Barry

BIDDIN' BARRY GOODBYE by janus znaiu

The airport taxi idled in the driveway as Jack Llewelyn gave my folks a bit of parting advice from the bottom step of our porch. "Gwen and Bron' shouldn't give you any trouble at all, but if that Barry guy gets too full of himself, feel free to give 'im a backhand whenever you think he needs one. Talking to him doesn't always work. Everything goes in one ear and out the other-- nothing in the middle to slow it down, just like his old man," Mr Llewelyn chuckled, ruffling Barry's mop. If he was serious, it was wasted counsel; my parents had never hit Nils or me in our lives. Domestic violence of even the mildest kind was as alien to their natures as the tamest display of affection was.

They embraced the elder Llewelyns an awkward goodbye, and stood back while the vastly more demonstrative Llewelyn clan crowded together in a last, teary mass hug. All four girls, his mom and his younger brother were crying quite openly. Soon Barry left them to stand at my side, out of the glaring porchlights. He regarded the tableau of his family's leave-taking with a nearly-convincing air of detachment. "Boy, if this was all you saw of them, you'd never believe how they scrap with each other the rest of the time," he chuckled. But his tone of voice, always the true yardstick of how he was feeling, betrayed a touch of sadness. I tugged on his sleeve as we waved at the departing cab and took him up to my room to watch Bonanza.

"This is gonna be so cool, Slim. Nicholas is okay for a pesky little brother, but I always wished I could share a room with somebody more like you. And now-- here we are!" he waved his arms about at our accumulated teen squalor. "It's almost like I picked up my room from home and brought the whole thing here!" It sure looked like the mess he used to call his room. He was in hog heaven, but I knew my mom, and most especially Mrs. Kowalchuk, our housekeeper, would have several things to say about Barry's eccentric definition of 'tidy'. I'm certain she demanded, and got, a fatter retainer for the duration.

"Let's get this cot set up for you." I suggested, "Man, there's nowhere to put the friggin' thing." I shifted several of Barry's boxes to make room for it.

"I don't see why I can't just bunk right here like I always do." Barry said with a foul look, making no effort to get up and help me. He sprawled on my bed and palmed the insides of his jeans-clad thighs. "That was supposed to be the best part of this whole thing"

I couldn't see why either; my bed was a double. We'd always shared it for sleep-overs. I suspected Nils of putting some bug in my mom's ear because she'd been so uncharacteristically adamant about it. "A boy that age needs a bed of his own," she'd said with an air of finality, and she made pop and me schlep the cot down from the attic. It was an ancient wrought-iron contraption with a thick, heavy mattress and a tendency to bite during set-up. In the daytime it got folded up and wheeled into the bathroom between my room and Nils'. For the two days it had been there so far, in advance of Barry's arrival, it had been the source of no end of whining and complaining from Nils about how it was going to be like living in a gypsy camp for the next two and a half months. He made constant wisecracks like that, some of them dangerous; he even referred to my room as the 'honeymoon suite' within earshot of the twins earlier that evening. As much as I was looking forward to sharing my room with Barry, I dreaded what horrible things would ensue if Nils ever let his lips get too loose when my folks were around.

"I figure as long we make it look like you sleep on the cot, you can still spend some of the night in with me." I told Barry. I'd spent the past three months preparing for this night, ever since we found out that Barry and his sisters would be our guests until the school year ended. I lay awake every night planning how best to take advantage of our proximity without allowing anyone to find out we were regularly blowing each other. There were so many details. My door to the hallway didn't lock. "You'll have to be on the cot by morning, but nobody says you have to start out there." I smiled him one of those smiles.

"Hey now, that sounds more like it!" Barry said, suddenly back to his cheerful self. He jumped up and spread a sheet over the narrow single bed wedged between my bedside table and dresser. He flattened the sheet out a bit, grabbed the pillow to his chin and belly-flopped, full length, onto the cot. "Guess I got to make the sheets a bit wrinkled and sweaty, to make it look like I slept here all night, like." he giggled, rotating his crotch into the sheet, treating me to a compelling view of his ass grinding away beneath his tight, faded jeans.

"I'm serious about you not being in my bed early in the morning, man-- sometimes my pop wakes me up to help him with shit before he goes into the city, and he doesn't always knock. Anyway, we got to be real careful if this isn't going to get us into shit. Gotta watch what we say and stuff." I pointed at the wall between my room and Nils'.

"Yeah, he's turned into a real prick alright. Never mind him right now. He's downstairs with that homely girlfriend of his." That was true enough, I could hear a four-handed version of some gospel nugget drifting up from the music room directly below us. Barry undid his shirt buttons as he walked towards me. "Let's take a shower," he whispered, with a sneaky look.

"Together? Now? Are you nuts? Nils could come upstairs anytime!" It suddenly occured to me that for all my careful planning, I'd failed to take into account Barry's impulsive, almost foolhardy, nature when he was turned on.

"So we lock the door to his side," Barry said, as if he were explaining it to a four yearold. "Far as Nils' concerned, only one of us is in there-- long as we keep the grunts to a minimum. Man, you worry way too much, Slim." With that, he grasped me about the shoulder with one hand and began undoing his belt with the other. I followed him with no small amount of trepidation, but I followed him.

Barry locked Nils' door with a broad look and accompanying gesture that said: "See? I'm locking it; now calm down and get undressed."

I had removed my sweater and pants, and was just about peel off my jockeys, when Barry stayed my hand. "Leave 'em on," he whispered into my ear. We pulled off our socks and together we stepped into the steaming spray. My dick began stirring the instant the hot streams met the front of my briefs, soaking them with the moist, insistent warmth of many drilling tongues. Barry spun me around so that the seat of my drawers could soak as well. His briefs were still almost dry, but for a few large mottled places on one side. He cupped my hand and held it to the warm pouch of his Stanfields so that my fingers cradled his low-slung nuts. He smiled and moved in to kiss me. A sudden, liquid heat caressed my hand as it ran between my fingers and dribbled off the backs of them. Barry's tongue probed my mouth as the flow of his piss abated and his cock began pulsing to tumescence against my palm. We broke the kiss and Barry stepped out of his briefs. A pale pee stain soaked the rumpled pouch on the floor of the tub. The puddle at our feet turned a marbled yellow as urine blended with water before disappearing down the drain.

Barry pulled my cock out the fly of my jockeys and pointed it at his thick, unhooded bone, but I was too aroused to return the favor. "Guess I'm going to have to work some other kind of juice out of this fella then," he whispered, dropping to his knees in front of me. He lathered up one armpit by smearing the bar of soap around in it and knelt with his back to me. "Step in close, Slim."

