We just saw an old friend on TV. Kelly and I haven't seen him in many years but at one time he was one of the most influential person in our lives. We would wonder through the years what had happened to him, where he was, what he was doing, and then there he was giving an interview on CNN.
Kelly and I are now living together. We tried the straight life, even fathering kids, but ended up back with each other. It would have been much better had we started this way, but that really isn't part of the story. It started long ago when Kelly and I were young boys, at a camp where we grew up each summer.
It was my second year to return to camp, I loved the horses, swimming, mountain climbing, and just about everything else that went on there. I was excited about seeing a lot of the kids returning that year. Kelly and I had really become good friends in the school year and I laid on the sales pitch hard for him to join me at camp. We were both 11 that summer and we got to be senior campers, which meant a few things, like getting to stay up later at the dances, better horses, and getting the cool counselors.
Kelly has always been a cute boy. He was dark complected, almost Hispanic looking, very common in our city on the border. His dad had black hair and his mother was a little dark but Kelly insisted his ancestors were from western Europe and Ohio. He had a thin face with really great green eyes. His black hair was spiky even though we wore it long then. It would stand on end and make his head look bigger. He styles it now so that it looks great natural. His smile looked a little to big for him, and his teeth looked so white and pretty, even if one is a little crooked. He fought wearing braces as a kid, I didn't have much choice. Kelly was thin but not skinny, and he was stronger than he looked. He loved playing sports and was very graceful in every move. He just could never stand to be dirty.
As I look back on pictures of me when I was a kid, I do have to admit that I was cute as well. I was as blond as could be. The contrast of Kelly and me was very distinct in complexion and hair. We were the same size, barely a half inch separated us in height, changing every so often as we hit growth spurts. Clothes could be swapped and often were when we spent the night with out much preparation. My features and complexion reflect my German heritage, Aryan, if that is politically correct these days. Like I said, I was cute. A little too cute for me.
Little girls would chase after me because I was blond and cute. Then in junior high, those girls would chase after me for dates and such. I won two categories in the unofficial poll of 8th grade girls, for cutest boy and best hair. Beginning in junior high and growing stronger through high school and even college, guys would hit on me too. Some clearly gay approaches, others I'm not even sure they knew it was a homosexual attraction. Those weren't all that bad, and being popular in school sure wasn't the worst thing. It was how uncomfortable I got when older men would pay a lot of attention to me for no particular reason than my looks. It was really one coach, everybody knew he liked boys. He would monitor the showers to make sure everyone got naked and into the showers. There were the stories about him and certain other boys over the years.
However, it is with an older guy that this is really all about.
It was at camp that it started. I was thrilled when I found out that I had the best counselor from last year. It took me asking only one time for Kelly to move into my cabin.
Even though there had to have been a 1,000 kids pass through that camp each summer, Greg remembered me. He smiled at me as I hopped off the bus and he called my by my name as he told me which cabin I was in.
Greg really went by a nickname all the years I was there and some kids probably didn't even know his real name. I knew what it was, mostly because of the junior counselor we had used it when he talked to Greg. Mike, the JC, said that he knew him better and he wanted to use his real name, so Kelly and I did too. He was an all-state football player on a team that won state his senior year. His arms stretched out the sleeves in his shirt, his thighs looked bigger than most of the kids bodies. He was tan, dark brown, other than under the gym shorts he wore most of the time. His face was so handsome that we thought he could go into the movies.
He was so strong that he could scoop kids up and make it look like he was picking up towels from the benches at the pool. He taught swimming but he also filled in at riflery and archery when those counselors took their days off. He was loud, you could here him from one end of camp to the other.
Greg was like some hyper coach when it came to competition. He'd yell and holler, encourage and push the kids. I think it was all positive. It seemed that way, but now days if the coach says anything but please, he gets written up and eventually banned from coaching his own kid's team (another story for another time). It the pool, he would race kids who were on swim teams at home, his powerful body would win every time. Even though he would win, he would tell the kid how good he swam and worked and encouraged the kid to do better.
He rode a horse like he was right out of those old westerns, never abusing the animal though. Everyone would always want to ride his horse. I realized it had not as much to do with the horse as it was with Greg. We rode back from town and he had to ride a horse that was usually reserved for little kids, it was slow and gentle and would just follow the horse in front forever. Greg made it look like one of the pickup men's horses in the rodeos. That horse never ran so fast in years.
