Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2017 06:16:46 +0200 (CEST)
From: Proton <protonelectron@tutanota.com>
Subject: Forced to Be Friends, Chapter One

Title: Forced to Be Friends, Chapter One
Author: Proton

Summary: Mike is introduced to his father's friend's son, who is more
worldly than Mike is comfortable with. This is the beginning of his
introduction to sexual attraction.

Keywords: mb, nosex, bsolo


Author's Note: This is a little more gritty than my other story, "New
Neighbors: Temporary babysitter for Jacob," but it deals more with the
confusion of early adolescence.  I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear
from readers whether they liked it or not.  Feel free to send me email at
protonelectron@tutanota.com. Best to you and all of your young friends.


Forced to Be Friends

by Proton

Chapter One

I woke up one Saturday and threw an arm over my face.  It wasn't that I'd
had too much to drink the night before.  It was more that I had neglected
to drink enough water in between classy glasses of bourbon.  Or at least
afterward, before I went to bed.  It wasn't really my fault.  I had started
peeing like a racehorse and figured that meant I was hydrated.  What did I
know?  I was drunk.  Anyway, I'd left the window curtains open and the sun
was my enemy.  My eyes' enemy, actually, but they took it out on me.

I got up and brushed my teeth, since the fire in my mouth from the whiskey
had burned out the night before, leaving only the taste of ashes in the
morning.  I rinsed out my mouth and then kept refilling the water cup right
from the tap, drinking half a dozen of those piddly cups of water. It
occurred to me that I might still be drunk, but the throbbing settled to a
dull hum, and I felt well enough to dig around for the bottle of aspirin I
never used so I could break my streak and pop a couple.

Breakfast was a greasy affair of a bacon and egg sandwich.  I did not fry
the bread in the bacon grease, because I'm not a monster.  No, I buttered
the bread and grilled it.  Besides, the bacon grease was for cooking the
eggs.  I skipped the juice and squeezed one of those water flavoring things
they sell into a bottle of water and drank that.  All the better to clear
my head, because it was time for spring cleaning.

Just another way of saying it was time to get up off my ass and figure out
what I was going to do with all my junk in the garage, but at least it was
an excuse to stop ignoring it.  Whatever works, right?

Three hours later, things had devolved the way they always do.  I'd
trail-blazed a pretty good path back to some of the older stuff I'd pulled
out of storage when my parents had died, back when I hadn't had time or
energy to go through it.  I'd been pretty good about looking through things
and throwing stuff out, but sooner or later you always stopped trying to
ascertain what needs to go, and started just going through things for the
trip down memory lane.  Opening Fotomat envelopes and going through the
photos, or flipping through a box with old homework from grade school.  I
never knew why my mom kept those, but there they were anyway.  You tell
yourself you should look through it all some time and see if you want to
keep anything and throw the rest out.  It never happens.  I spent another
hour before I got to the box that brought everything flooding back.

Inside was an old Dell computer.  No, nothing you'd ever recognize.  Piled
on top were large, off-white cardstock envelopes with things like "MS-DOS
5.0 Setup" and "Microsoft Windows 3.0 Setup Disks."  Old stuff.  I tried to
pick up the computer and nearly tore off a nail.  It felt like it was made
of sheet metal.  Back in those days, actually, they were.  I dragged the
box out through the path I'd cleared and put it next to the garage door to
deal with later.  Then I looked back at the pile of crap that was sitting
there, waiting for me to sort it and throw it out, and then back down at
the computer.  I picked up the box and carried it into my house.  The crap
could wait.

I went to my "office" and took my work laptop out into the living room and
put it on the coffee table.  Then I went back to the office and started
pulling computer parts out of the box.  The keyboard was heavy and make
chunky mechanical sounds when I tested the keys.  I probably had an old LCD
monitor in the garage just waiting to be thrown out, but visions of CRT
scanlines danced in front of my eyes and I felt wistful.  I put the
keyboard aside and took out the manuals and software boxes, and tipped the
computer up onto its side so I could look at the back.

