divulge to others.  We all hated him, and I had reason to hate him more
than anybody.

I couldn't believe it, my feelings a mixture of abject abandonment and
intense longing, and horrendous guilt.  Added were embarrassment that
"somebody" and perhaps a great number of "somebodies" now knew my secret.
I looked around me like the classic paranoid, striving to note if anybody
looked at me differently.

You must remember that my early career at school had been on the receiving
end of much harassment, jeers, and strange looks, so I was both familiar
with it, as well as sensitized to it, so that I could "see" it probably
where it didn't even exist.  Now I know that even had there been nothing
going on, my own behavior was so erratic that I would have CREATED notice!

But there was one good thing that happened: I reached down into myself and
realized that it was impossible for things to get worse that this.  Given
that, there was nothing, but nothing, to do but to hold my head high, and
march down the halls as though I owned the place.  I became irritable,
assertive, and difficult.

Kids cut a wide swath around me.  After all, I was big.  Inside I hurt
worse than I'd ever hurt in my life.  Losing Stephen was like having my
heart sliced out of my chest while I was still living: I 'knew' he was the
only person in my whole life who'd loved me, and I felt that it was all my
doing that had led to his downfall.  I'd ruined his career, his marriage,
everything!  All because of me.  I'd destroyed the only beautiful thing in
my life.  I just had to know what had happened, but I knew not whom to ask.
I asked Phil, one day, in the hall.  Why him?  He was a jock, the only one
I had a "history with," and I figured he would have heard any rumors.  When
I asked him, though, he became obviously uncomfortable, and shirked the
question, spurned eye contact, and rushed off, making some excuse.

I finished the year, those years, never forgetting Coach for a moment,
never without longing for what we'd had, undoubtedly "bronzing" those
memories into something far more beautiful than they'd ever really been.

After graduation, I could not wait to leave the area.  I was accepted at a
prestigious university: was it because of my grades, very good?  Or because
I was half black and counted on some university's quota system?  It didn't
help my self-esteem any to have to contend with that one.

This story is not about those years or the 6 that followed.  I dated women,
and enjoyed it, and even had a satisfactory and relatively happily
sexualized affair with a slender, beautiful woman whom I thought it was
possible I might marry. But even then I realized that something was
entirely missing.  And when Sherry found me with a man, she dropped me
abruptly.

That started the openly gay part of my life, and it descended rapidly.
Having determined my truest identity, I sank into profligate sexuality, and
took up a job offer as a junior pencil-pusher at a firm in Manhattan.  In
that wild metropolis I rapidly found all the spots where every variety of
sexual excess was allowed and sought after.  That I did not contract HIV
was a miracle of such proportions that I never fail to say thanks.  Even
though it must have been some sort of sexual self-destruction that powered
me forward.

That life, too, was inadequate.  I did my job well enough, but was
frequently so tired from sleepless nights that I was not terribly
enthusiastic, and so I was not advanced on that basis.  My boss attempted
to seduce me, but I found him very unattractive, and had not sunk to the
level of having sex for job advancement.  After my rebuff, my job became
increasingly untenable, and finally, my soul at ground zero, my job
performance scarcely above, my sexual life frenzied and increasingly
distraught, and HIV becoming a huge scare, I gave it all up.

I made repeated attempts to locate Stephen.  He'd moved from Maine to
Minnesota, had stopped over only a part of a year, then moved on again, and
again, until the trail of his existence tapered off into thin air.  He'd
separated from his wife and children, I learned.  Part of the time, I
longed for him, still, though years have a way of healing even the sorest
of wounds.  I still blamed myself for everything, but strangely that
alternated with blaming HIM for it!  Blaming him for being there, for
allowing it, for leaving me (perhaps that was the real blame, how COULD he,
after what had happened between us?)  But I blamed him unceasingly for
leaving me without a word, no explanation, no attempt, ever, to contact me.

In one last attempt to find him, this time haunting the NYC Public Library
for a long weekend, I tracked down the last lead, and arrived at the
sorriest, hardest news of my life.  He was dead. Killed in an accident in
some dreadful two-bit town in northern Iowa.  I sent for a copy of his
obituary, and it was a short, not-so-sweet account of a single car
accident, where alcohol was very much involved.