I didn't know exactly what he had in mind, but, as he often did, he'd evidently come up with yet another novel way to coax a load out of me. In these situations, I'd learned well enough over the past months, the best thing to do was just let him go and put all my trust in the caprices of his dirty mind. He reached behind him and placed my palms on his shoulders. Then he reached again and drew my dick into his soapy armpit, clamping his arm down on it. The very tip of my cockhead stuck out the front and Barry wasted no time twiddling it with foamy fingertips. I began tentative fuck moves into his armpit, gradually gaining momentum as I went. My knees pressed against his back and I gripped his shoulder for leverage, pulling his torso on and off my cock while I thrusted. Barry jacked himself off with his free hand. We both came quickly, explosively and practically in unison. With one final lunge, I shot my spunk out the front of Barry's armpit, splattering the checkerboard tiles with great dripping trails of it. Barry's climax went unseen, but felt by his tremors against the fronts of my legs. When he stood up to face me under the shower spray, his thighs were spotted with white goo. I removed my sodden jockeys, licked the cum off his legs before it could wash away and we went about the business of cleaning ourselves up for bed.

Bronwyn and Gwen, could be heard in the guest room on the other side of mine, rattling around and doing whatever girls do at bedtime that's so damn funny. They were used to sharing a room; you could tell. Before Barry and I even got all of their boxes carried up to the room that afternoon, they'd already turned the bed ninety degrees and defined their own spaces on the dressertop. Suddenly there was a shriek from down the hall. We threw on our robes and stuck our heads out the door. The shriek had come from Bronwyn, who'd discovered, halfway through her shower, that there was no more hot water. Pop took a quick roll of who'd had showers recently.

Barry and I got off with a friendly reminder that there were more than the usual number of people in the house and that we'd have to learn to take shorter showers. "Hey, maybe we should double up, like at school," Barry suggested evilly, just to wind me up. Pop told him, deadpan, that it shouldn't come to that. I shot Barry a black look and yanked him back into my room.

"There isn't enough water in Lake Ontario to get those two sinners clean," Nils sneered to the assembled group, loud enough to be sure Barry and I could hear him on our side of the door.

Being roommates turned out to be less difficult than I'd feared. Once I realized that I'd never make an instant neatnik out of Barry, I began to try to make the best of a messy situation. Most of his stuff just stayed in boxes littered about the floor of my room the whole time he was there. His underwear box and my underwear drawer merged before the first week was out. I had filled out a lot over the past six months and we were now within a size of each other. Wearing one anothers' underwear had become something of a leitmotif between us, even before Barry moved in. It was perfectly symbiotic: Barry liked the tight feel of my jockey whites for a change and I enjoyed the slackness and extra ball room of his Stanfields. Also, he'd started buying colored underwear, something that was still quite novel then and considered a bit swish, even if the design and fabric were exactly the same as regular whites. I didn't have phys-ed with him, but he told me he took a fair bit of ribbing over them. I sure never had the guts to wear any of them on my phys-ed days. We used to laugh at the yellow ones with the black seams, about how you could forget to shake your moneymaker after you pissed and it wouldn't matter.

We settled into a comfortable routine of school, home and, as the weather improved, outings to our favorite haunts. Barry could keep his car until it was time for him to leave for the coast, at which time he'd hand it over to his dad's former partner at the dealership. Doubtless his dad would line him up with new wheels once he got to B.C.; there were always more vehicles in that family than there were Llewelyns. Trouble was, he had to drive the girls to class and share the Volks with them after school too, so lot of nights we just sat around home being brotherly. It was idyllic, in a sense, especially since Nils, my brother only by some perverse accident of natural selection, had suddenly become less of a nuisance.

All at once, a peculiar change had come over him. For the first couple weeks after Barry moved in with us everything had been the same; he behaved as abusively towards us as he always had, as full of insults and self-satisfaction as ever. Then, for no reason I could figure out, Nils suddenly became not only less malevolent to Barry and me; to the best of his ability, he avoided us altogether. If we came into a room he was in, he'd quietly gather up his stuff and go elsewhere. At meals Nils would join in the conversation with my folks and Barry's sisters, but he avoided any unnecessary conversation with me and dealt with me diffidently when he couldn't avoid it. He treated Barry as though he were invisible, never making eye contact with him and behaving sheepish around him. I didn't understand it, but it made a very pleasant change from having to dodge his nastiness all the time.

It went on like that for some bliss-filled weeks, until one evening after dinner. My parents had left the table, but Gwen and Bronwyn were still sitting opposite us drinking coffee, babbling like some twins do-- talking overtop of one another in unison and finishing the others' sentences.

"You got any homework tonight?" I asked Barry. Homework, said in the tone I said it, had become our secret code word for sex. I was asking him if he was horny-- as if it needed asking.

"Oh yeah! A TON of homework," he said, smiling and aping my inflection. "I might have to get started on it right after dessert, or I'll just never get it all finished." We giggled a bit between ourselves. Maybe one of us licked our lips in some vaguely obscene way.

Nils looked up from his strudel. He stared right at Barry, inhaling audibly through flared nostrils. When his chest expanded to its broadest, when he couldn't possibly take in any more air, he exploded. He tossed his fork to the middle of the table, where it knocked over a salt shaker. "You two are disgusting!" he shouted in a red-faced stage whisper. The girls stopped chattering and looked up quizzically. It seemed like our respite was over and the old, nasty Nils was back. "I can barely stand to be under the same roof with you," he spat, "Either of you!" he added, glaring directly at me.

Barry sat back in his chair and met Nils' gaze with an arched eyebow. "Pick up that fork, Nils." He said it plainly, without any discernable emotion, as if he expected no argument over it. He tongued the inside of his cheek thoughtfully and drummed his fingertips on the arm of his chair, never letting go of Nils' eyes.

Nils blinked first. A crimson shadow drew across his face. Exhaling deeply in resignation, he lowered his gaze. He picked up his fork and took it, along with his strudel and coffee, upstairs to his room, stomping away with as much noise as his stockinged feet and the pile carpeting would allow. Gwen and Bronwyn simply shrugged the whole matter off and were soon immersed in their own conversation once again. Nils' door slammed in the distance.

I opened my mouth to ask Barry what had just happened, but he waved me off. "Later," he said rolling his eyes towards the twins. It nagged at me so much that I lost all interest in my dessert. Nils' outburst had been surprising enough in and of itself, but to see him just cave in like that and take a direct order from some mere highschool kid more than two years his junior, well, stuff like that just didn't happen in my world.