There was a specs sticker on the back, another thing computers don't come
with anymore.  Intel 80386 SX, 33 MHz, 2 MB RAM, 80 MB hard drive.  It was
all there.  I looked at the ports and noted the after-market sound card and
video card I'd added, along with two phone jacks.  A modem.

Back in the early 90s, there was no Internet to speak of.  I mean, yes, it
had existed for a couple decades before in universities, and there were
home Internet connections by 1995 that were still rare if not unheard of.
Instead, your computer was a standalone device, unless you had a modem.
Even then, you'd maybe dial into a friend's computer over your home phone
lines to play some two-player game.  Or maybe you had an online service,
which back then charged by the hour. When I got this computer for my
birthday, I'd turned 12.  My dad had bought it for me because he'd heard
friends talking about how they were good for education.  My parents were
divorced, and my mom couldn't afford an online service, so once I'd tried
Compuserve for a month, I was stuck with whatever was on the computer.  In
the end, I'd ended up discovering bulletin board systems, which were free,
privately-run systems you could make your computer call.  It was different
times.

I snapped out of my reminiscing long enough to look down at my clothes.  I
was pretty grimy from all the dust in the garage.  I washed my hands in the
bathroom, grabbed a couple rags from the linen closet, and cleaned up the
computer and set it up.  I turned it on without a monitor and heard the
power supply whir into life and the hard drive spin up with an electric
whine.  Each disk drive made a visceral burrr-BUR-bur, one deep and then
the next higher pitched, and then a chipper BEEP! from the PC speaker
announced that the computer had completed its power-on self test.  A soft,
creaking growl from the hard drive told me the computer was booting, and I
was pretty pissed at not having a monitor.  I waited until the hard drive
had quieted down, about a minute later, before flipping the power switch to
the off position and hearing the computer whine to a halt.

I thought back to those days, when full telepresence virtual reality seemed
just months away and when super-blocky, 256-color graphics and nothing more
than differently pitched beeps had been able to transport me away to
fighting Nazis in World War II Germany or to medieval fantasy lands or off
across the far reaches of space as I traded between stars and fought off
pirate attacks while trying to save mankind.

I took a shower and really scrubbed hard to get rid of the dust.  The
nostalgia remained.  I made lunch and didn't even entertain the thought of
going back out into the garage.

On the couch, I concentrated on those early days.  I hadn't known anything
about computer networks except that computers could talk to each other with
one, and universities had joined their own networks with each other to form
a global internetwork so they could send electronic mail.

The idea that I might ever be able to participate at all unless I became a
scientist was first proposed by a boy.  I hated him; he was my father's
friend's son and they made us spend time together.  He was very much unlike
me, but eventually, I got used to him.  And we did become friends, after a
while.  Of a sort.  I went into the kitchen and grabbed the bourbon bottle
from the top of the fridge, then remembered that morning's headache.  I
hesitated, then pulled a shot glass from the cupboard, filled it, and put
the bourbon back and pulled a bottle of beer out of the fridge.  I poured
that neatly into a glass beer mug, rinsed out the bottle, then shot the
whiskey.  Washed it down slowly with the foreign beer, and carried the mug
back into the living room where I stretched out in the recliner.  The TV
was off, the A/C was on, and I could just relax, nurse the beer, and relive
old memories.

I was 12, lived with my mother, and was pretty happy as things went.  I was
a little nerdy, but computers were seen as cool because you could play
video games with them.  Far better-looking than Nintendo games, although
the Super Nintendo would change all that.  On the other hand, it had only
been a few years since computers didn't have built-in programming languages
like BASIC when you turned them on, so even being able to program really
simple games "like guess the number" or "pick a random person from a list"
was a neat skill and not something that made you an outcast.  Although it
could still happen if you were too excited about programming.  But at this
point, DOS games needed every resource a computer had, so a would-be gamer
needed to know how to format a boot floppy and set up CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT to load all the drivers you needed for a game but nothing
more.

FORMAT B: /S

That was how you created a boot disk.  The A drive was my
five-and-a-half-inch floppy disk drive, and I didn't like it because they
didn't hold as much and bent too easily.  So I always made boot disks with
1.44 MB three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks.  Sometimes that was even enough
space to hold the game itself.  Then you could set it to run automatically,
and 10 seconds after you put the disk in and turned on the computer, you'd
be staring at the title screen.