He also had a more personal side, a more intimate and softer side. He had some of the best ghost stories and would tell them to us each night in the cabin as the other counselors merely threatened their kids to go to bed and shut up. Many times it was not ghost stories, he would get us talking about our lives. Most of the time is was something going on at camp, sometimes it was life back in the real world of parents and school. He was great in big crowds of kid, better at a cabin-full or about 8 or 10, and what I liked most was how he was with just me...well, sometimes with Kelly too.
I really liked wrestling Greg in the pool. I loved the feeling of wet bare skin sliding against his. I would jump on his back and wrap legs and arms around him, only to be pulled off and tossed 10 or so feet into the deep end. The wrestling would result in hands going over all parts of bodies. I usually ended up with a boner. It was easy to hide in the water, but over the summers, I did get big enough to not get out of the water right away. And Greg would get hard as well. I could feel his boner against me and we twisted about. Since it didn't take much for me to get hard, I just thought it was cool knowing that he got hard too.
We could really only do it with Greg, Kelly and I would get up on one shoulder each, facing each other and hanging on as Greg would spin and move with us on him. I really liked it because I could feel his shoulder press under my balls, and my boner would press into his neck. It was almost like jacking. After doing it with Kelly, I found out after that first summer that he was in about the same condition. It wasn't the only way that Kelly and I would jack together (another story for another time).
Greg never did anything that I think could be considered abuse. He did swat my naked butt as I was horsing around after getting out of the shower. I was asking for it, it wasn't hard enough to hurt, but it did get a rise out of me. It wasn't the threat of another swat, it was that I was boning up quick. I found clean undies quick, tight enough to hold down my boner, mostly. But I ended up jumping on him to continue wrestling. He never seemed to mind wrestling, even when we were all, including him, in nothing but undies.
Greg would look as boys changed and ran in and out of the shower. He was never obvious about it and never made anyone feeling weird. I would do a little extra. I was never even sure he was watching but as long as I wasn't boned up, I would stay naked a little longer when he was around. And I would take advantage of when he got out of the shower. He would shower early in the morning, before he would wake us up. Unless I was really tired, I would wake up when I heard the water running. I would turn my head so I could get good look at him. He would have a towel around him, but it never did quite cover his goodies.
His dick was the largest I got to see for years. It is what I think about today as the example of what a cut dick should look like. It would swing and sway as he combed his hair or put on his aftershave. And I noticed something that he still doesn't know about himself, when he would concentrate on putting in his contacts, his balls would tighten up. I was amazed to see them suck up at least an inch while he gazed into the mirror. In the summers to come, he grew a mustache and they would do the same thing as he trimmed it. I loved to look at the bottom of his scrotum as it emptied and shriveled when he did his contacts and mustache at the same time.
If Greg had ever wanted to take advantage of little boys, he could have done it with me. I never asked him to do anything, but I did silly little things like sliding up next to him and moving his arm so I could get closer, purposely laying his hand in my lap, hoping he would start playing with me. Every time, he moved his hand back around my shoulder or knee. He wouldn't push me away, hardly that, instead he would usually pull me closer, making me feel comfortable against him. Sometimes, he would talk to me, other times I would just be there as he talked to someone else. In those relatively quiet times, I just enjoyed his touch. He would play with my hand, firmly pressing against the bones, sliding the skin back and forth, stretching it so that my fingers would move like on a string.
All that combined with the way he made me feel like I was a real person, not just some skinny blond kid, is what made him my most favorite person growing up. It is harder to describe those times. Sometimes it was just me telling him about a teacher. It was talking at night, right before I fell asleep, talk about nothing important but talking. And one night, on a campout, I felt like I had Greg all to myself. I fell asleep against him and woke up hours later finding him asleep and still holding me.
Besides me, Kelly and Greg were close too. Many times, Kelly would take the other side of Greg and snuggle up. That first year, Kelly and I talked about how cool he was. Kelly was the third person who called him Greg. It the years to come, as Kelly and I grew up together, we spoke of Greg in even more intimate terms. We imagined things we would do with him, or things he would do to us. Some of the most sexual fun Kelly and I had with each other was when one of us would pretend to be Greg.