"Okay, so what WAS all that about at dinner?" I asked Barry, the instant we were safely in my room again.

"Nothing much," he said.

I grabbed him by the lapels. "Spill it! Oh, mama! I thought Nils would shit himself when you shot him that look."

"What look?" Barry asked, sounding nearly innocent.

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. You're holding something over his head, aren't you?

His pained expression gave me to understand that I was right-- and that he really didn't want to be having this conversation.

"Well, aren't you?" I prodded him.

"Well, yeah." Barry admitted.

"I KNEW it! So THAT's why he stopped being such a dink all this time. Well?"

"Well, what?"

"'What IS IT?"

"I can't tell you, Slim. I promised him I wouldn't."

"C'mon, don't gimme that! You don't owe him shit!"

"Yes I do. He's living up to his end of our bargain-- at least he was until just now. He realizes he got stupid and he'll be more careful next time. Just let it rest."

"Let it rest? I've never had an incriminating bit of goods on Nils in my life. You're not going to keep this from me."

"Yes, I am. Unless he forgets himself too often. Listen, today was only an accident. He's entitled to that once in a while. Anyway, it's not something you can really hold over him yourself anyway-- it's YOU he doesn't want to find out."

"ME? Now you GOTTA tell me!"

"No, I don't." Barry said, almost impassively.

It didn't make sense, his not telling me about this before-- like back when I used to go on and on, thinking out loud for hours on end about the possible reason for Nils' sudden change in attitude. I didn't miss his jibes an catcalls, but I'd sure been flummoxed when they stopped.

"I can't believe you're taking his side here, Barry," I told him.

"I'm not taking anyone's side, Jens. I gave the man my word and that's that."

I pouted, but privately I admired Barry's sense of honor. I also went bananas trying to figure out what it could be that Nils was so keen to keep from me. I brought it up often but Barry always redirected my attention with a change of topic or, if privacy permitted, a caress. Eventually he'd just have to give me that cherubic, long-suffering look of his and I'd back right off. For his part, Nils never again repeated his outburst, but you could see him seething whenever Barry and I shared a private joke or risked some innocent gesture of tenderness in his presence. Thus, the weeks flew by.

In our school system, if you maintained an honors average in any given subject, you could be excused from writing the final exam. It turned out that I only had to write math and physics, but Barry had to spend most of the last couple weeks of the term poring over his books. I'd tried to goad him into applying himself more to his schoolwork before that, but on evenings that I had a lot of homework or papers due, he'd take off to visit one or another of his Tennis Friends. I knew who they were and didn't like them much, but I bore them no particular envy when he did it, I just felt a profound dismay that he'd take his awful grades so lightly.

One of the Tennis Friends, Jay Katz, was a regular visitor at our house. During the week of finals he and Barry would commandeer a corner of the patio just below the window of my room every day and cram together, weighting their books and papers down with rocks and glasses of iced tea. I even helped them out by quizzing them and cluing them in on a way of memorizing dates and place names without actually memorizing them. Of all Barry's friends from among the country club bunch, Jay was the least toxic to my mind. He was still a bit of a snob, but I got the impression he thought I was 'okay'. And he made no complaint about the smoked salmon on pumpernickle my mom was always foisting on us. I admired his quick, often biting, sense of humor and he sure was easy to look at, with his straight black hair, his raven eyes and his strong, manly chin.

On the eve of Barry's last final exam, after Jay went home, Barry crept into bed with me, spooning himself against my back. "Hey Slim, are you awake?" he asked, gripping my half-hard cock through my jockeys. Of course I was still awake. I wasn't going miss any opportunity to add to my bank of jackoff memories. I knew very well that chimerical Barrys would have to sustain me when the physical, sweating Barry was far away. By my calculation, we had only sixteen more nights together. It had come as a very happy surprise when the twins were somehow able to pursuade both sets of parents to let them stay for an extra two weeks after school let out so they could check out a few university campuses in our area. Since Barry had no similar project to occupy his time, we could be free for our final couple weeks.

He reached past my waistband and gripped my dick, twiddling the foreskin as my glans filled out. "Most of me's awake. Keep that up and I'll be completely awake in no time."

"Jay and me are going Watson's gravel pit tomorrow night, to celebrate the end of exams, like." Barry said. "Jay says you can come if you like, 'cause you helped us with our history and geography and stuff." Year-end parties were usually held at the beach, where kids typically lit bonfires and burned their year's notebooks, most of them juiced on purloined beer. A bonfire in an abandoned quarry, without even the potential for privacy that the beach would afford, didn't strike me as a particularly enjoyable way to spend time with Barry, especially not if his classmates were all going to be there.

"Aw, you know I don't like that crowd. The only reason they even talk to me is because you live here. You go. Have fun."

"What crowd? It'll just be Jay and his cousin and us." I could feel his dick broaden aganst my buttcheek. "Kevin's got a cool van and Jay says he can even get us some reefer and beer and everything."

"I dunno," I ventured, reaching between my legs, trapping Barry's swelling pole between my thighs, his knob nudging my sac. I didn't much cotton to the idea of a less populous marshmallow roast with Jay and his unknown cousin either, but I knew, when his tongue began those lazy licks along the furrow behind my ear, that I'd be going to Watson's Pit with Barry alright, or anywhere else he chose to go for that matter.

We arrived at the quarry just before dusk began to fall. Kevin's van turned out to be cool, just as Barry said. But cool is relative. In truth, it was appalling. The back of it consisted of little more than a tired mattress covered with a grimey sleeping bag unzipped to make a blanket. Still, I envied the concept, Kevin's mobility and his freedom. Although Kevin was only nineteen, he'd dropped out of school some years before and already driven to California and Mexico a couple times, in fact, he'd only gotten back from his most recent trip that week. He clearly loved to regale us with his hair-raising stories of the open road.

We smoked several joints of the ropey-smelling pot Kevin had brought with him. I'd never smoked anything stronger than a menthol cigarette in my life, but even before we cracked our first beer, I was feeling euphoric and incredibly turned on. We piled out of the van in a billowing cloud, spreading out in search of firewood. I recklessly grabbed Barry's ass in full view of the other boys, suddenly wishing we'd gone there by ourselves.