Don't even ask me how I still remembered that format command.  Anyway, I
didn't even have to do that until I had done some chores and made some cash
to buy a sound card, and then a CD-ROM drive, and those last games DOS
games before Windows 95 was around couldn't run without a boot disk.  It
was dark times, but any kid who had a computer and played games on it was
familiar with the startup config dance.

I considered myself an expert, and my papers got typed up in Windows 3.1 in
Microsoft Write and printed on my dot-matrix printer.  Then for games, when
I was tired of Solitaire or unable to figure out what the hell were the
rules of Minesweeper, I'd exit Windows and type commands into the black
void of a DOS command prompt.

I could do that and I could write useless BASIC programs, and I considered
myself pretty good with computers.

Every other week, my dad would pick me up on Friday night.  I missed him
and looked forward to it every time.  It was always a bit strange.  My
parents had started a divorce in 1990 or so, and it took a year for
everything to finalize.  I was pretty oblivious to the details, and was
slightly disillusioned when I realized, only after a couple of months--that
when my dad would take me to one of his friend's house and I'd spend time
play Silent Service with her son on their NES, taking turns steering a
submarine under the waves and launching torpedoes--that my dad was
technically cheating on my mom.

I found out when my mom asked what I had done that weekend with my dad, and
I happily said that we visited his girlfriend and I got to play Nintendo
games with her son.  Her shock and the following sobs don't haunt me
anymore, but I remember the confusion and distrust of my dad's friends
after that.  Although I do have to say to my mom's credit that once the
divorce was finalized, she didn't hold any future relationships like that
against him.

But as 1992 came around and I turned 12 and got my computer, it was still a
confusing time. Television families were sometimes mixed, and I remember
Hogan's Family showing a husband dealing with his wife's death by having
his sister move in and help with the kids, but every other family was a
nuclear family and I felt that divorce was different and bad.  The closest
thing on the air was Roseanne, where both parents worked, and they fought
but loved each other, and so that show in particular was some kind of
comfort.  That and Married... With Children showed lower-income families,
and even though they were obviously sitcoms, seeing a reflection of my own
situation on TV was affirming in a way, even though I was never teased at
school for having divorced parents.

Maybe all of that's too long an intro, but by the fall of 1992, I was back
in school and chafing under the lost freedom of summer.  I had also become
a little withdrawn and polite to try to cope with my parents' divorce.
They were both doing their best to take care of me, although my dad
sometimes complained about having to pay child support and the tension was
palpable.  Another couple of years and they mellowed out and could be
friends again, but the recentness of the divorce and my dad's playing the
field beforehand had left things sensitive, and I was always slightly on
edge.

My dad came one Friday to pick me up, since it was his weekend.  I had a
backpack with my clothes and my Game Boy and was ready to go when he
arrived.  I kissed my mom goodbye and ran out to my dad's truck and climbed
into the front seat.

"Hi, Dad, what are we doing this weekend?" I asked him.

"I thought we'd visit an old friend I used to know from work," he said.

I moaned, and he said, "You'll like it.  I know him from way back, and he
has a son who's your age.  He's 13."

"I'm 12," I said.

"I know you are, but he's about the same age, too.  Look, don't be like
this.  Just give it a try.  If you get along we'll spend more time with
them and if not it's just for one evening."

I reluctantly said "Okay," and slouched in my seat, trying not to sulk.  I
answered the usual questions about school and what I'd done in the last two
weeks, and maybe 20 minutes later we were driving down a residential street
and nearing my Dad's friend's house.  We pulled up to a duplex--the first
time I'd heard of or seen one--and walked to the back unit, which was
strange to me.  Unusual and exciting, but the strangeness put me on edge.
My dad knocked on the door and a man opened up.

"Phil!" he said.

"Hey, Joe," he said, and they clapped each other's arms.

"Come on in," Joe said, and swung the door open all the way.

"Joe, I want you to meet my son, Mike," Dad said as I walked in.

