The air around the bed was tingling with electricity. The walls had faded in to mere shadows. He towered over me, his arms keeping him an agonising distance from me. The feeling of his breath alone sent shivers through every part of my body. He looked down and stared through my eyes and deep inside me. I felt as if he could sense every thought and desire I had for him.
He sat upright, looking down at every inch of my naked flesh. As his eyes made his way up my body, he smiled his all-conquering smile before leaning in once more.
He kissed my forehead. I could feel him pulsing against me. He kissed my nose, my mouth, my cheeks, my chin... my neck. Bliss. Lower he went, his lips inching their way down my chest. Lower still, my stomach clenched as he caressed it.
He was so close now, no more than an inch from kissing parts of me that nobody had ever even seen.
A telephone rang out around the room. I looked down at John who had frozen at the sound.
Again it rang. I raised an eyebrow, desperately trying to encourage him without whispering a word.
The ring grew louder, screaming as if from the centre of my skull.
I looked away and closed my eyes as John moved with a promise that he was going to fulfil my every wish.
I felt the warm rush as he surrounded me with his lips. I felt the world grinding to a halt around me. I could have died where I lay. My back arched my chest in to the air at the sensation and every part of me writhed with pleasure.
The phone screamed out another deafening tone... and then nothing...
The room melted away and the terrifying joy that had filled every pore was replaced with the pained panic and the realisation of what was happening.
My eyes strained as the blinding light that was streaming in through the window struggled to be contained by my curtains.
It was nine o clock on Saturday morning. I was alone, confused and the phone was still ringing.
I reached over to the bedside table knocking the ringing phone to the floor in a daze. As I moved away the bed covers, the upshot of my minds trick revealed itself as a warm white patch.
I hit answer on the phone and fell crashing out of my bed as I continued to try to come to terms with reality. My still solid friend dropped dripping from my boxer shorts and I oozed further streams on to the floor.
"Hello?" I wearily enquired.
"What took you so long?" Lucy's words made me smile as I looked around at the chaos that I had created. The bedding that should have embarrassed me just made me think back to the day before, of that smile and everything I pretended it was going to lead to.
"It's Saturday morning is what took me so long!" I exclaimed "What's wrong with you? Don't you sleep?" I giggled to myself, a stinging joy was filling me again.
"Yeah, but some of us like to make the most of their days away from that shitty school..." Lucy quipped back.
"Right, and what are you doing that's so exciting?"
"I'm preparing..." She said with a mischievousness to her voice.
"Oh dear, why do I get the feeling that you're plotting something?"
Lucy had invited me over to her house for a party that evening. I use the term party quite wrongly. Generally these `parties' consisted of me, Lucy and her little brother sitting and watching rubbish television until about ten o clock. Such social lives we led!
This time, however, Lucy had promised that things were going to be different. She had spent the week before inviting pretty much everybody in the school year to her house with the knowledge that her parents would not be around. The picture she had excitedly painted to me was not unlike what you see in American high school films. I think she imagined herself stood on a table as all the popular kids had a great time around her. I think she imagined everybody cheering and declaring her the Queen of the world.
The reality turned out to be a long distance from her fantasies.
My mum and dad had left the house for their Saturday morning shop, which gave me plenty of time to clear up the inconvenience I had left in my bed. I stripped it down along with myself and walked through the freezing house. I shoved everything in to the washing machine before running to the shower to clean myself up.
I could not get John out of my head. No matter what I did his face just kept beaming down at me.
I did not try too hard to think about what my feelings and thoughts meant but even when I did, I could not make any real sense of them. I didn't have the first idea about love or relationships. Nobody tells you these things, school kids don't have such conversations with each other and the kind of television programmes I watched rarely reflected on how to deal with the first time you have strange feelings for someone else, especially for someone of the same sex.
Without help, my brain struggled to make any attempt at coming to terms with the screaming desire I had within me to touch him, to hold him or even to simply look upon him. Every ounce of my heart was screaming `you want to be with him', but my head wasn't playing ball.
Perhaps the stupidest part of all was that I didn't think of my dreams and fantasies as reflections of a hidden sexuality. I didn't think to myself `this must mean I am gay', truth be told the thought had never even crossed my mind. So stupid and naïve I was that I guess I was dismissing everything as a fascination with someone I had helped out. Someone who was unlike any other boy I had seen before. But gay? No! Being gay was for somebody else to have to deal with.
Despite the tide of thoughts my mind was struggling to swim against, the one thing that remained clear was that I knew for sure that for the first time since I had started at the new school I could not wait for the Monday morning walk in.
My parents pulled up the driveway an hour later with bags of shopping overloading the back of the car. I raced out of the house, a beaming happiness plastered all over my face. I waved joyfully at them as I went by and flung a door open.
My dad peered through his glasses at me, a perplexed look about him. My mum looked over as she got out of the car smiling.