A fire was started in the existing circle of blackened stones. Someone had abandoned the back seats from a couple of old cars and we rescued them from among the trash that was strewn about. We pulled them to opposite sides of the fire pit to use as sofas. Barry and I shared one of them and Jay and Kevin sat on the other. The reefer and the beer made it all quite congenial and light-hearted. Kevin brought out his guitar and for far longer than I care to admit, we sang dopey camp songs from our childhoods, laughing hysterically when Kevin substituted "balls" in the lyric of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?".

He put his guitar up and passed yet another reefer to Jay. "You know, it was pretty hokey having to go to camp every summer, mostly 'cause I was older and I had to look out for Jay all the time," Kevin said to Barry and me. "

"You're just pissed 'cause I caught you jackin' off with your bunkmates that time." said Jay, passing the joint to Barry. "After that they had to let me play too, 'cause they were scared I'd turn 'em in. I wouldn't have, but it coulda been hairy if we'd gotten caught-- my folks and Kevin's are friends with the guy who runs the camp."

Kevin put on a show of being a bit put out by the revelation, but you could see he also felt a certain nostalgia when he said, "Jeez, the stuff you get up to when there's no girls around. You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Don't sweat it Kevie, we've all done it. And don't make out like we only did it at camp a coupla times! You always started it too, you horny bastard. I know a few guys who did it lots," he stared directly at Barry. "right Bar'?" I saw a secret look pass between them in the firelight. So, Jay was one of those guys who'd preceded me in Barry's masturbatory career. I felt no jealousy whatever. In fact, I felt a new kinship with him, secure that, while Jay might have had intimate knowledge of Barry's cock before me, I had Barry's affection as well. "You were pretty good with the old two-hander yourself, weren't ya Barry?", Jay poked Barry in the ribs.

"I guess. That was all a long time ago," Barry said somewhat sheepishly, shooting a nervous glance at Kevin.

"What's with the 'long time ago' shit? It was two fuckin' years ago! You better watch yourself Jens, Barry's one of those guys who likes to put his pecker in your hand while you're asleep."

He certainly was, but I wasn't about to spill the beans. "I wouldn't know," I lied, "We sleep in separate beds," I added jovially, hoping that would dispell any lurid thoughts Jay might be entertaining about us.

"Beds, schmeds. When he stayed over at our house, he had his own fuckin' room for chrissakes! Didn't stop him from sneaking into my bedroom and crawling in the sack with me. Scared the shit out of me the first time. Don't get me wrong Jens, I liked it! We jacked each other off plenty of times after that, didn't we Bar'?"

"I guess," Barry said, poking around in the coals of the fire with a stick. Again he looked at Kevin who'd been following the conversation with ill-disguised interest. Each seemed to be sizing the other up. I'd never seen Barry interact with anybody quite that way before; it was as though they knew each other, even though they'd never met.

Kevin cleared his throat and passed the joint to me, even though it wasn't my turn. "I guess you're the only one here without a confession to make, Jens. Dont' tell me you've never whipped it out with a buddy before." He winked at me and held my gaze while I puffed on the joint. He waited until I passed it on to Barry. I was hoping Barry might have some comment to make that would serve to change the subject, but he didn't. "Well?" insisted Kevin. I coughed a bit, hoping it might deflect him or at least delay the need to answer. But even at the end of my hacking fit, his eyes were fixed on mine.

Kevin was little older than Nils, but it seemed like he'd taken on an 'adult' form somehow and it felt a little intimidating. "I used to... I mean, not a lot, but..." I hated lying, didn't even know why I was doing it. Everyone else had openly admitted to some mutual wanking. I guess it had to do with the fact that I knew I'd be seeing Jay at school the following year and I didn't want to give him any fodder for schoolyard innuendo. He was known as a bit of an evil joker and his good looks made him popular among the more frivolous, gossipy girls at our school.

"Well," Jay said to me between tiny puffs, "it's tough luck for you that you didn't start hanging out with Barry before he stopped circle jerking-- the guy's got magic hands." How well I knew! I was tempted to add, "and he gives motherfucker head too!"

Barry was watching Kevin rub the crotch of his cutoffs. Volumes more information passed between them as they continued to lock eyes over the fire. "Who says I stopped?" Barry asked boldly, suddenly bolt upright in the seat. "Who here hasn't got a bone on right now? Hands up!" Nobody's hand went up; in fact, my hands, which had been innocently clasping my knees, drifted to my own tented basket. Nervous cannabinoid laughter competed with the Bo Diddley hand-jive beat coming from the van's radio.

"Wanna then?" asked Kevin, "What harm can it do? And we are all boned already." A long cylindrical bulge threatened to expose his dickhead at the frayed edge of his shorts. He spread his legs wide, pinched the tip and looked over at Barry and me. "Maybe Jay and me ought show you how the big boys do it at camp." he bragged, patently ignorant of what Barry's baggy jeans concealed.

"Suits me, Kev," said Jay, "but you ain't seen a 'big boy' 'til you've seen the monster schlong Barry pisses outa'!"

Kevin got up to get us all another beer. He blithely stepped out of his cutoffs, kicking them into the open side door of the van with a merry chuckle. I was shocked to see that he wasn't wearing any underwear. That's the first time I'd ever known a guy to do that. I was disappointed and turned on by it all at once: disappointed because I kind of looked forward to checking Kevin's laundry out, but turned on because the idea of running around all day in just a pair of cutoffs and nothing else suddenly struck me as the hottest thing I'd ever heard.

"I don't mind getting a handjob from anybody, or even giving one" Kevin boasted, "but I sure wish one of you guys was a chick. I'd get ya' to suck on this thing for me." His slim, upstanding cock was a circumcised replica of mine in virtually every respect. The evening breeze had drawn his hairless nuts close to his body and it ruffled through his unusually sparse pubes. Making sure he gave us each a good personal view of his turgid shaft as it bobbed in the strobing light of the flames, Kevin passed out the beers. When he came to me, he held the long-necked bottle some seconds after I'd taken it, forcing me to meet his gaze. He grinned down at me and remained standing next to my end of our improvised sofa, his dick only inches from my face. "You know, Jens here's kinda pretty, maybe..." he put his palm on my shoulder from behind me. I gulped audibly and spun my head the other way to search Barry's eyes.

He jumped right into the breech without moving an inch. "I sure hope you're not going to try any fag shit, man," Barry said in a forthright, don't-fuck-with-me tone, "I don't like it when my buddy has to be nervous. If we're going to whip off a coupla' loads like you said, then let's just fuckin' do it."

"Relax Barry, I'm just fuckin' with your head," Kevin's hand left my shoulder, but not before he squeezed it and mumbled in my ear, quietly, so low even Barry couldn't hear, "Sorry guy, Just read you wrong, is all. Won't happen again." He caught Barry's eye and held it all the way to the van. He came back smiling and solidly boinked, carrying a jar of vaseline and a roll of paper towels.

