Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2010 15:02:32 -0700
From: Zack McNaught <zackmcnaught@hotmail.com>
Subject: Matt and Jake Part 2

DISCLAIMER: the following story is about a pair of young teenaged boys
falling in love. 'Matt and Jake' contains very few explicit sexual
references, but all the same if this kind of material offends you, or is
likely to get you into trouble, now's the time to leave... Still here?
Good, then settle back and enjoy the ride.

Luvz,

Zack Mack
(zackmcnaught@hotmail.com, www.asstr.org/~zack/, twitter.com/zackmcnaught)


Matt and Jake, part 2

15.

Jake closed the gap between us in one stride. In the same movement his
hands went to the sides of my head, and a heartbeat later his lips touched
mine.

I was still too flabbergasted to understand what was happening. Jake tried
again, and thankfully this time I got it. This time I realised what was
happening, and that quite frankly I loved it, and I wanted to do more of
it.

It's funny to think how quickly you learn to kiss, especially with passion
involved. A minute later my lips and chin were covered in slobber from our
rather wet coupling, and a surge of adrenaline close to lightning bolt
strength was racing through me as a hot, soft hand reached inside my shorts
and took possession of all of me.

16.

I doubled over with the shock of feeling him touch me, ripping my mouth
away from his, gasping for breath. The sensation had been too much and Jake
stood staring at the single wet streak which ran up his arm, seemingly in
disbelief. I leaned back against the only solid wall of the den, breathing
hard, shaking like a leaf and feeling weak at the knees. He came over to me
and pulled me upright, grabbing me in a fierce hug which had a lot more to
do with companionship than lust. For the first time since I was a small
boy, I let a tear fall from the corner of my eye.

17.

We went and talked, but properly this time. I know it seems strange that
two thirteen year old boys would go and talk about it, but we did. In
excited whispers, of course, because his parents were still asleep
upstairs. His little brother came in at one point and demanded to watch TV,
so our conversation was curtailed somewhat until we struck on the ingenious
notion of going to his room and talking there.

Of course, we had to be even more quiet there. My presence wouldn't really
be questioned, but his parents hated to be woken up early at the weekends,
when during the week they both got up early for work. So we whispered, and
then kissed again, and by the time we were done whispering, and kissing,
and well... you know... anyway, by the time we were done it was very much
time for me to get home before I was missed. With one last kiss I left him
standing there with a rather obvious problem to either hide, or solve... by
himself this time.

18.

To suggest that I saw the world through rose-tinted spectacles that day
really didn't do justice to the way I felt. Suddenly all those unpleasant
emotions which had been ruining my relationship with my mum were gone. I
was her happy little boy again, her best friend. She even joked that I must
have found a girlfriend, and I smiled inwardly as I was able to say that in
all honestly there was no chance.

The possibility of telling her about Jake and I didn't even enter my
head. It just didn't occur to me that my mum's reaction could be in any way
positive. I just imagined her freaking out and kicking me out of the house
or something. I didn't think for a second she would see it for what it was,
see that I loved Jake and that was that.

Of course, I asked if Jake could come over and stay the night, something
he'd done fairly regularly in the preceding few weeks. Normally my mum
would have agreed straight away, and I'd almost thanked her before my brain
registered that she'd said no. That rather knocked the wind out of my
sails, but to be fair she was right, she had told me several days before
that she was going out for the evening, and that she was going to get one
of the neighbours to look in on me from time to time. She didn't feel it
was fair on them to have the extra responsibility of having Jake around.

The fact that her reasons were good did nothing to blunt my anger. I'd just
got Jake and now I wanted him all the time. With homework and chores to do
during the day the only chance I was going to have to see him was the
evening, and now my mum's personal life was getting in the way of mine. I
was the one meant to be having fun, not her!