I entered therapy.  I have to credit the gentle soul who heard my mental
flagellations with turning "something" around inside me.  I found something
in there I liked.  I grew to accept that I was a very "mixed" sexual
being. And while never absolving myself from the guilt to which I was
liege, I nonetheless learned to forgive myself.  I learned to hate the New
York scene, the crime, hustle- bustle and non-stop pace of the place, and I
began to long for the fields of the farmland where I grew up.  It became so
powerful, that I had dreams of fields every night.  Not crop fields, but
where gentle grasses blew and wildflowers sprang up.

Finally, I announced to my therapist that I was leaving---her, and New
York---and she smiled her always-approving smile and acknowledged that she,
too, though it was time.

What happened next was the most serene portion of my not-so-satisfactory
life up to that point.  I gave up anything but solitary sex, told myself it
had only once brought me any happiness and would never again, and anyway,
it had ruled my life too long.  I took a job in a small-town bookstore and
did my job well, and rented a tiny run-down bungalow in upstate New York,
where the bugs were ferocious, the beauty real, and the vistas profound.

I began raising a garden, and from that leased a nearby field, and started
raising herbs and flowers which I could dry and sell readily at the local
florist.  This probably creates the image of the quintessential gay
lifestyle: a book clerk, a dried flower arranger....  Yeah, maybe.  But I
was--and remain--anything but effeminate in my demeanor, my appearance, or
mannerisms.  And, as noted, I was inclined to be asexual. Nobody in those
days would have assumed I was gay, and I gathered more than my share of
passes from the local citizenry---all women, some of them married---ready
to drop their drawers at a moment's notice.  No man in those parts made any
notice of me, and I was just as glad.

The life suited me.  I got a dog, who became my steadfast and loyal friend,
one of a truer proportion than I'd known up to that point, anyway.  I read
voraciously, and began to write a bit, as well.  Evenings, I'd lay up in a
hammock-chair looking out over a spectacular field of flowers, which had
slowly become a kind of showplace which attracted passers by of all
denominations. Many of them stopped and shared with me their appreciation
of my efforts.  A few took tea, sometimes a mint variety I'd grown myself.
And it was good.  The whole thing was good.  I felt peace for the first
time, and real satisfaction.  And a lack of the turmoil and self-doubt
which had racked my life to that point.  Under no circumstance was I
interested in losing my hard-won footholds.

I should have recognized him immediately.  How I didn't remains a mystery
to me, and which convinces me that I was in a powerful state of repression.

"Hi!" he said, as he very deliberately entered the bookstore where I still
worked, now only part-time, "just to keep my hand in."  My dried flower and
herb business was easily paying my simple livelihood.  I should have
realized he was looking for me, not books, but all I was aware of at the
time was that he was a singularly good-looking young man, I supposed about
20, who had very light blond hair, and piercing blue eyes and a narrow face
which should have seemed familiar.

I didn't greet his visage with any great enthusiasm.  As beautiful as he
was, I think my radar had already started blipping, telling me to stay
clear.  Here was danger.  A way to get hurt, a way to ruin the peacefulness
which surrounded my every day.  I didn't realize then that I'd also bought
boredom and sexual frustration at a very dear price.

"Hello," I greeted him back, and tried to keep my eyes elsewhere, and my
voice keyed low, disinterested.  He didn't make that easy.

"Are you John?" he asked me, surprisingly.

"Yes, I am.  Do I know you?"

"Oh," he smiled with a row of beautiful white teeth but eyes which revealed
his seriousness, "I don't think so.  I don't see how you would."  He made
no effort to introduce himself or his task, and hooked his thumbs into his
jean pockets and wandered among the books.  Finally, he emerged back again
in front of my counter/register.

"Good book selection," he said, "and I'm sure I'll be coming back in here."

"Well, good, I'm glad you're pleased.  It's real work trying to keep ahead
of the game, and to know anything at all about what you're selling you've
got to read, read, read, like crazy, and all of the reviews, too.  A full
time job, as though I didn't have several others." (And loved every one of
them, but I didn't add that).