"Hey, Mike, how's it going?" he said, and put his hand on my shoulder and
gave it a squeeze.

"Good," I said.  My stomach tingled--I didn't know this guy and wasn't sure
about him, but I figured his friendliness was a good sign.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I'm twelve," I answered.

"My son's thirteen.  You'll get along with him just fine.  Do you like
video games?"  I nodded.  "Then you'll have a good time together.  Hey,
Erik!  Come out to the living room, we have guests!"

I heard a voice yell "Coming, Dad!" from down a hallway.  I could tell he
was older than me because his voice had a rough, husky sound that I knew
meant it was changing.

My dad said, "Mike here knows how to program computers."

"Really?" Joe said.  "Maybe you'll grow up and work for Microsoft or IBM."
Then he turned toward the hall and yelled, "Erik!  Get your ass out here!"

I was shocked because I never swore at the time.  Closer than before I
heard "Holy shit, Dad, I'm right here."

My eyes widened as a boy walked out of the hallway.  I braced myself for my
dad's friend grabbing his arm, and wondering if he'd yell or spank him.  I
didn't want to be there for that and I glanced around and wondered if we
could just go home.  Joe reached out towards his son and I flinched
slightly.

"About time, Erik," he said, and put his hand on the back of the boy's
neck.  "Erik, this is my friend Phil's son Mike.  Introduce yourself."

I looked at Erik.  He was a couple inches taller than me, but I was the
shortest kid in my class.  He had the faintest hint of shadow above his
lip, and had black hair that was cut like Eddie Furlong's in Terminator 2
except it was parted in the middle.  He had slightly almond-shaped eyes,
and I later learned he was half-Japanese.  It added to his exoticness
because I was white, although one of my best friends at school was
completely Japanese and I didn't consciously think anything of it at the
time.  It was more of a thing where I can look back now and think "oh yeah,
that was just one more thing that made him interesting."

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I replied.

Joe sighed.  "Erik, why don't you take Mike to your room and hang out?  You
both like computers."

"Yeah, follow me," Erik said, and I did.

"Have fun," my dad called after me.  I have no idea what they did together,
although when I think back on it I wonder if they went back to Joe's room
and smoked marijuana.  My parents both smoked cigarettes until much later,
and I didn't learn what marijuana smelled like until I was in high school,
so I never really found out.

Down the hall and on the right was my Erik's room, and he said, "Come right
in.  You're not some kind of neat freak, are you?"

I laughed and said "No."

"Well good because it's a fucking mess in here," he said while he closed
the door behind us.

I flinched and he said, "What's wrong?  Are you afraid to swear?"

"No," I said.  "I just... don't want to."

"Ugh, don't be a baby," Erik said.

"I'm not a baby," I said.  "I just don't swear a lot.  It doesn't bother me
but my mom doesn't like it."

"Oh man," he said and laughed.  "You're a such a momma's boy."

"I'm not a momma's boy!"

"Then swear," he said.  "Say a bad word."

I crinkled my brow.  I didn't want to swear.  I wasn't used to it and was
afraid I'd swear wrong. But I didn't want him to think I was weak.

He jumped at my hesitation.  "Ha, I knew you were a wuss.  Don't worry,
some day your nads will drop."  I felt myself blush as he mentioned my
balls.  I didn't know what it meant but I'd heard it in a movie once and
knew it was an insult.  "Don't worry, I won't say bad words in front of you
if it'll make you cry.  What are you, ten?"

My cheeks burned hotter.  "I'm twelve!" I said.

He stepped closer to me.  "Bullshit," he said.  "Say a swear word, then."

I took a step back and hit the door.  My anxiety started to rise.  He
continued.  "Say 'shit,'" he said.

I took a deep breath.  "Shit."

"Say 'fuck.'"

I hesitated, but when he smirked I said "Fuck!"

"Shit, you're all right after all.  Maybe you are twelve after all.  Hope
your balls finish dropping soon."

"They have," I said, having no idea whether I was lying.

"Yeah?  Prove it," he said and reached out towards my jeans.