There was only one thing for it – I had to persuade my mum that I was
old enough to look after myself, and that I wouldn't burn the house down if
I was left to my own devices. I started almost straight away, trying my
most persuasive tactics as we went round the supermarket getting the week's
food in. I carried on as we went to the DIY shop to get a replacement power
socket for the living room (you pick up all sorts of things when there's no
dad on the scene and your mum was never that good with the practical
things), and by the time we reached the pet shop (dog food, in prodigious
quantities) I could sense that she had reached the point where she was
either going to agree or lose it with me altogether. Being the annoying
little kid that I was I pushed it.

19.

For the first time ever I was going to be left home alone. Of course she
agreed, I always knew she would! And the best part was that in fact I
wouldn't be alone. My `best friend' was coming over, and the knowledge of
what might happen set my heart hammering in my ribcage, and all of the
blood it pumped heading in the wrong direction... I was a giddy little kid
all afternoon, definitely not acting my age.

My mum noticed how excited I was, and commented on it with a weird smile on
her face. Suddenly I was paranoid, wondering if perhaps she knew
something. I just made up something about there being some film on TV that
we really wanted to watch. Thank God when I looked in the Radio Times it
turned out that Die Hard was on that evening, and that was just the kind of
movie I liked watching.

20.

Jake turned up at six o'clock, the appointed hour. He came in with a shy
smile, and because I knew my mum was in the shower upstairs I closed the
door and stopped him with a hand on his arm, moving in to kiss him. Oh,
major butterflies time! It was practically chaste in comparison to the last
time we had kissed, but instantly I went light in the head at the feeling
of his soft, hot lips. His hand went briefly to the back of my head, then
my shoulder, and then my lower back, pulling our hips together. When
finally we parted I was blushing strongly and had a serious problem to
conceal before my mum came downstairs.

"Hey," he said as he smiled at me. His eyes betrayed a fierce battle
between the pure emotion of live and the corrupting forces of unstoppable
lust.

"Hi," I replied. "My mum should be going out in about twenty minutes. She
actually has a date! Can you believe that?"

Jake giggled and shook his head – after all, how was it possible that an
old person would go on a date. To put into context how ridiculous our train
of thought was my mum was only 34 at the time, but of course that was
ancient to our eyes.

We went and sat down, making sure to be careful to sit on different sofas
so my mum didn't suspect anything when she came downstairs. When she did in
due course she was very much dressed to impress, and smelled rather
strongly of perfume.

"Oh, hi, Jake," she said when she came into the living room. "Glad you
could come over, Matthew's been excited about it all afternoon."

I cringed. I mean of course Jake knew I would be excited, but it was just
the sort of thing mums said to embarrass their teenage sons. My mum gave me
a triumphant smile which said `that's payback for this afternoon', and then
walked out with all sorts of warnings and instructions shouted over her
shoulder, none of which I listened to.

Almost as soon as she was gone, Jake gave me a wicked little smile and
jumped forward off his sofa onto mine. He straddled my waist and planted
his hands either side of my shoulders on the back of the sofa, and then
leaned forward, his hot breath on my neck. Immediately my hands were
beneath his t-shirt, tugging at the buckle of his belt.

21.

As the hot water ran down my body dragging soap suds with it, I reflected
on what had just happened. My mind still spun with the reality of the
situation. Jake and I were past friends now. We'd not used the word
`boyfriend', because for us that meant something else, something between a
girl and a boy. But though we didn't have the words to describe it, we both
knew what was going on.

As I washed my most sensitive part, a blot shot through me, a reminder of
sensations only newly experienced, of a peak of euphoria so great that its
impact lingered on in my body, and would do for days to come. No solitary
exploration would ever again be sufficient to sate my lust, not now.

I didn't think about it at the time, but I've done so any number of times
since: we were really lucky in that very specific sense. The reality was
that most of our classmates had never experienced love, or the opportunity
to express that love physically with another. Girls were always a bit less
keen to get involved with the physical side of love. Before Jake there were
girls, though none of them anywhere near this serious. All were very well
brought up, lovely girls, and therefore completely useless for a young boy
racked with surging hormones.

I don't mean to paint a picture of gay life being one long promiscuous
orgy, but Jake and I had no compunctions about experiencing what we so
desperately wanted to experience – sex, and a lot of it, as often as
possible. We were in love, yes, but also in searing, overwhelming lust.

