Chapter 29 - Kevin and the Wake Up Call

Chapter 29: Kevin & the Wake-Up Call

Author's Notes: Let's start this chapter with an important disclaimer. Remember that you are reading this story on a website that is dedicated to printing "EROTIC FICTION". As I told you before Chapter 1, Brad Healey is not my real name. Further, names, places and facts have been materially changed to protect the identities of real people. The events depicted here may have been altered significantly from what actually happened. Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental. As an author, saying anything otherwise is foolish. That's just not something someone sensible like me would ever do.

So, with that out of the way, here continues the story of my life. If you've found yourself liking me less after the past couple of chapters, well- that certainly makes at least two of us. The carefree, wide-eyed and naive explorer from childhood and adolescence has become a beady-eyed hardcore addict, focused only on his next fix. Where I had always regarded myself as a compassionate, honest and thoughtful person, I had sadly now become a person I didn't recognize, manipulative and driven to make up for twenty years of sexual lost time. If ever I needed professional help it was now- yet I was convinced that I was simply living the life I was always meant to live and didn't need advice from anyone.

I want to be quite clear as I tell these final few chapters that mine is certainly not the path that all men "growing up denying they were gay" take, but this happens to be my story, and it was the road I ended up on. My days and nights became an insane game of Chutes and Ladders, yet I felt invincible; that I could handle anything.

Today, I am posting two chapters together. Read them both if you want to know what actually happened. If you are here simply looking for a good erotic story to excite you, I strongly advise you to skip the second one (chapter 30) entirely. Now, many, many years later, I am sharing a story I previously knew I would take to the grave. If these final few chapters help a single person turn his own life around and save his own life as mine was saved, I will feel I have served a positive purpose in my life.

Finally, allow me to offer that I will post an epilogue at the conclusion of the story, tracing where everyone mentioned has ended up in the years since the story ends. I will also address the most common questions that readers have posed to me as this story has played out over the past months. If you have any comments or questions, please send them to me. I promise closure in the weeks ahead.

You may contact me at bradhealey@rocketmail.com.

********************

I had never been so self-centered in all my life. 31 and I had finally begun to accept myself as gay. The realization that: "this was what was wrong with me all along" felt like ten thousand pounds lifted from my shoulders. The pressure to change was gone—I suddenly felt elated and I literally felt as though I had just met someone new, and that new person was me. Now to someone reading all the facts laid out in these many chapters this may seem like a silly and ridiculously overdue conclusion. Even to me, writing these words more than fifteen years later it seems silly. But my words here fail to begin to describe the depth of private revelation and the relief that accompanied my change. I suspect that any person who has finally "come out" can relate to this process, and it starts with coming out first to one's self, forget other people for the time being!

My catharsis was surely aided by therapy, which I first attended reluctantly. For the first time, I heard other people explain in detail the same sort of feelings and experiences that prior to now I had thought were mine alone. I became transfixed with the thought that I wasn't alone after all, and that perhaps I wasn't damned to burn in hell for how I had always felt inside. I realized too for the first time what a powerful but invisible foundational role that my religion, coming from a devout Catholic family had done to seat my feelings of failure and self-rejection. I began to realize suddenly and with shock that I probably would never be able to reconcile my faith and my sexual orientation, and that one of them would have to be abandoned. While I never thought of myself as religious, the anguish I felt over this "decision" was surprisingly powerful and disquieting. I finally came to the surprisingly gut-wrenching and uncomfortable but foregone conclusion that it would be my birth-religion, not my sexual orientation that would have to go. I consoled myself in the belief that, if it turned out I had been wrong, God might forgive me and take me back, so long as I was able to make amends just moments before I died. Painful, powerful, and forgive me—really silly stuff.