I jumped as his fingers brushed the snap of my jeans.  "Hey!" I said, and
covered myself with my hands.

Erik just laughed.  "I was just fucking with you.  Don't be so nervous.
What are you, a queer?"

"No!" I snapped back.  That made me angry.  I was vague on the details, but
I knew that being queer meant you wanted to have sex with guys and that was
bad.  "I'm not a queer."

"Then don't act like one," he said, and went over to his bed.

I stood there, frowning.  I was fully aware that touching others' privates
was wrong and yet I felt my penis tingle and stiffen, and didn't know why,
but it put me on edge.  I had to change the subject.  "Where's your
computer?" I asked.

Erik rolled his eyes.  "It's at my mom's house.  I don't have one here."
That answered another question, too.

"You live with your mom, too?" I asked.

"Yeah, most of the time.  But I live with my dad on the weekends.  He's
pretty cool.  He lets me do whatever I want."

"Oh," I said.

"What's your favorite video game?" he asked.  I hesitated, wondering if it
was a trap.

"Well, I like Mario and Final Fantasy, and on the computer I like Elite."

"What about Wolfenstein?"

"I--what's that?" I asked.

"Wolfenstein 3D?  You're a spy who goes around shooting Nazis.  You've
never played it?"

"No, I never saw it in stores," I said.

"Oh man, you really don't know anything, do you?  It's not in stores.  You
have to download it from a BBS?"

"What's a BBS?" I asked.

Erik rolled his eyes again.  "Man, you don't know anything at all.  A
bulletin board system?  I thought you said you liked computers."

"I do," I protested.

"Well then you should know about BBSes.  You call them with a modem and you
can download stuff.  Do you even have a modem?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then you should call one.  Give me your phone number and I'll call you
from my mom's house and give you a number for one.  Then you can download
Wolfenstein."

He dug around in his desk drawer for a notepad and gave me a pen.  I wrote
down my name and phone number and he grabbed the pen from my hand and said,
"Okay, I'll call you Monday when I'm at home.  So what do you want to do
now?"

I sat there and thought.  I was excited that he was sharing something new
with me, but still upset that he had teased me about swearing and about my
privates.  "I donno," I finally said.  "What do you want to do?"

"Well I can think of something but you're such a momma's boy you probably
won't want to do it."

"I'm not a momma's boy!" I said immediately.

"Then promise you'll do what I say."

"First what is it?"

"It's something you'll like if you're not a chicken.  Just trust me."

I felt one side of my mouth slide into a frown.  I didn't trust him, but I
could tell that he was cooler than me and I didn't want him to think I was
a little kid, especially if I would have to hang out with him because of my
dad.

"Okay, I promise.  What is it, then?"

"You wanna look at Playboys?"

I gasped out loud.  "Well... I..."

"Ha, I knew you were just a wuss."

"I'm not a wuss!" I cried.

"Well once you grow hair on your balls like me you'll learn that Playboys
are cool."

"I have hair on my balls!" I said.  I could feel my cheeks getting red, but
I was telling the truth.  I'd started growing a thin collection of pubic
hair around my penis, just thin, straight ones all in a ring, and there
were at least 5 or 6 on my scrotum.  I'd noticed them in the shower shortly
after I turned 12 and had counted them in bed that night before sleep.  I'd
grown several more since then.

"Then show me," he said.

"Wh--what?" I stammered.

"Pull out your balls and show me your hairs," he said.  I covered my crotch
again with my hands.  "C'mon, we're both guys.  Don't be such a queer," he
prodded.

"I'm not a queer!" I said, and pulled the snap in my jeans open.  I pulled
each side open so my zipper slid down and slid the smallest tip of my
thumbs under the waistband of my white Hanes underwear.  I felt my knees
shake a little, and I pulled my underwear out in front and put a hand over
my erect penis to figure out how I was going to hide it while I showed my
balls.

But instead, Erik shrieked with laughter and fell back on his bed, holding
his sides.

"Oh god, what a queer!" he managed between gasping for air.

"But you--"

"You're not supposed to be so excited about it," he said.  "You have a
boner.  Why do you want me to see your balls so much?"