22.

The first morning waking up next to another person, next to the person with
whom you are in love, is something sensational. Jake was still asleep,
which was unusual for him – all the times we'd spent sleeping over at
each other's houses, before we had admitted our feelings, he had always
awoken first, then made sure I was not far behind so we could begin the
day. I must have worn him out, I suppose.

He lay there on his back, one arm above his head, snoring very gently. He
was covered up to his chest, but beneath I was fairly sure that, like me,
he was unclothed. I couldn't resist very gently lifting the covers and
glancing downwards. Whilst I was experiencing the usual morning issues that
every boy of a certain age does, Jake was clearly still very asleep,
because his lay inert across the top of one thigh.

I couldn't resist. It felt naughty, but at the same time suddenly
permissible. I reached down and held him, rolled him around, tweaked the
tip of his foreskin. I was just so fascinated by it, almost as if I didn't
own one myself. In fact I was fascinated by the whole of his body, from his
delightful face, to the beautiful soft skin of his neck, his slightly brown
nipples (a contrast to my own pink ones), his delightful tummy, slightly
rounded still with youth, to his scraggly, almost non-existent patch of
hair and finally the thing which marked him out more than anything else as
pure boy, standing tall now beneath my ministrations.

I still get a thrill to this day from waking him by dropping my head down
beneath the covers, working on him in that hot, stuffy air, darkness
enveloping me, heightening my sense of smell and of touch. What I did that
first morning lay the foundations for a memory which has lasted a lifetime.

23.

We were invincible, suddenly. All the taunts and jeers of our classmates
faded into the background. No, of course we didn't flaunt it, that would
have maybe tipped the balance toward violence, but nor did we hide the fact
that, as we had always done, we preferred our own company to that iof a
bunch of ill-informed idiots.

Of course it wasn't all plain sailing, but by God there were
compensations. As long as you were discreet, no-one saw two lads
disappearing into the toilets at lunchtime. Suddenly I understood what my
mum was always trying to tell me – school days really are the best days
of your life, if you were lucky like we were.

The daily grind was suddenly not so painful. As soon as I saw Jake,
everything was OK. Everything else faded into the background. I started to
almost enjoy myself. We left the library, too, found a corner of the
playground which was ours alone. Even befriended some other kids who had no
other friends, though the real truth of our relationship was kept to
ourselves.

My mum noticed the change, though she mistakenly took it for me settling
down a bit better than I had in other places. I imagine she thought I was
going through all sorts of changes, so the more relaxed Matt was simply
another stage.

Of course, nothing that perfect ever lasts. Not in the real world.

24.

I stomped my foot. I actually, in the heat of anger, pounded the floor with
my foot.

"You can't do this! Not now!"

My mum was calm. She'd seen this before, though perhaps not with such
passion on my part.

"Matt," she said, her tone half conciliatory, half commanding, "we have to
go. The job's massive, and there's a chance I might get taken on
permanently at the end of it. It's not like you've made a lot of friends
this time round!"

Oh God that hurt. It hurt so badly that I doubled over with pain and just
sobbed into my hands.

"Look, Matt," she said, perhaps realising that she had gone too far,
"perhaps the next school will be nicer. I mean, the one you're at now can
be a bit rough, can't it?"

She referred to the state of my school bag two weeks prior to our
conversation, muddied and torn after things turned a bit ugly on the way
home.

"But I like it!" I protested.

"Why?" she asked, clearly confused.

"Because!"

What was I meant to tell her? That I had found love, that it wasn't a girl
but rather it was my best friend? That couldn't happen.

"Come on, Matt, tell me. Please?"

"No!" I shouted. "You wouldn't understand!"

"You don't know that, Matthew. I thought we were really close. I thought I
knew everything about you, but now you won't tell me anything."

"You wouldn't get it, mum, OK? You just wouldn't get it."

I stalked out of the room, stamped my way up the stairs and slammed the
door shut behind me.

25.