"I haven't got the faintest idea what's happened to you these past couple of days but I can't say I'm too upset." She watched as the smile fell from my face. They would have had no idea what was going through my head but I suddenly felt like my thoughts were being played out as a movie for all to see.
I picked up a couple of bags of shopping and looked up to my dad. "Would I be able to get a lift to Lucy's house tonight please?"
My dad smirked at me ever so slightly and then looked over to my mum. I knew what they were both thinking and I was fine with that.
The day wore on wearily as I paced my way around the house looking for something to fill my time. By late afternoon the clock was ticking so slowly that I had my dad take me to Lucy's early.
`Coming early, bored to death!' I sent to Lucy's phone.
`Good, me 2, so excited!' she text back moments later.
As I arrived I could see Lucy frantically arranging a table in her dining room. She stopped momentarily to look out the window as the lights of my dad's car shone through at her. She waved at us and came racing to the door.
"Come see, come see!" she exclaimed with excitement as her front door flew open before I had chance to put one foot on to her driveway.
"HI Lucy..." my dad shouted as she turned, disappearing in to her hallway.
"Hi Mr B..." Lucy's voice faded as she went.
I looked up and smiled at my dad who grinned back shaking his head.
"Big night planned have you?" He looked over at me.
"Ha! Yeah, we will be bouncing off the walls doing drugs and everything!" I laughed and my dad laughed back over the car at me.
"Thanks for the lift dad, I'll try and get a lift back later off Mike... If he turns up!"
My dad paused and his face fell back to his usual resolute stare. As I closed the door to the car and made for Lucy's house he watched as I strode. "Son... you're ok aren't you?"
I turned back and looked at him. I cannot say that my dad and I had ever had the best relationship, what with him seeming to work every hour of each day throughout my childhood, but the upheaval that the family had gone through seemed to have driven a further wedge even further between us.
"What do you mean?" I worryingly enquired.
"Come ooooon!!!" Lucy had appeared back at the door looking flustered.
"No, nothing son, just go and have a good time..." Without another word my dad sat back down in the car and waved at me. A smile filled his face again briefly.
I guess the upheaval of moving miles from the home he had been in for twenty years had got to him too. It was at that moment that I finally came to the stark realisation of how selfish I had been over the months since moving to Carlisle. I had never given a thought to how my parents must have been feeling. All I had done was bemoan the destruction of my own life, never sparing a worry for how it must have affected them too.
I watched as my father reversed on to the road.
Lucy grabbed my arm and began to drag me towards her house.
Mike turned up at around half past seven along with a couple of boys from school. I recognised one from my French lesson. He was a ginger haired slim and small boy called George. I wondered if Mike liked hanging around with him because of the way it made him look. Mike was a good looking guy, but next to George he looked like a model.
The other boy he had brought was a guy called Steven. I had not seen him before, nor did I care to see him again. He was not much shorter than Mike's impressive height, but had the structure of a bodybuilder. He looked much older than any of us. For most of the night he talked and moved with the arrogance of somebody who thought that there was only himself in the world.
The minutes passed in to hours and the awkward conversation thawed only slightly as the evening wore on.
"Lucy, you know it's after nine o clock don't you." Lucy had watched as every minute passed by her suggested eight o clock arrival time and I could see each second was cutting her. I was sure that she knew she didn't have a lot of friends, but I guess she genuinely thought that this night was going to change everything for her. I had thought throughout the week that her attempts at selling the party as the social milestone of our lives were going to turn out to be a massive exaggeration, but I had not realised how much Lucy believed that the outcome her mind had created would truly happen.
"Yes!" She snapped back at me.
The three boys looked up from their giggle filled corner and looked straight at Lucy. They had set up base on a small settee that filled one side of the dining room, something which I felt had further annoyed Lucy. She was sat at the table with me, alone again.
"What!?" she shot at them.
Mike raised his eyebrows and went to say something.
"I'm getting a drink." Lucy interrupted.
"You've got one here." I shouted as she stormed out in to the hallway.
Mike turned back and began talking to George about something. Steven's eyes rolled and he stood up and made his way over to the table and grabbed a handful of crisps. He sat down in the chair right next to me.
I looked away. I felt uncomfortable just being in the same room as him, never mind being sat this close. I had not uttered a word to him all evening and worried over his intentions.
"So, what's your story kid?" he bellowed out of from a snack filled mouth. `Kid?' I thought to myself.
I wasn't sure what to say to him and looked up as he munched away. "Erm... nothing really...You?" I tentatively asked.
"What's my story?" He grinned manically.
"Erm... Yeah?"
Steven started laughing. My previous assumption that he was a lunatic started to feel a reality. The laughter subsided to an awkward silence after a couple of seconds.
Lucy bounded back in with a stack of plastic cups and a half drunk bottle of Rum. She crashed the bottle down on the table and took one of the cups out of the stack.
"What are you doing?" I asked. I had never drunk before and didn't have even the slightest desire to start now.