"Busy, huh?"  He stood looking at me, then, and continued to look well past
the time in which I'd begun to squirm a little bit.  I mean, if he hadn't
been who he was (which is nearly the best thing I'd ever laid eyes on), I
would have said he was rude.  As it was, he WAS rude, and I was still glad
that he hadn't left the store yet.  At the same time, I didn't like the
signals my brain was sending downhill, and I made every effort to stop them
cold.

I figured I could out-stare him.  Since my 'new life' in the boonies, I
felt good enough about myself, and so assured that nobody there knew about
my checkered past that I could act as though I had real self-confidence,
and in those days, I think I did.

He finally glanced away, and cleared his throat, stretched himself out
languidly just like a big cat might, (and I knew the motion was a fake; he
was no sleepier than I was!), and in the process showed 6" of bare midriff
as his cutoff sweatshirt rode up over his firm tanned tummy.  Shit!  I
looked away, hating this young male who was so beautiful and so rude and
so, so, I didn't want to put any further words on it.  That way lay
disaster, I kept telling myself.  Then, as suddenly as he'd come in, he
left again.

I breathed a long sigh of relief and ?  And turned back to the stack of new
books which had to have prices affixed and some space, somewhere, put on
them.  A moment later, the door opened again, and he was back.

"I should ask you: where's a good place to eat around here?"

"Over at The Artichoke.  They fix a decent sandwich if you like the healthy
stuff.  Or the row of burger places if you like the grease."

"Which do you like?" He asked me, curious, and his eyes once again affixed
firmly on my face.

"I have to confess that I go both ways.  Mostly the healthy way, though, I
hope..."

"Good.  Want me to bring you back a sandwich from there?"

WHAT was this guy up to?  I was clueless and I began thinking that there
was some clear ulterior motive which I couldn't begin to fathom.  It left
me frustrated and irritable.

"No thanks!" I said as curtly as I could muster.

"What do you eat when you go there?"  He asked, as though he were
impervious to my irritation. He must have been.

"Their turkey, sprout, brie and avocado is to die for..." I heard myself
saying, wooed away from my hard ass stance just because he was standing in
front of me.

"Good."  He marched out again.  In 25 minutes he was back one more time,
carrying a large sack. He perched on the edge of the Windsor chair we had
for people to sit a spell while they looked over a book or magazine.  His
neatly creased jeans ended up at a golden ankle and he had really large
feet clad in what appeared to be new Teva sandals.  He tucked one foot back
and one foot forward and I found myself looking at them.

"I brought you one, in case you'll change your mind..."  He fished out a
large white-paper wrapped sandwich and held it up and partway extended
towards me.  His hands were as large as his feet and just as beautiful, I
thought, with long narrow fingers and deep tendons, and ultra clean
fingernails.

I was hungry, I had to admit.  He glanced at me with a mysterious look
which said seemed to say come on, eat with me, and I had to admit it
smelled delicious.  I'd ripped out of my bungalow in a dead run to open by
8:30 and that meant a tired muffin for breakfast.

Something about his gaze at me wiped out any resistance I still held, and I
fetched another Windsor and sat across from him.  We bunched knees
together, each of us, and spread the white paper, catching the sprouts
which wanted to drop out everywhere.  The big pickle came next, and whoever
he was who sat opposite crunched down on that with obvious relish.

"Good grub!" he said.

"Yeah.  I'm leery of recommending places: people have different ideas of
what is good."

"Isn't THAT the truth!"  Whoever said.  His lips smiled regularly, but his
eyes remained cautious and very serious.  The combination was uncanny and I
didn't feel particularly "safe,"---oh, to be sure, I was a half-a-head
taller than him, at 6'3" and maybe I had 30 pounds on him, too---but I'm
not talking that kind of "safe," am I?

"You are?" I said, sticking a hand out to shake hands with him.  Without
wiping his hands on his pants, he reached out and grasped my hand and gave
it a strong shake. For some reason, I likedthe fact that he hadn't wiped
his hand first, nor after.  He grabbed his sandwich back up again
instantly, and said, "Alan, one 'L' then 'A.'  Hamerlin.  One 'M' one 'L'
'I' 'N'" This was rote.