Jay was already naked except for his socks and his jockeys. He'd spread his jeans across his and Kevin's car seat and pulled it closer to ours, so that they were facing each other only a couple feet apart. Barry had dropped his jeans and was fingering his meat through his flyfront briefs, the new red ones with the bright white waistband and seams. He dug his elbow in my ribs, "C'mon Slim," It was his reassuring, it's-gonna-be-okay smile that got my pants off.

Kevin plunked himself down next to Jay, his knees almost touching mine. He began applying petroleum jelly to his pole and looked around at the three of us rooting around in our underwear. "Shit! What's with the skivvies? I feel like I'm in the middle of a friggin' Sears catalog or somethin'. C'mon! Whip 'em out!" He gawked at Barry's crotch while he felt Jay up through his drawers. "Let's see if it's as big as Jay says, hotshot."

Barry's best dick hand had hooked my waistband behind my bag and was busily skinning me, so I extracted his cock for him, proud to be connected to it in some way, however vicariously. I waved it towards Jay and Kevin a few times and began unhooding it, more for Barry's benefit than theirs. A clear drop of lube appeared at the aperture, glistening in the firelight. Jay gasped when I smeared it around Barry's glans for him. If he'd ever done that to Barry and experienced the feeling of raw power one got from the shudder it always evoked, I knew he was missing it.

"Fuck Bar'!" exclaimed Jay, his eyes glued to my skinning. "What have you been doing to it? It's even bigger than I remember!" Jay tugged excitedly at Kevin's dick and spoke directly into his cousin's ear, "When we were ninth graders, we all used to rattle Barry's chain about getting a fattie in the showers. I guess he got just sick of hearing it and so one day he just starts jackin' it-- right there in the lockerroom in front of all the guys in our gym class! Once we all saw what his schvanz looked like when it really WAS hard, well, everybody just kinda backed off him about it after that."

I could feel Barry's shoulder jiggle mine as he chuckled at the recollection. "I had to go pound off a wad in the shitter right after." He turned to me, "You shoulda seen the looks on their faces, Slim!" he said. I was having a very hard time stifling the urge to kiss him right then. His hand was around my dick, pulling on it gently. My hand was around his. Our lips were mere inches apart. I licked my lips and tried to kiss Barry telepathically, holding his gaze with a serious, squinting expression for as long as I dared. He acknowledged my frustration by jacking me a little faster. I looked over to see Kevin watching the tacit interplay between Barry and I with great interest. Jay's hand grasping mine on Barry's dick redirected my attention. "Can I?" he asked me.

"Hey! What're you askin' him for?" Barry wanted to know, taking mock offense. "It's MY fuckin' dick!"

Jay never missed a beat. "It may be your dick, Bar', but Jens here sure looks like he's used to treating it like it's his own." He grinned a lascivious grin at Kevin who was scooting forward to grab my dick and balls. We all moved within easy reach of one another, our knees and knuckles bumping as hands traded cocks. Jiggling forearms crossed and collided, like we were playing some bizarre meat-beater's version of the game, Twister.

Barry and Kevin got to handle each other a bit, as did Jay and I, but we naturally paired off. Barry and Jay were obviously intent on reliving old times and Kevin seemed very interested in me. I had a nice time fondling him too, but something about him just gave me the creeps, something in the way he looked at me. When Barry regarded me with his horny look, there was always something softer behind it, something private and noble. The lack of it in Kevin's leer was the part that made me feel uneasy. I didn't know it at the time, but it was the look of lust, the look of pure lust, unsanctified by any depth of feeling.

Physically, though, I responded enthusiastically to Kevin's expert palm slides up and down my shaft. Presently I felt Barry's thigh tighten against mine and looked over to watch him spew. He coated Jay's flying hand and scooped up a wad of it to bring Jay off, speedily reducing him to a panting, whimpering pup who had to lean against Kevin for support until he got his wind back. Kevin's grunts got louder and closer together. He humped my fist as I bled his creamy load onto his thigh.

One would think with all the spunking going on around me, someone as visually oriented as I would have been inspired to follow suit fairly quickly. But for some reason I just kept hovering at the precipice while Kevin continued fervently flogging my dick. I'd get so close my breath would halt in mid-gasp and then the urge would recede again. Normally, if Barry and I were alone, this kind of delay would be welcome enough, but it was getting a bit embarrassing. Barry and Jay were playing with their own cocks and watching Kevin wanking me, having already finished toweling themselves off.

Kevin took up a position between my spread knees, obviously to get better leverage, but he when he bent over my cock, only an inch or so from the knob I thought for an instant he meant to blow me. He spit a big gob on my dickhead and worked it in. Kevin's free hand was tucked up under my bag and was rubbing my perineum with two very insistent fingertips. Every time I raised my butt for an upward thrust into his fist, a finger would poke at my asshole. Barry eventually picked up on what Kevin was doing and he clamped one of his big mitts around Kevin's wrist, staying him with a mildly threatening look. He pulled Kevin's other hand off my cock and replaced it with his own. I met Barry's, smiling, beatific eyes and within a half-dozen strokes of his familiar, practiced hand, I shot and shot and shot. The first jet sailed towards the fire, landing on a hot rock, where it sizzled and popped. The next shot splattered Kevin's chest and the rest splattered me.

"Fuck! Do you always shoot off that far?" Kevin asked as Barry milked the last of my load. The first of it, on the firepit rock, had sputtered away to a dry ashen stain the size of a dime.

"Sometimes, " I gasped, still wracked by tremors. "Not usually that far though. It depends." I said, suddenly realizing Kevin's question had been largely rhetorical. Still, I felt less embarrassed about my failure to spunk on cue like the others.

"Wow, I bet when you fuck a girl, she can taste it in the back of her throat when you spooge," Kevin joked. I think he knew perfectly well I hadn't fucked any girls. He kept checking to see if Barry or Jay were looking. He took advantage of the first moment they weren't-- unseen by them, but plainly visible to me, he coated one finger with my cum off his chest. Staring directly at me, grinning wickedly, he licked it clean. His eyes rarely left me for the rest of the evening, even after we got dressed again and drank more beers. Whenever I happened to look his way, he'd smile at me again and sort of feel himself up for my benefit. He always had a private laugh if he made me look.