Now that I was beginning to accept myself as a gay man, I wanted to find out what the world I had been missing was all about. Starting privately with a couple of my similar-aged companions in therapy, I had long talks over coffee and dinner about mutual issues- childhood doubt, boundless but often painful fantasy, sometimes compulsive masturbation, constant fear of discovery and rejection by family, employer and friends. I even questioned the value of our therapy, and voiced my reticence of being completely honest regarding my deepest feelings in this group setting. But that openness came to a screeching halt the day that I sat in my group session and realized that one of the men had blabbed our intimate conversations to the therapist, as he directed a strong lecture to all of the group members while staring mainly at me, on the importance of being open and honest with the group. I recall seeing angry red as I realized the diatribe was directed at me, and I aimed my anger alternately back at both my cowardly, unfaithful "friend" and our glaring, unenlightened, beady eyed Gestapo-like therapist. I don't remember exactly what followed, but I recall that I stopped sharing openly in therapy, reporting how wonderful each week had been, and soon afterwards departed to figure things out on my own, armed with only my rudimentary knowledge of what was wrong with me and a twisted glimmer of what I might do about it.

I turned to another form of group therapy— the new phenomenon of the Internet called Chat Rooms, a place I was gleefully introduced to for the first time by young Wes as we sat and talked in my apartment one evening. I was intoxicated with the realization that there were chat rooms for gay (or bi-curious) guys to talk to each other, and even that many such chat rooms existed specially for each city, enabling contact to go beyond screen chat, continuing on to late night telephone calls with local strangers, then allowing me to actually meet selected others in person whom I could talk to if we were both interested. The fact that they didn't know me and I didn't know them was a strong advantage. I therefore had no fear of entanglement with work, with community, or of word getting back to my family as I experimented somewhat openly at long last with my newfound sexuality. There was no need to travel to unsafe places, hang out in smoke-filled dark and seedy bars, no fear of being beat up because someone you met was really there to bash some fags.

Both online and eventually in person I met a spectrum of men just like me... married and separated, married and divorced, engaged to be married and still on the fence. I met businessmen like myself, school teachers and professionals, a priest, a fireman and even a Marine. The discovery that this whole world was out there and had probably always been out there was the revelation of a hidden parallel universe to me. Newly empowered I couldn't wait to get home from work each day to my small apartment, logging on to see what was happening out there, wondering who I might meet tonight. I'd log on at six PM, and log off after two AM each night, often forgetting even to eat and even sometimes to pee.

It wasn't long before I recognized that there were two basic types of guys cruising out there, and began to develop a preference for one type over the other. The group that held no interest to me were the guys who were gay, knew they were gay, couldn't remember ever being not gay, and wanted to get together to fuck... right now. Usually at least my age but some younger, they were not interested in talking, in sharing their coming out experiences, in being friends.

The second group was far less experienced, more afraid and less adventurous and outgoing. The men were often shy and unsure, hesitant to meet, always used fictitious names and locations. Yet as we talked, the walls often came tumbling down and we confessed our fears, indecision and conflict. Sometimes we might eventually meet, and these meetings would nearly always conclude with sex, sex of a fumbling, adolescent variety that was exciting to me because of the realization that my partners were as unsure about all of this as I was.

Few of these relationships ever went past a meeting or two, but that was OK. I was getting the experience I craved and I could hardly get enough. Weekends became a marathon of chat rooms and emails. The dial-up modem carrier tone sound and the announcer man's voice on America Online that proclaimed cheerfully "You've got mail!" was a signal to my inner-Pavlov's dog to begin to salivate, anticipating what tasty sexual treat could await with the very next click of the mouse.

At 31, I was older than many of these undecideds. Men in my age group (or older) cruising AOL had seemingly by and large settled on their sexuality, and were more likely to be in the group who wanted to get together to fuck. Mostly they wanted to fuck me, and I was more than simply "not interested" in this activity, I was afraid and even strongly repulsed by it. Instead, I mostly found myself talking to guys in their twenties, and to college students who attended one of the many universities that were located nearby in the big city, close to where my suburban home lay.

I met a beginning law student who had never been with a guy before, a medical student who was a real ladies man and was becoming a full-fledged alcoholic as a part of his confusion; a freshman football player from a division "B" school who was a strapping farm boy and who confessed that he had always been attracted to other guys but never had the nerve to make even a single move. This fellow in particular had a powerful effect on me. Eric was eighteen and nearly six foot five and around 250 lbs. he had a huge, thick muscled neck and still wore his football training camp buzz haircut. With hands twice my size but a cock half my size, he first began laughing and who began crying in relief after I had jerked him to orgasm, I learned his first experience ever with another person. "Oh, thank you thank you thank you" he sobbed over and over. "Thank you for helping me." We slept next to each other all night, but the next morning I shamefully will confess my embarrassment at him being there in my bed, and I dressed hurriedly for work and left him a note to lock the door behind him on his way out. It never occurred to me that any of my possessions were in danger from this gentle giant, and when I returned that night I found the rooms tidy and the bed made and a simple note on the kitchen counter that said "Thank you so much Brad". While I talked to him online several times afterwards, we never got together again. I was afraid he would get totally hooked on me, and as nice as he was I encouraged him to find other guys like him at school. I don't know what happened to Eric.