"John Simons," I answered, "spelled just like you think it should be." If
it was a joke, this serious young fellow didn't think it was funny.

"Oh, yeah, I asked about you.  I know your name and all that stuff."
Warning bells should have been going off like crazy.

"Okay, so are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"  He seemed genuinely perplexed at my question.

"I mean, you come in here, not to buy books, obviously, and then you insist
upon returning with a sandwich so we can have lunch together.  You act as
though you know me, and, well, I'm perplexed."

"I came to meet you."  He said, his eyes never wavering from my own, but so
serious that I had to look away.

"That's obvious."

"I saw your garden plot out on 128.  I thought it was quite beautiful.
I've determined that I'm going to live in this town.  I'd like to work for
you, actually, if you think you could use the help."

Whoa!  Help!  I thought suddenly to myself.  Too much, too fast, too
incredible.  I swallowed hard.  "I, uh, never had anybody working for me
before."

"You can't use anybody?" He looked up as though he clearly couldn't, and
didn't, believe me.

"I, well, I suppose I could, as a matter of fact...."  I had meant to go on
to say that I could 'use' somebody, but that I wasn't inclined to work with
somebody else.

"Good.  I looked at all those flowers and gorgeous herbs, and knew you'd
need somebody."

"Uh, I'm not sure I can affor..."  I didn't even get the last consonant out
of my mouth.

"Don't worry.  I'd like to learn what you know about raising flowers and
herbs.  I'm not a pig when it comes to money.  I have a little bit on my
own.  Money's not the thing....  I don't even use much of it, if you can
believe that..."

"Sandwiches don't come free," I observed, "and stood up to drag out my
wallet.  "$4.86 if my recollection is accurate...  With tax."

"No, really, they're on me.  Usually I don't eat out.  No sweat.  Money is
not an issue, okay?"

"Well, I wish I had YOUR great fortune," I said drily.  Sarcastically.
Again, it went way over his head, or he pretended he'd not heard me, one.

"My step-father is very wealthy.  I try not to take money from him.  Don't
want to.  But my Mom figures out ways to get me to take money, some here,
some there.  I rarely spend what they send, even."

"Do I know either of your parents?" I asked, again my curiosity
overwhelming me.  Was I old enough, 27, to know this guy's parents?  I
figured I had to know somebody he knew, someplace.

"I don't think so.  Maybe once, but I doubt even that."

"What are you, twenty?" I asked him.

"I'm 19, but almost 20.  I went to college for two years, and I'm gonna
take a break.  I'm tired of putting on the learning game when I don't know
what I want to do.  Maybe in a year, or 6 or 26 I'll have some idea..."

I admired his honesty, wondered what my life would have been like if I'd
been as honest with myself, through-and-through.  "So, okay, where were you
raised?"

"Upper part of Ohio," he said, naming some obscure town.  "At least the
last half of my life.  The only part worth mentioning."

"And before that?" I pressed on.  I had to know.

"Oh, a succession of places.  We moved around a lot."  The inflection of
his voice told me to press no further.  The topic was at an end.  Okay.

"So, Alan," I asked, after finishing the first half of my sandwich and
running my tongue over my teeth to ferret out the send-ends of the sprouts,
"why this town?"

"It's a beautiful little upstate New York town, why not?"

"Well, yeah, but..."  But what?  He wasn't allowed to come here?  I could
think of no way to finish the sentence.

"I've been driving around a bit, and I came upon this place.  I knew I
wanted to do something else.  I saw your beautiful spread out on 128, and I
asked around.  People told me about you.  I came in here to wangle a job
out of you.  Now, do I have the job?"

"Shit," I said, more like amazement than frustration.  Was it so simple as
he made it sound?  Whether it was or not, it sounded like he thought he was
making a completely adequate explanation and I would be ungrateful, maybe a
lunkhead, if I didn't accept it.

"Where are you gonna live?" I asked, changing the subject.  I figured that
this would be the clincher.  It was very difficult to rent a place in these
parts, especially in the summer, when the city folks descended (if you can
call moving NORTH "descending"---more like ascended) like locusts, taking
even dumps (like mine) for serious money.