Jay and Kevin dropped us off at my house just minutes before curfew. Amid the parting insults and see-ya-laters, Kevin drew my head inside the driver's side window and said, quietly, so the others couldn't hear, "My folks' number's in the book. Call me if you ever need a ride someplace... or whatever."

The days and nights flew by. It was difficult to be in denial about Barry's imminent departure; increasingly, every little activity stunk of it. The boxes of stuff that had cluttered my room for the past couple months had been transferred to a staging area in the garage, along with the twins' stuff where it awaited sealing for transport. Unavoidably, each conversation was peppered with references to his leaving, causing a new sinking feeling in my gut every few minutes. I decided to stick as close to what would be my routine after Barry left as possible. Barry seemed content to do anything at all, even farm chores, as long as we were doing it together.

We'd just finished preparing a stall for the steer my pop was going to fatten for the freezer. "I want some of this," Barry said, using his husky voice, gripping my dick through my overalls. He backed me up against the stall's side partition and his hands yanked at my suspenders. They slipped past my shoulders and dropped around my ankles, leaving me naked from there up except for my jockeys. I wasn't boned yet, but the happy tingling had started.

We didn't often mess around in the barn any more, not now that Barry was sharing my room. We had the nights to ourselves and we used them well, but as our time together dwindled to fewer and fewer days, Barry seemed more inspired to jump on me whenever or wherever the urge struck him.

Barry's fingers tugged at the waistband of my briefs and he dropped to his knees in the freshly-scattered straw. His mouth clamped onto the cloth-covered bulge that was my soft, spongy dickhead. Warm spit soaked through the cotton and I could feel the swirling of his tongue all around my expanding glans; even more so when he reached inside a leghole and retracted my foreskin. I heard the zip of his fly opening and the rustle of fabric as he doffed his jeans, but I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on his lapping and the humid heat of his breath as it seeped through the fabric of my underwear, which was actually his underwear.

Barry had me turn around to face one of the side walls, my palms pressed flat against it. He pulled my jockeys down past my butt and began licking the length of my crack with a lot of slurping and humming. For my part, I clamped my eyes shut in concentration and used my biceps to stifle my pleasure noises.

There are always odd sounds in a barn. The boards of its cladding pop and bang as they expand and contract with the coming and going of the sun. Pumps and fans go on and off automatically. Animals kick at their stabling. That's the reason we didn't see Nils until he was practically in the stall with us.

"Oh, my GOD! STOP THAT!" he shouted , clearly horrorstruck by what he saw.

Barry pulled his tongue out of my asshole and sprang to his feet, hastily stuffing his meat back into his briefs. I crouched to gather my fallen coveralls and pulled them up to conceal my bobbing knob.

"Is there NOTHING you two won't do? That's absolutely SICKENING!"

"I'm warning you Nils, fuck off right now." Barry growled, his eyes fixed on Nils', as they'd been that time at dinner.

"No, I won't!" Nils shouted, "You've gone too far this time! What if my mother had come in, instead of me? You'd have given her a heart attack!"

"But it wasn't your mom, it was you. Just turn around and leave! Do it now!" Barry's face was flush with an anger I didn't imagine him capable of. He gave Nils a few moments to think it over, but he grew visibly more impatient as the seconds stretched out. He wiped his spit-spackled nose. "Just GO!" he shouted finally. I was struck utterly dumb.

"The HELL I will!" Nils swore. He made a lunge for Barry as if he meant to punch him in the mouth, but he started his swing from too far back to have the element of surprise going for him. Barry deked it handily and Nil's fist deflected off Barry's shoulder. That gave Barry a text-book opening and he landed a low jab to Nils' mid-section, just below his belt buckle. Nils bent over with an 'oof' and staggered backwards a few steps. He looked momentarily shocked, as if he'd really believed that a single, feeble punch in Barry's general direction would be a sufficient to bring him down. He gathered himself and launched another charge at Barry, growling as he went. By some miracle, Nils' punch actually connected with Barry's jaw and it sacked him. Barry's head flew back and the rest of him followed, his shirtails flying. He bumped his head against the stall's back wall so violently when he landed that it shook dust from the beam over our heads, sending it shimmering in the parallel shafts of sunlight streaming in through the spaces between the barn boards above us. Barry rattled his head and regarded Nils with an expression of bemused curiosity. One ball had escaped a slack leg hole of his briefs and pieces of straw clung to the hairs of his legs. I bent to help him up, but he gently pushed my arm aside without looking at me. Slowly and deliberately, he hauled himself to his feet and once again faced Nils, who was hunched forward in anticipation, hopping from foot to foot and taking loud, panting breaths through his nose.

Barry stepped within striking distance and they circled each other for a few moments like sumo wrestlers. "We don't have to do this, Nils." Barry kept saying. Finally, he just straightened himself up, as though he suddenly felt silly doing this pugalistic pas de deux with my brother. "For the last time Nils-- just fuck off!"

Nils growled again, obviously encouraged by the fact that he'd been able to knock Barry on his ass and lured by Barry's less-than-defensive stance. Turns out that punch he'd landed to Barry's jaw had been a fluke. He attempted another one to Barry's face which Barry fended off with a ready forearm. Once again, Nils had left himself open for a gut punch. What he was expecting even less was the clean uppercut to his jaw that followed it. Nils flew backwards and there was a sickening clunk as thick, fundamentalist skull met pine timber. This time Nils was the one on his ass, rubbing the back of his head with a confused look. It seemed like he might get up again for a second or two, but he looked up at a seething Barry towering over him and visibly thought the better of it. I remained nailed to the ground at Barry's side, slack-jawed and awestruck.

"Why couldn't you just leave well-enough alone, Nils?" Barry demanded. "I'll be gone in a week. You could have just let it go... "

"Fuck you!" Nils spat up at him. In our whole lives, I'd never heard Nils use that expression. It sounded as alien coming from him as it sounds when you hear three year-old saying it.

"Fuck you?" Barry asked, as incredulous at Nils' use of it as I was. "Them's fightin' words, Bunky. Get up, asshole. Looks like I haven't knocked enough sense into you yet! Come ON!"

He waited a few seconds for Nils to make a move. But he didn't. He just lay in the straw, glaring up at Barry in impotent rage. "Fuck you," he repeated, softly, without much conviction.

"That's it, Nils. You just blew it right there." he said flatly and turned to me. "Slim, I wasn't going to tell you any of this, not until just now, but big brother here hasn't left me any choice. He's been a very nasty boy, Slim. Oh yeah! Just as bad as us, maybe. Haven't you Nils? Oh no, don't get up now; you had your chance to split. Now, I'll just have to knock your pathetic ass back down again. So just sit there and take it like a man-- and be glad that scrag of a girlfriend of yours isn't here to hear any of this. Remember, you brought it on yourself." Barry straddled Nils' booted ankles, pinning him with another threatening look.