There were more—a waiter at a trendy downtown restaurant, twelve years my junior. An elementary school teacher in his late twenties with a squalid apartment where he tried to bed me mere moments after I walked in the door, and when I expressed my dismay at his hurry he lost interest in me and wished me "good luck finding whatever I was looking for" showing me my way back out. And somewhat frighteningly, a 20 year old who still lived at home with his parents in a tiny house in the small town next to mine, who advertised himself as having a "football player build" who, when I arrived, hulkingly appeared, standing silhouetted blocking the entire dimly lit doorway, I would honestly have characterized him more as "disgusting sumo wrestler build". He was easily over three hundred pounds, stale cooking air from the house wafting out from behind him and then past him, mixing unpleasantly with his sour body odor, immediately assaulting my nostrils while his looming shadow physically encroached on my personal space. I was too polite and also too stupid to turn and leave as I absolutely should have, even though my subconscious voice screamed at me to run; run, run back the way I came and not ever enter that house.

Hustled inside and seated on adjoining sofas in his parents' living room he blatantly tried to seduce me with Long Island Iced Teas (which as we all know have not a drop of tea in them) and when I wouldn't drink them he became visibly agitated that his plan wasn't working as it doubtlessly had on other hapless victims in the past. As he excused himself to make me another drink, I asked where the bathroom was, but headed directly for the front door making my hasty escape before he knew I was gone. I should have been more cautious after my close call, but I wasn't. Instead I was euphoric that I had outwitted him and vowed to learn from my experience at the next opportunity, and couldn't wait for that next opportunity to happen to test my skills.

********

It was in the realm of these chat rooms that I met Kevin. "Hey" he had said in a private message. "I read your profile. Someone I would definitely like to meet." We talked privately in the chat room for over an hour, and he admitted to be just graduating from City Catholic High School, and that he was going to start college in the fall. He was unsure about his sexuality, he said. He had grown up Catholic, as had I, in a strict family, as had I. He lusted after older boys when in school, but stayed far away lest he betray his secret. He was amazed that I had experimented in school where he dared not, and admitted to having been once with an older guy, though he wouldn't say when or where. "Hand job" was all he would offer, and he refused to say even who the recipient was- him or the other person.

Kevin was obviously intelligent—as was evidenced in our talks where he expressed deep thoughts, using rich sentences laced naturally and unpretentiously with complex vocabulary. He played the piano by ear and wrote his own beautiful compositions which he played for me over the phone. He had a husky voice and his tone was as masculine as could be; not a trace of swish or lisp. He liked the same kinds of music I did, and was clearly looking for an older guy he could trust to be his friend for the summer.

"I dunno—I just like older guys," he had confessed when I asked. "I relate to them better. Guys my age are so stupid. All they want to do is drink beer and get high and talk about fucking girls, which I doubt any of them actually do."

I was a lot older than him, I warned, like by fourteen years. When online I used my real name and photo, and the information in my profile was all true. I felt that if someone didn't like me the way I was, I didn't want to get into a situation where sooner or later I would have to admit that I had lied. No, I had spent my whole life lying, and it was long about time to get really honest, I figured. But Kevin didn't seem to care about our difference in age. "Can we meet?" he asked. Living in the city his family had only one car which his father took to work, so I suggested that we meet at an outdoor block party in the city that Saturday, a restaurant festival of some sort, where bands played and streets were blocked off to traffic. I chose a spot and a time, and suggested he could meet me there. I told him what I would be wearing and he told me the same. This was the safest route, I knew from experience. That way if he decided when he saw me that he didn't want to make himself known, he could just keep on walking and just disappear. Same for me, though I honestly couldn't imagine an 18-year old I wouldn't want to meet.