"I haven't figured it yet, but that's never been a problem.  If I have to,
I'll camp out until I find the right place.  In fact, I really love
camping.  Trouble is, getting showers."

He sounded like he meant it, and looking at him, despite his
unrealistically clean cut appearance, which belied EVER getting dirty, he
looked like he probably knew how to camp.  In fact, there was a fundamental
toughness about him, about his eyes maybe, which said that this young fella
had probably done all that he said he'd done, and could do whatever he
wanted to do.  He looked a bit younger than 20, until you gazed into his
eyes, and then he looked as old as me.  Older.

I made a fundamental decision, then.  "I guess we can try it."

"Good."  There'd never been any question in his mind, apparently. "Shall I
drop by your place?  Or what do you want?"

We arranged the time and place.

And so Alan came to work for me.  Not only was he dedicated, he was sharp,
and in a matter of several weeks, we'd already worked out how to expand to
an adjacent field.  Alan showed up on time, and worked through the
stickiest of days, the sweat rolling down off his bare back like rivulets
of gold.  I rarely got much of a smile out of him, and more than once I
caught him staring at me, sometimes as I turned around suddenly, sometimes,
I thought, at a distance.

In awhile, he accumulated several friends, I discerned, with whom he kept
company in the evenings, I thought.  Later, it turned out, he'd been
sharing a house with both of them, and they were not as much friends as
"roomies," and it was of no great emotional connection.

At first, Alan was loath to share any of his living arrangements with me,
and I was equally reticent about asking.  He came to work neat, worked
hard, usually left sweaty and covered with dust and dirt.

I sat with him on the porch of my bungalow, a couple of hundred yards from
where we'd been working together on the first field.  It was mid-July, as
hot as it got in upstate New York.  I brought out a pitcher of ice tea, its
sides already running with condensation.  Birds chirped in the intermediate
distance and hummingbirds throbbed in the air feet away at the nectar
feeder.  Haze hung over the hills and the green all around would smash out
your eyes.

"So, how do you like all this hard work?"  I asked him.  I didn't know how
he'd answer, fearing that he would say "I hate it," and leave.  I realized,
suddenly, that I would miss him severely if/when he left, but had no
illusions that a young man of this caliber and looks would/could stay in
such a backwater for more than several months.  So, I never let down my
guard.

"I think that you have a good life here," he said, a glancing blow at a
direct answer.  He sat back and propped up his huge tan work boots on the
railing.  His legs were covered in tawny kinky hairs from the top of his
white boot socks to the bottom fringes of his jean cutoffs.

"Yeah, well, maybe I do, but we were talking about YOU, not me.  Or didn't
you remember?" He looked up at me sharply and with some curiosity, and I
thought I felt a rise of quick anger in him, before it settled back down,
just as quickly. Where it went I wasn't yet to know.

"Is this about me?" He asked, diffusing again.

"It is!" I said.  "And I've noticed that you rarely give a straight answer
to anything!"

"Are you mad at me?" He opined.  It wasn't really a question.  It was an
observation begging validation, and one thrown out with idle curiosity and
no worth attached.  He might as well have said "Are you having a good day?"
in the manner of greeters who never stick around nor desire an answer other
than "yes."

"No, I'm not."

Alan looked around and took another sip, then leaned back in the glider,
big hands hanging off both arms, legs spread widely and his basket full and
round in his too-tight cutoffs.  I tried desperately to keep my eyes
everywhere else but there. I don't know how successful I was, for once,
fighting the battle anew, I looked up and caught his eyes on me, with what
seemed a cautious assessment of what I'd been doing.  His response seemed
neither positive nor negative, but as neutral (and chilling) as anything
I'd ever felt.  But, I noticed, he made no move to conceal his equipment,
pull his legs back together or any of the things he could have done to stop
my looking.  In fact, if anything, I noted with increasing panic, his bulge
definitely seemed to be enlarging.  I became seriously frightened, then,
and cleared my throat and got up and went into my house.  I fussed around
with some sandwiches (I usually fed us), and stomped back out again,
sitting in a different place where I could no longer look at him.