She came up and knocked softly on the door half an hour later. I had cried
myself out, and was sitting on my bed looking around the room, trying to
memorise it all before it was taken from me.

She came and sat next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders.

"Matt, I need you to tell me why you're so upset this time. I know it's not
easy, but we've always been alright, haven't we? We've always coped
before..."

"It's different this time, mum. It's just really different."

"What is it? Is it a girl?"

Oh God. There was the opening. There was my chance to just come clean. All
I had to do with step through the door. How many times had I come to this
point, nearly telling her and then chickening out? How often had I come
within a hair's breadth of saying everything I so desperately wanted to
say?

What tipped me over the edge this time I don't know. Perhaps it was the
spectre of losing Jake when we meant so much to each other.

"No, mum, it's not a girl. Actually, it's a boy."

I just left it hanging there.

26.

My mother's face didn't display a mixture of emotions. Actually, that
doesn't happen very often. Usually it's one emotion or other, but not a
mixture. The one emotion which reigned over all was not anger, or disgust,
thankfully, but confusion. She sat there looking as if I'd spoken to her in
Cantonese and expected her to understand.

The dawning of understanding was like the rain that falls at the end of a
long, hot summer's day. It comes in little dots at first, but then suddenly
the heavens open and it pours down. The penny dropped for my mum, and
suddenly everything fell into place.

"Oh."

I don't know why, but I was angry that was all she managed to come up
with. I wanted more. I didn't care what it was, good or bad, but I needed
her to say something, not just look at me with that strange look on her
face. It was as though I had given her the key to a puzzle she had been
working on for a long time, and now the answer was plain to see.

"So, Jake then. Right?"

I nodded at her, and then decided she needed more than that.

"Yes, Jake. And you can't stop me seeing him mum. You can't!"

I'd interpreted her lack of words as a sign of discontent, though looking
back it was clear she was simply trying to digest the news. She held up her
hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"I'm not going to stop you, Matt. It's just a bit of a shock."

"What, that I'm gay?"

"Well, yes. I mean, you're not exactly effeminate, are you? You're just not
how I expected a gay person to be. I thought I knew everything about you."

I had no answer to that. Honestly, I had been a bit selfish – my mother
and I usually shared everything, and yet I'd hidden something massive like
this from her. My mum was looking down at the floor now, troubled.

"Do Jake's parents know?" she asked.

"No, unless he's told them this morning. We haven't planned it, you know."

"Right. Well, perhaps you ought to go over there for a while. Maybe he
needs to know you let the secret out."

I'd already planned to head over to Jake's as soon as my chores were done
for the day, and I took my mum's suggestion as permission to skip those, so
I just grabbed a jumper and went and found my bike.

27.

When I was done telling Jake everything he looked down at the floor, and
when he raised his head again there were tears in the corners of his eyes.

"We're fucked, aren't we?" he said.

Jake never used the f-word, so I knew he was pretty upset, though whether
it was about our impending separation or the realisation we were out (at
least to my mum) I couldn't be sure. There was simply too much to take into
account. He was right, we were fucked.

We sat there lost in our own thoughts for ages, until his mum came up and
checked on us, wanting to ask Jake whether he wanted to go shopping with
her and his brother. I knew he could do with something to take his mind off
things, so I suggested he go, and I would go home and talk to my mum. When
we were alone he bear-hugged me, and gave me one little kiss goodbye on the
cheek.

28.

There was an open bottle of wine on the kitchen table. Half gone. And two
glasses. This was odd for an early Saturday evening. I knew my mum drank
occasionally, but she was never really a heavy drinker, and usually it was
confined to nights out. Who was the other drinker, too?

I wandered through to the living room, from which a pair of lowered voices
emanated. When I walked in, there was mum, with her boyfriend, Dave. He
looked up at me and gave me his usual warm smile of greeting, though my mum
refused to raise her head, and when I looked closely she had clearly been
crying. Dave motioned for me to sit down on the other sofa, and then spoke
to my mum.

"Linda, do you want to talk to Matt about it, or should I?"