There is one incident that endeared him to Kelly, and both of our parents. I think it was the reason they let us go back every summer from then on. They would group all the boys into groups of four to compete in the rodeo. Not rough stock, but barrel races and chasing goats with bells, and throwing them into a sack with a partner. The winner in each group would get a championship buckle. It was truly a prize, one you could wear to school all year and then especially back to camp the next summer as the returning champion.
Kelly and I were in two different groups, my one year of experience separating me from the rookie. We did team up for the goat sacking but finished was back. I won my group easily, ringing up first places in the rodeos in the first and second weeks. My chest was so puffed out when I rode back into the arena to get my buckle that I was almost too top heavy to stay on the horse. Greg was there to shake my hand, smile at me hugely, and congratulate me for winning.
I was all wrapped up in myself and excited about winning. I didn't even notice that Kelly was not out in front with all the other winners. We calculate the points and were sure that he won his group, it was close, but he should be the points winner. We figured it was a difference of one point, I was even a little jealous that he was going to win his first year, but even prouder that we would be going home with two buckles (actually, my little sister won hers that morning).
After the rodeo, we went back to the corrals, our parents were there to meet us and to throw us back in the van and take off back home. I did some hugging and saying goodbye to friends and counselors and even looked for Greg and tried to wait for him to get off his horse after all the others were off. My parents were in a hurry and they got me into the van. In the back, Kelly was sitting back, arms crossed, crying. He was mad at the world and wouldn't tell me anything that was wrong. His mother told me that he was upset that he didn't get a buckle. He just shook his head when I said that he should have won.
I was sad about leaving and a little pissed about having to leave in such a rush. I was also dreading riding back home for hours with Kelly in such a pissy mood. While I felt bad for him, I didn't want to share his mood.
It took just a little bit to get the van out of the crowd and head down the road to the front gate. We just cleared a little bridge over a dry creek when I saw a guy on a horse running from the back of the corrals. My mom and dad even noticed that it was Greg. He was running fast on the back of his horse, my mom impressed that he looked like he was attached to the horse. I loved the thought that my last image of camp was going to be Greg flying across the pasture, so smooth, so fast, so handsome.
We noticed he was pointing to us, trying to flag down the van. My mom convinced my dad to pull over. Greg barely slowed, his horse digging its heels into the sand and in one motion Greg was off the horse and standing at the front door of the van. He asked if Kelly was in the van and Kelly's dad opened the side door and called him over. He crawled part way in and motioned Kelly to meet him. Greg held Kelly's head in his hand, pressed their foreheads together and he whispered to Kelly. I heard him say the guys in the announcer box messed up and that he had won a buckle for real. He held out his hand and there was the buckle, I stared at Greg and Kelly like there was no one else in there. I could hear his parents say how nice that was, my parents congratulating him. Greg finally got a smile from Kelly. Greg seemed to know how to do that with all kinds of kids. Kelly wiped his eyes, the dust from the rodeos was smeared over his cheeks.
Greg told Kelly that he did a great job. He said he was so proud of him with or without the buckle but wanted to make sure that he got what he deserved. Greg hoped he would get to see him next year and that he sure was going to miss him. That actually got another tear or two from Kelly but they were much better tears.
As Greg wished us to be careful and have a good trip, I stumbled out of the van for one last hug. I felt like I was swallowed up in his arms. But no matter how big and strong he was, it was a tender hug, I knew he meant it. And I knew he meant it when he told me I was special, a great friend, a good kid, and that he was going to miss me a whole lot.
He got tears from me. I was already to abandoned my parents right then and there and spend the rest of the summer with him. My dad was quiet but Greg knew he was anxious to get out of there and he had me get back into the van. I looked out the side window and saw what my mom saw. As Greg put his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over the saddle, the loose ends of his belt flopped around. He had taken his own buckle, won years before when he was a camper, and given it to Kelly. It was the first time I ever felt a tingle go up my spine.
An hour on the road, Kelly and my sister were sound asleep, I had my eyes closed and was close to passing out myself. My mom told Kelly's mom about Greg's buckle. They would talk about it for years afterwards. I know both of our parents wrote Greg a letter, he thanked us for them the next summer but never let us read them. Greg was something of a hero for years. Even today, my mom suggests that I send my boys to camp, thinking they may find a friend like Greg to help them grow up.