Nils propped himself against a straw bale, still panting and rubbing his jaw. He daubed the thin trickle of blood off his chin with his shirtsleeve. He'd obviously bitten his tongue. The helpless cast Nils' face took on when our eyes met ought to have elicited some pity for him, but it didn't. I'd spent too many months hating him. And I was far too curious as to what he could be so guilty of that would make him kowtow to Barry this way. I wasn't about to let simple fraternal compassion complicate my enjoyment of its revelation.

"This isn't the first time Nils has seen us mess around together, Slim. Not at all. When I first came to stay here, old Nils used to watch us by opening the bathroom door just a crack when we were, uh, busy, like. I only noticed it once, but for all I know he might have been doing it for days. He might have ALWAYS been peekin' in on us like that. To keep the peace I didn't call him on it, but that's why I got so weird about keepin' that door locked all the time" Barry cleared his nose and spit.

"But, when did.." I ventured.

"But that's not even the worst of it, Slim. Remember that Saturday you and your old man went to that trade show in Niagara Falls? Well, I gets up from sleepin' late and I go into the bathroom to hang a rat, you know. I notice that Nils' door's open a little and there's all these squeaky mattress sounds goin on, so I decide to sneak a peek of my own. Nilsie probably thought he was the only one home."

Nils shuffled his feet in the straw and Barry picked up on it. "What's that, Nils? You want to tell him the rest?" Nils cringed some more and drew his knees closer to his chin. "No?" Barry went on, "Naw, didn't think so. Well, anyways, Slim, here's Nils with his legs thrown over his head and he's jackin' off to just beat all hell. Really rockin' the old headboard weren't ya Nils? Now there's nothin' too weird about pumpin' a load into your mouth that way-- everybody with a dick and a mouth's tried it. But Nils here's got a whole extra kick to that game. I look a bit closer and see that he's playin' with his asshole too. Nothin' too weird about that either, unless you go around making trouble for people about the shit THEY DO..." he tapped the bottom of Nils' boot with his toe, as if he didn't already have his attention. I could tell Barry was feeling a fresh wave of rage pass through him and that he desperately wanted to hit Nils again. He tapped Nils' foot again, a little harder this time, as if urging him to get up. I grasped Barry's elbow.

"Well, to make a long story short, Slim, there's Nils stuffing his butt with one of those metal tubes like my dad's cigars come in-- just a-stuffin 'away. Man, no wonder there's never any fuckin' Vaseline around here." He turned to Nils again. "So what were you thinkin' about while you were pokin' yourself Nils? Sure sounded like you were havin' a good time-- all that gruntin' and moanin'. Were you thinkin' about some big ol' boy scout bonin' ya? Or was it some Jesus preacher maybe?" Barry stepped a little closer to Nils' grimacing face and hefted the pouch of his briefs at him, accentuating his flaccid cock between the tails of his open shirt. "Maybe you were thinkin' about me! Would ya' like a bit of this one right here?"

Nils' face was even redder than it had been just after the shock of Barry's first punch registered. He stared at the ground, tears steaming down his cheeks. "No," he croaked.

Still I felt no pity for him. In fact, I wished Barry still had his dad's Poloroid camera when he'd caught Nils, wished that he'd gotten a picture of him in that most compromising position. That would have made my adolescent revenge complete. But even without concrete evidence, I knew that Nils and I now stood as equals again-- he had something on me and I had something on him. The two things cancelled themselves out.

"You SURE you don't want me to fuck you?" Barry asked, still badgering Nils, still gripping his cloth-covered softie a foot from Nils' face, still making Nils squirm, just as Nils had made us squirm, all those many times. "Maybe you'd just like to lick it a little..." he shuffled astride Nils feet.

"NO!" said Nils, pushing at the fronts of Barry's thighs, a sudden flash of anger rising out of his humiliation.

"Well now, that's funny, because I seem to remember you offering to blow me if I promised not to tell Jens about your nasty little hobby. Remember that part? Or were you so shit-scared that you just said it without meanin' it? Fuck, I was staring to think you're really just like us under all that mama's-boy diguise. Maybe you'd like to blow me right now. You know, join in the fun, like." His tone changed abruptly to one of baiting anger again. "Or maybe you just want to try to take another round out of me," He kicked the sole of Nils' boot again, trying to goad him.

My grip on Barry's arm tightened. I didn't feel any overwhelming compassion for Nils, but I didn't like where this was going. I honestly didn't want to see Nils get beaten up. Not for his sake, but for Barry's and mine. If he left marks on Nils there would be explanations to make. "Let him go," I said.

"See that? Now that's a brother for you, Nils. Next time you get a yen to make life a little tough for Jens, remember how he stuck up for you just now, asshole. Now, get on your feet and get the fuck out of here." He pulled me out of the doorway to give Nils an exit. It suddenly occured to me that my standing where I did probably prevented Nils from bolting long before.

Nils gathered himself up and slunk out, brushing straw off his ass and flattening the front of his Howie Highschool brushcut back in place. He avoided eye contact with me, but scowled openly at Barry, who had slipped a chummy arm around my shoulder solely for Nils' benefit. Still, Nils didn't say a word, as if absolutely all the jam had been kicked out of him and he had nothing left, even for a parthian shot.

Barry gave me no time to absorb what had just happened. I could still hear Nils' departing footsteps as Barry pinned me to the wall with a wild, passionate kiss, one of unremitting tongue-thrusting, one tinged with the taste of his blood. He pawed at my overalls again. Still transfused with adrenalin, he broke the kiss and flung me backwards into the loose straw.

He crept between my splayed knees, roughly yanking my dick out of my jockeys. I wasn't nearly erect yet. Barry clamped his lips just behind my glans and blindly tugged my spongy cock up and down until blood finally began to fill it. As it stiffened, he began long, sloppy glides on it, accompanied by a lot of snorking, gagging sounds. It was as if he were venting the last of his anger on himself, as if the act of impaling himself on me like that, without regard to his comfort, would somehow dissipate the rage he still felt. Barry felt me twitch in his gullet and he buried his nose further into my pubic patch. He moaned and shook his head from side to side while I spunked into his convulsing throat.

Once I got my wits back, I made moves to do him back. It might have been with far less vehemence than the blowjob he'd just given me, but I owed him a big thank-you for getting Nils off our backs once and for all. "Naw, Slim," he said when I started feeling him up, "Save it for later. I'm going to take your bike out for a while."