Now I was thoroughly confused. Dave had been mum's boyfriend for a while
now, since before Jake and I had been together. The date she had gone on
the night Jake and I had first spent alone together in my house was with
Dave, and little did I know that my mum had actually been seeing him for a
while before that, through work. The way he was talking to mum had
overtones, though, and I wasn't sure I liked the sound of it.

Eventually, mum nodded her head.

"I'll do it, Dave," she said, then turned to me, wiping away a tear from
the corner of her eye. "Matt, what you said earlier, it was a shock, OK? I
didn't deal with it properly. I didn't realise how much Jake meant to you
until I sat down and had a think about it. You spend all of your time
together. His your only friend. Obviously a bit more than that, too.

"It made me think about all the moving around we do. I didn't realise how
bad it messed things up for you. Or me. I called Dave and got him to come
over. We were talking, and it just seemed like a good idea."

Mum stopped. Obviously she hadn't realised that she hadn't told me what was
a good idea. I just looked at her.

"Well, what do you think?"

"About what?" I asked.

Fortunately, Dave was following the conversation.

"Linda, you didn't really tell him what we were thinking."

"Oh, didn't I? Oh. Well, Matt, Dave and I were thinking that we really like
each other. Not enough to get married just yet, but maybe enough to live
together."

"Do you mean we could stay here?" I asked.

"Well, sort of. In the area. Dave has a house over in Stokebridge. It's no
further from school than here, but it's a nice place. What do you think?"

I didn't know what to say. I was drained. After resigning myself to losing
Jake, then coming out to my mum, then breaking the news to Jake that we
would be split up, and now this, I just couldn't cope emotionally. I put my
arm on the arm of the sofa, buried my face in the crook of my arm, and
cried.

29.

Ok, that's gone by in a flash. Seems to be all so neat and tidy, and quick
when I write it down like that. But it wasn't that way, really. Looking
back at my diary shows so much confusion. I can't write it all down,
because the words are garbled. There's just feelings in a random order on a
page. Several pages.

My mind was a mess, that much is pretty obvious. I didn't want us to move
in with Dave. Oh, we got on OK, but moving in with him was something
else. I didn't want things to change, didn't want it to stop being me and
my mum. Looking at it with an adult head on, I can understand how unfair
that is. Why shouldn't my mum have happiness? I did, after all. At the
time, though, there was a lot of resentment.

30.

There's another aspect to this we've rather skimmed over up to now. The
narrative has turned rather Matt-centric, but Jake was suffering, too. The
fact was that now my mum knew he was gay, and my boyfriend. That put him in
a terrible position – my mum had promised that nothing would be said
until he was ready, but what had been something exciting, fun, secretive
now became a millstone around his neck.

He didn't want me to come over the next day, a Sunday. He said he needed
time alone. I left him to it, not wanting to argue. I waited in my room all
day, my homework done, my mother out with Dave somewhere, probably looking
at wallpaper or some such thing. I just sat there looking out of the
window.

Until something familiar moved out there. I jumped up and looked out of the
window, down into the front garden. It was Jake, and he was heading at
speed for the front door.

I ran down the stairs and flew to the front door. Jake almost fell through
the door, and into my arms. He was crying, and it looked like he had been
from some time. He sobbed into my shoulder while I held him. These weren't
tears of joy.

31.

Jake's father was at the door. I opened the door and there he was, being
big and scary. Well, normally he was big and scary. Now he just looked
defeated, and worried half to death.

"Jacob's here?"

It was phrased as a question, but spoken as a statement of truth. I nodded
anyway.

"I'm not going to barge into your house, Matt, but if you don't let me
speak to him I won't be happy."

Let's get this clear – I was scared absolutely shitless of Jake's
dad. He didn't interact all that much with me, though he had never been
unfriendly as such. Now he seemed to be asking me for permission to see his
own son. This was really messed up. But he didn't seem angry. I showed him
into the living room and then went to ask Jake if he wanted to see his dad.

32.

I sat awkwardly on the sofa next to Jake. He didn't want me to leave. Told
me so in very firm tones in front of his father. So I sat there feeling
very much the third wheel, while Jake and his dad had the conversation they
needed to have.