"I don't!  I can just prove that I have hair down there," I said.

"God, I believe you.  Stop blushing like a fucking girl."

I opened my mouth but shut it again.  I suspected that anything I said was
a trap.

"Look," Erik said, "just come here and look at these with me.  But don't
get too close to me.  I don't want to find out you're a queer."

I went over to the bed and kneeled beside it, a foot away from him.  He
lifted the corner of his mattress and pulled out three magazines.  They
weren't Playboys after all, they were more along the lines of Busty Blonde
Sluts or something like that.  He handed me one and I took it, looking with
some astonishment at the cover.

I'd seen my mom naked growing up, and sometimes my dad.  And I'd been
content to be naked when I was little, until my mom put a stop to that as I
was nearing school age, but I would sometimes stay in a towel after my
shower and could talk to my mom or walk to my room with the towel around my
shoulders and held tight in front.  If the towel slipped, it wasn't a big
deal, I just grabbed it and didn't give my nakedness a second thought.  I'd
become far more modest once I started noticing hairs growing in, but nudity
was never a big deal.

This, however, was different.  The cover of the magazine had a woman in
lingerie, with her breasts exposed and crotchless panties, kneeling in
front of a man.  I could see his penis--it was hard like mine sometimes
got--and his balls, and she was holding it in front of her open mouth.  I
didn't know why she was doing that, but it made my stomach drop out like I
was on a roller coaster.

Erik elbowed me.  "C'mon, let's look at them," and he opened up his.  I did
the same and saw lots of pictures of men and women together, naked.  On
each page there were 3-6 photos of various sex acts, and while I knew what
missionary sex was and had a very vague idea of what a blow job was, the
magazine filled in the gaps and then some.

My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton as we flipped through the
pages.  Erik would say, "Oh man, look at that!" and point, and I'd lean
over slightly to look at his magazine and listen to him say, "Oh man, look
at her pussy" or, "I'll bet she's such a slut."  I tried to imitate him,
and did the same, but I was unpracticed.  "Mike, wouldn't you like to fuck
her with your dick?"

I looked at Erik's magazine and saw a blond woman with gigantic breasts,
laying on her back with her legs spread and holding her vulva apart.  I
knew women had a vagina but was much more vague about other details, so I
saw a lot of red and pink but wasn't sure how it made me feel.  But my
penis had long been rock hard and was starting to hurt.  I wiggled my
bottom on my feet and reached down to pull my jeans and briefs out so my
penis could pop into a more comfortable position.

Erik saw this and said, "Oh man, you're not masturbating, are you?"

I jerked my hand away from my crotch.  "No!  I'm just rearranging my
pants," I said.

One again, I found myself the subject of Erik's attention.  I knew about
masturbation and did it at night, sometimes, and had been taught that
"playing with oneself" was normal but not to be talked about and only done
in private.  But here we were, looking at dirty magazines together.  I
relaxed.  This was a grownup thing, just like the magazines.

"Yeah, right.  Do you ever masturbate?"

I didn't hesitate.  "Yeah," I said with a smug grin.

"Ugh, gross," said Erik, and my grin faded.  How could that be gross?  He
had dirty magazines under his bed!  We were both looking at them and he was
talking about how sexy they were!  Didn't he masturbate while thinking
about them?  "I can't believe I'm friends with a masturbator," he added.

I looked down at my hard penis, hidden in my jeans, and then to the
magazine, with a lot of photos that made me feel slightly queasy but
somehow excited, and then looked at Erik.  My mouth opened but I didn't
know what to say.  I was absolutely baffled.

"Whatever," he said.  "Let's just keep looking at the magazines.  Just keep
your hands to yourself and on the magazine."

So we resumed looking.  Erik enthusiastically pointed out certain photos
and I tried to do the same to keep face.

When we got to the end, Erik tossed his to the side of the bed and got up
and sat on the edge, and I followed suite.

"Hey, you're pretty cool.  I'm going to get you that number for the BBS so
you can play some real computer games."

"Do want to sleep over some time?" I asked.  "Maybe we can trade disks."