Alan took a moment or two and then got up and walked into the house and the
bathroom. I could hear his heavy stream of urine running into the toilet,
and then returned.  He sat next to me in the metal 1940's restored
sofa-style glider I was sitting on.  He sat midway between my own position
and the other end of the glider.  Not so close as to be truly suggestive,
but closer than the average man would sit.

"Do I make you uncomfortable?" Alan finally asked me, his eyes directed off
into the indeterminate distance.

"Yes, sometimes."

"Why?  Because you are gay and you are attracted to me?"

His words hit me like a brick dropped from about 3 stories over my head.
Nothing I'd done or suggested, I thought, had made that conclusion for him.
I was angry at his impertinence.  And astonished at his bluntness.  And
more stimulated than I cared to admit, which in a way was the most
uncomfortable part of all.  I felt my groin stirring, and I didn't want him
to see me.  I stood up and moved to the railing, my back to him.

"Have I said or done something to suggest that to you?"

"I've seen your eyes."

"Well?"

"Mostly, you try to look away from me, and then I catch you looking at me.
So, I figured.  And well, now I'm asking.  Does that offend you?"

I took stock of his utter and blunt hammer-blow honesty. I could admire it
on one level, if it didn't make me squirm so badly.  "I'm unaccustomed to
such blunt questions.  I'm your boss, for Christ sake!"

"Yeah."  Just yeah.  I could interpret it as agreement, as humorous or as a
denial of that relationship.  In fact, I had no clue.

We kept our relative positions for a very long 5 minutes, and finally,
sensing that I was once again safe to sit back down, I took my position, as
far away from him on the glider as possible to sit.

He appeared to note my positioning with what I took to be humor.

"So, are we at a stalemate?"  He asked me finally.

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean, I was going to ask you if I could move in here."

Shit!  I must have visibly jumped.  My chest was rising and falling like a
trip-hammer, I thought, surely visible as day to him.

"Why?  I thought you had a place."

"I do.  I just wondered if I and you might be more comfortable living
together, here."

"I don't really think so." I answered, finally.  "I can't see how anything
would be better that way..."

"Fine."  He said, and stood up.  "We have a whole row of hoeing to do."  He
moved away and I heard him reclaim his hoe and head off to the other field.
It took me a half hour to recover from his proposition and try to act
normal again.  I didn't know whether I could pull if off around him or not.

Finally, I resumed working next to him.  He said nothing, whistling in a
low whistle through his teeth, in synchrony with his movements, which were
as economical and effective as it was possible to be, I thought.  The
total, was an uncommon gracefulness which I could probably only equal in
the best two days of my life.

We worked like this the rest of the day, and at 5 p.m., sharp, though I'd
not seen Alan check his battered watch, he slung the hoe over his shoulder
and started to move away.  Then, abruptly, he turned back again.

"You are gay, aren't you?"

"Yes," I answered him, looking momentarily squarely into his eyes.  "I am."

"So, why won't you let me move in with you?  You don't find me attractive?"

"Are you talking a sexual arrangement here?"

"Why not?  I mean, yes.  DO you find me attractive?"

"Of course I do.  Who wouldn't?  I'm not in that phase of my life
here. That's a destructive piece of my life that I can't face again."  I
said it with soft finality, but I hoped, gentleness.  Here was a beautiful
man who'd just offered himself on some kind of platter for me, and I was
turning him down, firmly.  I didn't want to devalue him, though.

I did not expect the response that I got, however.  Alan looked up with
sudden and vibrant curiosity and amazement.  I might as well told him that
I was from Mars!  His face was filled with utter disbelief.  And then
something like quiet grief.  All of that passed so quickly I couldn't even
be sure I'd seen ANY of it.  And then the neutral mask was back again, and
he grinned.  The grins always felt genuine, but the eyes always gave them
away.

"I just thought....  Well, I guess it doesn't matter...."  He picked up his
hoe, and before I could think of any words that might be helpful, he moved
away.  I heard his car starting up in the distance, minutes later, and then
silence.  My heart was still beating hard, and filled with something like
abject terror.

I knew he would not be back the next morning.  I 'knew' but I was wrong.
There he was, 7:59 a.m. by my watch, probably 8 sharp by his.  And he
grinned at me as though nothing had ever happened.