"I'll go with you. I'll take Nils' bike." I told him.

"Well, I'd kind of like to be by myself Jens. You know, just work it off, like."

"Sure, okay..." I told him. By the time I'd gathered the eggs and was making my way back to the house, Barry was leaning into the pedals near the end of the laneway. He stayed away for most of the rest of that day.

Later, in the darkness of my room, after we'd split up to go to sleep, we talked a little about what had happened in the barn. The image of Barry walking in on a very chagrinned Nils kept passing before my closed eyes, in all its possible variations. I wanted to know everything.

"Did he really offer to suck you off?" I was obsessed with this part.

"Yeah, listen Slim..."

"And did he?"

"Of course not. I wouldn't have made him. I..."

"Does he have a big cock?"

"No bigger than yours. Look Jens, I'm tired, and I'm not real proud about what happened today. Can we just go to sleep?"

"Okay," I told him. I reached over and stroked his hair, the only part of him I could reach because of the way the beds were spaced. He clasped my hand next to his ear and we fell asleep.

The days that followed were filled with activity as the final boxes of the Llewelyn kids' stuff got packed and shipped out west. Barry and the twins, reduced to living out of a suitcase each, often had their heads together, making plans and speculating on their new lives. I felt pretty out of it most of the time, but not in bed at night-- then, I had Barry all to myself and we made every climax count. School was out, so we were able to prolong the time we shared my bed without having to worry about having to get up early the next morning.

Finally, the eve of Barry and the twins' departure was upon us. Pop took us all to a nice steak house and Barry and I were able to toast each other with real French wine above the table and play ankle hockey beneath it. Nils had dragged his girlfriend, Shiela, along. With her safely at his side to assert his manhood, he managed to pull himself out of the funk he'd been in since that morning in the barn-- at least enough to be affectedly sociable. Otherwise, he'd taken to avoiding us again and I was glad of it. All in all, it was a fun evening, but even so, every few minutes I'd feel the cold chill of realization pass along my spine. I'd look at Barry, laughing and joking and kibbitzing with the waiter and I'd have to fight back the tears. It was difficult, but I managed appear as carefree as Barry did. I didn't completely loose it until we got back home.

"Don't go." I told Barry as we shuffled through the last of his stuff.

"What?"

"Just don't go. You're over sixteen! You could stay here with us and finish highschool here and... "

"Slim, you're asking me to desert my family. I can't do that. I wouldn't expect you to, if it was the other way around. Besides, you'll soon find somebody else who you'll like as well as me."

"No I won't! It won't ever be the same as this!" I told him, believing every syllable. "I LOVE you!" I blurted out, instantly sorry I'd said it.

Barry caught my eye and held it for a long, thoughtful moment.

"That'll happen again," he said finally. Looking past me, out the open window he added, "for both of us."

He moved in and enfolded me, aware, and not caring, that the door to my room was open and that anyone could walk by. We just stood there holding each other for a short eternity. This time there was none of the pawing and crotch grinding that position would ordinarily provoke in us. We didn't even kiss. Eventually, I thought I detected a tremble pass through Barry and I backed off him a bit. He was blubbering as badly as I was.

"Damn you, Jens," Barry said, biting his lower lip and forcing a chuckle. "I haven't done this since my grampa died." He dragged the corner of his t-shirt sleeve across his eyes and sniffed hard. He smiled a red-faced smile at me and tittered self-consciously. I could see he was trying to claw himself out of whatever well of emotion he'd fallen into. I got out of his way. Pulling out a few for myself, I passed him the box of kleenex, as I had so many other times, though never for tears.

That was the moment I began to make the break. Suddenly, I realized that if I was going to get through this at all I'd really have to start facing a world without him. "C'mon let's get the rest of your stuff packed." I told him, willing myself to my feet, refusing to listen to the panicked voices screaming in my head.

That night, when the house fell quiet and we'd spermed our last, Barry scooped my sticky form into his arms and settled himself in, his head on my chest, his forearm across the waistband of my jockeys. He didn't use the roll-away bed that night.

The chaos of departure day is a blur in my mind. I like to think we had some final, purgative climax together that morning, but all I remember is the stilted farewells at the airport.

After hugging the living stuffing out of my astonished parents, Barry took Nils' hand and leaned in close enough that only the three of us could hear. "Just don't be givin' Jens a rough time after I'm gone, big brother. I got one or two friends back here that would break your arm just for the fun of it, if I asked them to. And you can believe that, because you know who I'm talking about." Nils jerked his hand back when Barry let it go and rubbed it, wincing.

"Well, Slim, I guess this is it. I'll try to write, I promise. And we can talk on the phone sometimes. Maybe you can come out for a vist."

"Sure," I said, choking. I was hypersalivating like a St. Bernard, but utterly unable to swallow. The throbbing at my temples increased, my peripheral vision narrowed and I felt my knees threaten to buckle. I had to grip one of the chrome stanchions to remain standing.

Barry picked up his carry-on bag and pulled his ticket out of his inside pocket. One last, almost prefunctory, suitable-for-the-public hug. One more croaked, self-conscious 'bye' and he turned and walked down the long carpeted corridor to join the twins as they made their way to the boarding area. About half way there he looked back over his shoulder. The last time I saw him he was winking and bumping his chino-clad butt at me.

I locked myself into the music room as soon as we got back to the house. Usually, the family played the upright piano when we played; the concert grand was kind of my pop's private altar. But that day I went right to it and fell into long, meditative repetitions of a familiar, perhaps universal, 12 bar figure. Eventually the need to ornament it took over. I let that part of my mind and my fingers have at it, while the rest of me hung there suspended, more a spectator than a participant. When I finally stopped playing, I was shocked to discover that it had grown pitch dark; the only light in the room coming in from under the door to the foyer.

I gathered myself up and met my pop on his way upstairs. He completely ignored the fact that I'd been on the Boesie. "That was really, really good, Jens. Very genuine-- even if it was ALL in one key."

I had to chuckle at his naivete, in spite of my profound sadness. He thought I'd been woodshedding. In fact, I'd been living the blues; teaching myself how to defeat them on my terms.

I lay on my bed and stared at my dresser. Taped to bottom of the third drawer-- my underwear drawer, appropriately enough-- there was an envelope containing the three naughty pictures of Barry we'd taken the previous New Years' Eve. It was enough, for now, to know that they were there. I knew it instinctively-- it would be several weeks before I could bring myself to look at them.

END

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