"I donno," he said.  "I donno if I'd want to sleep in the same bed with a
masturbator."

I felt my cheeks blush again and I didn't know what to say.  'I wouldn't
masturbate while you were there' sounded odd to have to say.  'We would
sleep in sleeping bags' seemed obvious.  Then I wondered if it was normal
to share a bed on a sleepover.  'We would sleep facing away from each
other' seemed like a safe bet, but also defensive.

I was trying to figure out how to respond when the bedroom door open, and
Erik's dad was standing there.  I jumped and grabbed my magazine and slid
it behind me back.

"Hey, Mike.  I don't care if you're looking at magazines.  I just wanted to
know if you guys were hungry."

"Yeah," Erik said. "I'm fucking starving."

"Great, how about you, Mike?"

I nodded bashfully.

"We're thinking of running down to Tommy Burgers.  Get ready to go in two
minutes, okay?"

"Sure thing, Dad.  Thanks."

I watched as Erik's dad closed the door, and after it was shut I realized
I'd been holding my breath.  "Oh man, I thought we were so busted!" I said.

"My dad don't care," Erik scoffed.  "He's the one who bought these for me."

"Oh," was all I could think to say.  I handed him back his magazine and he
put them both back under the mattress.  We stood up and he pointed at the
door, so I went out into the hall and toward the living room with him
following me.

Our dads were waiting there and my dad said, "Ready to go?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Okay, let's hop to it!  We'll take Joe's car."  We went outside and loaded
into a station wagon, and went to Tommy's Burgers.  If you've ever been to
one, you know how great their chili burgers are.  If not, well, I guess
you're missing out.  Next time you're in Southern California or Nevada,
it's no In-N-Out, but it's great.  I had a chili dog since I wasn't into
pickles on a chili cheeseburger, but now I eat anything.  But I hadn't had
dinner and filling my stomach and laughing and joking without having to
worry about sexual themes made me relax again.  And Erik was pretty funny,
and he had called me his friend, even though it was in the same breath as a
put-down.  I wished I were more confident like him, and wanted to be his
friend.  Older kids could be like that to younger ones, even though we were
only about 8 months apart.

It was pretty late when we got back, around 9:30 or so, so my dad said
goodbye to his friend and I said goodbye to Erik, and we got back into my
dad's truck.

"So what'd you think of them?" my dad asked.

"They were cool," I said.

"Think you'd want to hang out with them again?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, noncommittally.  But part of me wanted Erik to
like me, and part of me wanted to get a chance to look at dirty magazines
again.

"That's good you got along," Dad said.  "We'll get together again and do
something.  It'll just depend on our schedules.  Maybe you can hang out
some more."

When we got to my dad's house, brushed my teeth before stripping off my
shirt and jeans and climbing into bed.  I had my own room at his house,
even though it was small, and it had a twin-sized bed and a giant stuffed
bear I'd won at a fair that summer.  I threw my clothes on the ground and
walked over in my briefs and hugged the bear.  "Good night, bear."  I was
too old for stuffed animals, but a giant one was kinda cool.  I crawled
between the sheets and shivered at the cold.

Sleeping at my dad's house was always a little weird.  At home, I had a cat
who would hear the shower turn on and go sit in the middle of my bed so it
was always warm by the time I climbed in.  My dad kept the shades in my
room drawn and the vents closed until I got there, so the room was always
cold.  But I laid still until the bed warmed up.

I thought about that evening and everything that had happened.  The images
from the magazines floated in my mind, and I tried to make sense of all of
them.  Who knew you could have sex with someone while you were facing the
same way instead of facing each other?  And why did they lick each other's
privates?  It obviously must've felt good to be licked, but why would you
lick someone else?

I reached into my briefs and squeezed the tip my penis.  It had grown erect
without me realizing it and as my glans slid out of my closing fingers and
my foreskin stretched, sliding along my glans as it went, I took a deep
breath.

'I can't believe I'm friends with a masturbator,' I heard Erik say. and I
let go of my penis only to grab the skin again a second later.