"I think you made the wrong choice yesterday," he said, breezily, as he
moved past me and picked up the planter which we were going to use today.
We were going to sow strawflowers, in a loose, non-rowed corner of the new
field.

"I did? How can you know?"  The way I said it, it came out "how can YOU
know?"  You know nothing about me, Alan.

"We don't have to have a sexual relationship.  But I'd save rent, and you'd
have me around."

"But that assumes a lot, doesn't it?"

"You mean, that you wanted to have me around?"  Alan said this lightly, as
though neither he nor I believed that I didn't.

"Well, yeah, that for starters."

"But you do."

"Okay.  Yeah, I like having you around."

"Good.  I was afraid I'd lost all ability to judge ANY reaction of yours."

"What the FUCK is this all about?" I suddenly railed.  A night of no sleep
had done nothing to my help my irritability.

"I like this farm, and on one level I like you, too.  You've been decent
and kind to me, you're a good employer, we have some good talks---yeah,
maybe not yet on any depth---I'm tired of living where I'm living.  You're
gay, you admitted it, and you 'like' the way I look.  So, where in all of
this have I made a logical error?"

"Are you gay?" I said, aghast at the coolness of his analysis of this
strange, strange conversation.  "I mean, isn't that an essential question,
one you've never answered?"

"Is it imperative that I be gay?" Alan suddenly asked, and for the first
time I saw a look of hatred wash across his face.  And with it, and the
knowledge that he'd slipped and showed it to me, he moved quickly away from
me and stood at some distance.  In a moment, I could see his shoulders
shaking up and down, and then I heard the terrible sounds of a man crying
in such great racking sobs that it tore at my heart.  I couldn't bear it.
I moved quickly to him and put my arms around his shoulders from behind.
He smelled of balsam soap.  He stood, allowing this, for a moment or two,
and then I felt something else cross through him, and he shook off my
hands, and turned towards me, his eyes red and his face distorted with
utter agony.  But the hatred was still painted there in its dirty reality.

"Shit, Alan, what the hell IS this?  What is going on?"

"You fuck.  You fuck, you fuck, you fuck!!!" Alan screamed at me at the top
of his lungs.  He lunged towards me and I side-stepped, a poorly-aimed
roundhouse missing my chin and whistling the air beside my ear.  One of the
few ungraceful movements he ever made, I think.  (Lucky for me).  I grabbed
him by the shoulders with my entire strength, and weighed him down,
bringing us down in a heap.  He struggled, I think not valiantly, for
surely I couldn't have held a wild man bent upon my destruction had that
truly been his goal.  But I was a very strong man, and I had him somewhat
at a disadvantage, my arms wrapped around his waist and my whole body
weight crushing him into the fresh earth.

"Alan!" I shouted at him.  "Take it easy!  Take it easy!"  He struggled for
moments more, and then it was clearly over.  I sensed some deep sense of
resignation in his body beneath mine, then, and I held on for only moments
more before rolling aside and letting him sit up.  He wiped at his face
with both hands, ashamed for tears in front of another man, I think.  The
wiping left him with mud-brown streaks, which gave him a strangely clown
look.  Perhaps mostly like Emmet, the sad clown, where tears are only
shadows away from the surface.

"My name isn't Alan."  He said, finally.  "Or, it is, but that's not my
whole name."

"Okay, what is your whole name."

"Josh Alan."  He looked at me as though that would immediately deliver the
whole truth to me.  It didn't.  Only distant bells rang and nothing
surfaced.  I looked perplexed.

"Josh Alan Andersen, once," he said, finally, softly.

Ah.  My heart sank and my own shoulders heaved up.  Tears came to my eyes
and I suddenly felt overwhelmed and inconsolable.  Ah, Ah, Ah.  I sobbed,
and turned away from him in the deepest sort of shame I'd ever felt in my
whole life.  I'd ruined then killed his father.

Alan, or Josh, now, took this in, sitting upright feet away, and then,
finally, I felt a soft touch on one shoulder.  I shook his hand loose.
There was nothing I could say to this young man, nothing to be said, no
exculpating testimony, nothing, nothing.....