"She's getting this fuckin' party sorted is what she's doing..." Steven exclaimed. The other boys looked up and saw what had been produced.
"Come on Mike..." Lucy insisted.
Mike smiled and got up to sit at the table.
Lucy placed cups in front of us and put the fifth at an empty seat.
"Come on ginger top." Mike joked toward George.
Lucy poured a small amount of Rum in each cup and everybody sat looking at the forbidden liquid in front of us. All except Steven who picked his cup up and threw the drink down his neck.
"Wait..." Lucy said giggling at Steven. She went to pour a drop more in Stevens' cup.
"The game is question time..." Lucy explained as she finished Stevens' measure. "You get to ask any question you want, it can be anything at all no matter what it is...
"But!" She exclaimed "Everyone gets to refuse to answer a question each round, otherwise you have to answer... and if enough people think you're lying about your answer then you have to take a drink."
Everyone around the table looked at each other.
I was filled with fear, knowing what could potentially be asked of me. I knew I was either going to have to lie convincingly or end up slumped drunk in a corner.
"Spin the bottle for who goes first..." Lucy sealed the bottle of rum closed. "Oh, and whoever asks the question has to answer their own question first!"
"You're just making this up..." Mike declared playfully toward her.
"So what?" she sang back at him happily.
The bottle span and everyone sat in the desperate hope that they would not be the one that the pressure would be on to come up with the first good question. It slowly came to a halt pointing at George's wide, fear laced brown eyes.
"Come on Georgie boy..." Steven and Mike banged the table and laughed as his pale face glowed red.
He pondered, looking at everybody in turn not knowing what to do.
"Oh, come on!" Lucy exclaimed after what seemed like an age.
Steven grabbed at his cup and took another swig of his drink. "Oops, forgot the rules, more please..." He cheekily pointed his glass at Lucy who scowled back at him. His smile switched to a frown and he grabbed for the bottle and unscrewed the top.
"OK" said George. "So, a genie pops up tomorrow and says to you I can give you any special skill you want so that you can be world famous at anything... what do you choose?"
"That... is... the single shittest question ever..." mocked Mike.
"What?" George's face flushed once more.
"You can ask any question of us, anything... You could find out something about us nobody knows..." I cringed as Mike continued "... and you ask that shit?"
"I don't know, do I?" George spoke back with anger in his voice. Mike shook his head and rolled his eyes.
"I'd quite like to be a show jumper." Lucy started, breaking her own rules before the game had even begun.
"I'm not sure that is such a massive skill that you need a genie to help you with it Luce..." Mike joked back.
Lucy smiled at him, not attempting to defend herself. "Matt?" Lucy looked at me.
"Erm..." I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and nothing sprang to mind. A few moments passed before I came up with the pathetically dull answer "... football."
Sniggers came from Steven and Mike. "What?" I asked, smirking at them.
"Come on... You? Football?" Mike asked.
"Isn't the idea that the genie gives you ANY skill you want? Meaning something I don't already have? I'm brilliant at everything else!" Everybody laughed in my direction and I joined in.
Questions flew by regarding things like who had ever kissed a girl, to which curiously only Steven and Lucy said yes. The rest of us abstained out of embarrassment. Steven got more and more drunk while the rest of us sat just staring at the drinks on our table as further questions rolled on by.
Eight questions in and the one I knew would come finally arrived. I thought that I was going to dread it more than any, but as soon as it was uttered I just began to grin.
"Ok... Do you fancy anyone at school?" Mike asked.
Lucy looked down at the floor, her face flushed red and she looked up at me. My eyes widened for fear of what this meant. A grin came on her face.
"Not you, you daft sod!" she laughed at me. Relief filled me from head to toe and I laughed back at her.
"Well, I think that's Lucy's answer sorted." Mike quipped. Lucy looked over at Mike as he looked and waited for George to give his answer. I didn't hear what George said as I looked and realised who it was that Lucy wanted. I suppose it made sense, he was the only person other than me that had ever even given Lucy the time of day at school. I looked over at Mike and thought what a good choice it was for Lucy. I hoped for her sake that he would give her a chance, but then in all honesty I held little optimism, as much as I loved Lucy I had doubts over how desirable she was to the other boys at school.
"Matt?" Steven slurred, breaking my train of thought.
"What?" looked over at him.
"Who do you want to bone?" He said. Had I missed something? Had we moved on to another question?
"Who!? I thought the question was IF there was anyone I liked?"
"Same thing..." Steven said, swinging his arm in my direction. As his body turned he slipped from his chair and fell in to a crumpled heap on the floor. Everybody burst in to fits of laughter. Nobody could stop as Steven tried to stumble to his feet. He waddled toward the door.
Lucy looked at me and grinned. "Well? Is there?" she said as the laughter subsided.
A cautious grin sat on my face.
A reminder that Nifty, this wonderful site, needs donations: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Best wishes