'Wouldn't you like to fuck her with your dick?' I heard again.  I tugged
harder on my penis, stretching the skin out from my glans and feeling the
skin glide back and forth.  It'd only been a month before my birthday that
it had become more than a game, and tugging on the skin was more than just
a pleasant feeling that collected in my stomach.  Since then, it would also
produce a build up--a sort of tension that felt confusing and unresolved if
I stopped.

I stretched my legs taut as the magazines' images slid behind my eyelids
like my glans slid inside my foreskin.  I tried to imagine what sex was
like, but the frozen pictures themselves were tantalizing enough.

'Look at her pussy.  Wouldn't you like to fuck her with your dick?'

I pictured that photo of the woman spread eagle, holding her vulva open and
the strange pink space in between.

I felt a spark and my back arched involuntarily.  My hand froze and I felt
my balls contract and my penis stiffen.  The glans swelled exquisitely, and
when my whole penis started jerking on its own I gasped and let go of my
foreskin so my glans wouldn't slide inside anymore.  I felt my balls
pulsate a split second before my penis would jump and the pressure inside
my penis tingled before fading away.

I lay there in the dark, on my back, panting.  After a bit I lifted my hand
off the mattress and back to my penis, where I grasped just below my glans
and squeezed forward, tenderly milking out a couple clear drops of semen.

I slid my thumb and forefinger together before remembering Erik's words
again.

'I donno if I'd want to sleep in the same bed with a masturbator.'

I felt myself blush again in the dark.  I couldn't believe he didn't
masturbate after looking at those pictures.  Maybe he didn't know it was
normal?  Or maybe when you turned thirteen you just got used to thinking
things were sexy and you didn't have to masturbate anymore.  Either way, I
scrubbed the pads of my fingers across the mattress.

I sighed, and then after a moment, sobbed once.  I didn't know why, but I
wanted Erik to be my friend.  I hoped I could make a better impression on
him the next time.  And if he did sleep over and we got to play video
games, then I could go a night without masturbating.  I wouldn't embarrass
myself in front of him.  It would be easy.

My dad dropped me off at my mom's house at 6:10 pm two days later. Of
course, as an adult, I learned that he liked to be up to 45 minutes late
bringing me back to keep my mom worried that he might keep me--against the
custody agreement.  Just the pettiness of adults that faded out another
year or two later as I got older and their relationship mellowed.

And that Tuesday, Erik called me on the phone and gave me three BBS
numbers, warning me to check the white pages to make sure the calling
prefix was in my local calling area and not a ZUM region so I didn't rack
up a phone bill.  Back then, just the area code alone wasn't enough to be
safe.

And so I figured out, very clumsily, how to use Windows Terminal to dial a
number and connect to a BBS, and eventually was able to download
Wolfenstein 3D via the Y-Modem protocol.

The game barely ran without shrinking down the screen size, and I had
trouble with the 3D first-person perspective and staying oriented.  But it
opened up a whole new world of gaming to me.  And connecting to other
computers opened up a whole new world of communication.

And those magazines were the start of a wider understanding of sexuality,
in an age where I'd only seen my parents naked as a kid, the occasional
glimpses at the swimming pool locker room, and naked pictures of statues in
the encyclopedia.

In my recliner, my thoughts turned back to present day, and I looked at my
mug.  I drained the last couple ounces of the beer and got up and
stretched.

I went into my bedroom and pulled on some fresh jeans and a button-down
shirt over my t-shirt, and grabbed my car keys.

I didn't feel like cooking, and figured I'd pick up some fast food.  But
first, I walked over to my phone.  "OK Google," I announced.  "Where's the
nearest Goodwill?"

"Here's some nearest listings for Goodwill within 3.4 miles," my phone said
as I picked it up.  I looked at the list--there was only one store because
the other location was just a donation drop-off center.

It was getting close to dinner time, and I didn't feel like cooking, so the
plan was fast food.  But first I wanted to see if I could pick up an old
computer monitor for cheap.  Something that would connect to the old
computer in my office.  If I could get it running, I could take a look
around and see what was still on there.

On the way back, with the very bulky, heavy CRT monitor in the trunk of my
car, I stopped at Tommy's Original Burgers and got a chili dog.