"I wanted you dead.  For years I wanted you dead..."  His tone was flat and
slow. "I thought I did.  I think I didn't, really."

"I don't blame you.  Not one bit."

"Then I tracked you down and came here."

"And finally it begins to make some sense," I added.

"Will you turn around?"

"As long as you don't look at me..."

"I can't and won't promise that."  He said, finally.  "Turn around anyway."

I did.  I looked at him with my own sort of hatred flashing through my
mind.  "Did you come here to kill me?  Because if you did, I wish you'd
just go ahead and do it.  I don't care.  Really. Just do it.  It'd be
fair."

"Yeah, maybe it would."  He admitted.  "But I didn't plan to kill you."
Suddenly he broke into a gale of laughter, the only really genuine bit of
laughter I'd ever seen from him, where his eyes and his mouth agreed, and
he laughed so hard that tears flowed from his eyes anew.

"So, what?  What are you laughing at?" I yelled at him, "What's so fuckin'
funny?"

"Just the image of ME, wild killer, seeking revenge, coming across two
states just to plug my old enemy..."  His shoulders were rocking up and
down, and his hands smeared yet new dirt stains over his face.

"Well, so?"

"You don't know me at all, do you?  I'm a pacifist, really."

"I didn't think so a minute ago, there."

"Yeah, I really convinced you, huh?"  He paused a second or two, then went
on, "Never mind. We're not having a contest, are we?"  He looked at me, and
a tiny laugh emerged yet again from his lips.  "I mean, we're both pretty
sorry right now, aren't we?"

"I reckon we are..."  I had to smile, and then, amazingly and without real
reason, tirades of laughter ruled my own frame for more minutes than seemed
reasonable.  In moments we were both rollicking in uncontrolled laughter,
the kind that makes your sides hurt, and finally I pulled him down and
rubbed dirt into his hair.  He twisted around to avoid my grasp and reached
behind himself, digging up fistfuls of dirt and smearing them over my face
and hair and chest.  In seconds we were both incredibly filthy.  And
wrestling in earnest.  It almost felt like a weight of a century had been
temporarily lifted.  I tried to get behind him, bind his arms to his sides
like I had earlier. Josh moved deftly and threw one leg over my waist and
tried to squeeze me between his thighs.

Our hands were flailing, trying for grabholds, the kind of fighting that
friends do when they are determined to control but not hurt each other,
which is to say, entirely ineffective.

And then, perhaps what was inevitable happened.  Josh's hands came down and
cupped my genitals, and my own cock, already half erect, became firm
beneath his hands' heat, almost instantaneously.

"Don't!" I said firmly, and sat up and pulled his hands away from me.  He
looked at me with questioning eyes, as though he could not understand my
refusal.  But he made no effort to touch me again.  We sat apart.

"First a shower, I think.  No work today.  I declare a holiday."

"You gonna let me use your shower?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna let you use it."  The way he looked at me suggested that
he thought I meant more.  "But I'm not gonna have sex with you.  Not now,
not ever."

"Why not?"  It sounded like a matter of curiosity rather than any wounded
ego.

"It's a place I just don't want to go anymore."

"Okay.  Whatever."  He tossed it off as though it had suddenly become the
least important thing we were talking about.

"Anyway, ARE you gay?"  That part of this equation was so strange that I
had to know the answer.  I mean, how likely could it be that father and son
would BOTH be?

"I have no clue," Josh said finally, "but I think it's a definite
possibility."

"You can tell me all about it, when we're both clean again...."

"Okay, sure.  We have a lot to talk about don't we?"

"We sure as hell do, JOSH!"

He showered first, and I shucked my filthy clothes, donning an old terry
robe that would have to go into the washer first thing, anyway.  I picked
up Josh's clothes from outside the shower and took them to the washer. I
moved to throw them into the top, when I realized just what I was doing.
In my hands I held the tiny roiled ball of briefs that Josh shucked, and I
knew that I wanted to have them, to wear them....  And I disallowed it. I
thrust them away from me and angrily turned the knob.  Once wet, I was
safe.  I wouldn't fish out wet undershorts.

end of Part IV, Phil; continued in Part V.....