"Jacob, your mother was wrong. Very wrong. You know she didn't mean what
she said, right?"

"Dad, she shouted all kinds of things at me. She told me I'm sick in the
head!"

Oh God, that must have hurt. Suddenly my experience with my mum looked like
the perfect coming out. What on earth had happened?

"Jakey, she's just in shock, OK? Let her calm down."

"What if she doesn't, dad? What if she just keeps shouting at me and saying
all that stuff?"

"She won't, mate. She won't. Just give her a chance to get over it. Give
her time. It's a bit of a shock, that's all."

"You don't seem shocked, Dad. You seem OK with it."

Jake's dad's shoulders slumped. He ran a hand through his hair.

"I'm not shocked, Jakey. Or surprised. I've known for a while. Knew about
you both."

33.

Jake and his father left together half an hour later, just as my mum and
Dave returned. They met briefly in the driveway, the conversation an
awkward one, where nothing is said but plenty is communicated.

I was grilled as soon as I was through the door. What were they doing here?
Was I OK? Was Jake OK? I tried to reassure them, but I was drained. The
weekend had been too much for me. I just slumped on the sofa and within
minutes was asleep.

I didn't go to school the next day, or the day after that. I slept, and
slept some more. My mum went to work, but each day came home early to make
sure I was OK. I think she understood that I couldn't cope with everything
going on at once. Jake stayed home, too, but we didn't see each other, at
his dad's suggestion. He was right, too. The space gave us time to wind
down, to reset I suppose. When I finally came out of the far side I was
refreshed and ready to face the world.

34.

Jake's dad was wrong. His mum really didn't grow to cope with it, not for a
long time. She refused to talk to him, and nothing his dad could say would
bring her round. It was only years later, when Jake nearly died in a car
crash, that she finally came around.

But all that was ahead of us. For the moment, and most importantly, Jake
and I were back on track. I had my mother's blessing, and Dave's too. In
fact, he was the most chilled and supportive of any of the adults I knew at
the time. Because of Jake's mother, we couldn't spend nights at his
anymore, so when we did have a chance to we had nights at mine.

Well, actually, at Dave's, because that's where we ended up only a matter
of weeks later. It was strange, being in someone else's house, no matter
what effort he went to, to make us feel at home. He even bought me a double
bed and redecorated my room, but still it felt weird.

35.

Of course, at our age, and with the feelings we had for each other, the
weirdness could only hold us back for a while. I revelled in the intimacy
Jake and I shared. Each time was special, each peak greeted with a
satisfied smile and a warm embrace.

I learned everything that made him tick, all the little things I could do
to drive him mad before I took him over the edge. He, too, could push my
buttons, touching me in places I never knew would bring such pleasure. To
have someone who knew so intimately what excited me took passion to a new
level. I would literally double up in pain at the intensity of the pleasure
he could make me feel.

We would spend hours together, playing, exploring, working out what felt
good and what felt weird. We had no guidance, so had few preconceived ideas
about what we were and weren't meant to do. The first time I felt his mouth
on me was at his instigation, and I can only assume he'd heard about the
idea from before, when he'd messed around with the other boy. Instantly it
became the heart and soul of our games, though, the most important thing to
do, the sharing of a bond of which no-one else was a part. So strong were
the sensations that the very memory of the first time I tried it on him
will even now bring me virtually unparalleled pleasure.

We became so close that I realised I would never again love so completely,
so wholeheartedly. Jake was, and is, the perfect, only love of my life.

36.

So, how to end our tale? Well, there is plenty more to tell, I suppose, but
not plenty worth telling, not compared to all that came before. Jake and I,
well, we're still together. We've been apart, but we're together
again. Those few months were only the beginning of the story, but it's a
story to be told another time, in another way. Thanks for reading, I hope
it means something to someone.


If you enjoyed `Matt and Jake', please let me know:
zackmcnaught@hotmail.com

For more stories, visit the Zack Mack archive at www.asstr.org/~zack/