I was standing listening to a folk-rock trio when I felt a touch on my elbow. I turned and was face to face with a scruffy looking guy looking fully half my age. Six inches shorter than me, he looked a bit like a young Alec Baldwin, with pale white skin, pale brown eyes and curly black hair; "Black Irish" they called it. . He smiled in a sort of twisted grin. "Hey", he said. "If you're Brad, I'm Kevin," and extended a hand for me to shake. He was wearing a worn Motley Crue t-shirt and cutoff jeans, black Converse hi tops and no socks.

I beamed. "Good to meet you Kevin," I said. "I'm glad you found me."

"I'm glad I found you too," he said, smiling sort of impishly.

I bought him some food (after all, he was younger than me and he was my date, right?) and sat on the grass to talk. He was cute but not really handsome or well built, but his youth and intelligence alone made him attractive to me. We chatted for a long time, talking over in person the same things we had discussed on the telephone—our mutual Catholic upbringings, our attraction to other guys and our fear of being discovered. But mostly we shared our general fear of simply being gay. Neither one of us had asked for this curse, and neither of us wanted it. We confessed to each other that we hated being gay. I had clearly told him I was married with kids, but he didn't seem to care a bit.

In person he was obviously as brilliant as he had seemed. He had taken Advanced Placement classes throughout High School, got straight As, was his class president, had been on the debating team and was in the National Honor Society. I asked him where he was going to college in the fall and this seemed to be a point of sudden conflict. His expression changed to one of discontent; he stammered and said that he was undecided and that this was the cause of arguments in his house, but he wouldn't discuss it any further. "Let's talk about something else right now," he said. "Mind if I smoke?"

I did mind. And I hesitated and told him that I didn't like smoking, but that if needed to I wasn't going to stop him. He laughed aloud. "I don't smoke," he said. "I hate smoking. I just wanted to see what you would say. I like you, you're honest like me."

I was amused, and told him so. It was getting dark and I asked him how he was getting home. "I came on the subway and the bus," he said. "That's the way I'll get home too." I offered to drive him home instead, and he readily accepted. We walked together to my car parked on a side street, and I unlocked his door first so he could get in.

"Thanks," he said. "You're alright."

"You're alright too," I said. Curious, I asked, "So—do you feel safe letting me drive you home? I mean you hardly know me. What would your mom say?"

He snorted laughing out loud. "My mom...Of course I trust you. I am a good judge of character and you are alright. So- do you trust me being in your car? I might claim that you tried to rape me, or shit on the seats, or something..."

I mused that one. My mother had drummed into my head never to get in a car with a stranger, and I knew that at 18 I would have been more nervous than he seemed to be. But then, at his age I would not have dared meet a man thirteen years older than me in the city either. "Fair enough I said. Let's go."

He chose the music on the radio, and it was definitely noisier than music I would have chosen, and as he sat beside me he played air guitar making quiet but funny distorted guitar sounds with his mouth. He directed me through the hills of the city, and into a residential neighborhood lined with row homes. "You can just drop me here at the Dunkin' Donuts" he said. "You know, just in case my parents are home. You understand, right?"

Of course I understood. As I stopped the car he grabbed my hand in his little paw, gave it a squeeze and hopped out. "See you again?" he asked hopefully.

"Sure," I replied and watched him turn to walk away as I drove off.

************

I was delighted to have found this little ragged, rough edged friend with whom I seemingly shared so much in common, including most clearly our level of emotional development. The next day after work, as soon as I signed on to AOL he sent me an instant message, and asked me what I was doing. "Nothing" I replied.

"Good" he typed back. "Come and get me."

I was surprised. "Get you and do what?" I asked.

"Get me and we can hang out together at your place," he replied.

I felt an involuntary erotic stirring inside. I wanted this to remain an innocent friendship, at least for a little while, but I was afraid at what might happen if we were alone together for any length of time.

"At my apartment? Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure," he answered. "We can watch movies or TV. You can pick me up at the same place you dropped me yesterday."

Hardly thinking I agreed immediately. "I can be there in twenty minutes" I said.

"Cool, I'll be waiting." He replied and I signed off.

Though I had had nothing to drink, I felt mildly intoxicated and my heart beat faster as I searched for my keys. This fellow was just a year or two older than Nick, Gabriel and Westy yet he seemed so self- confident and assured. I pulled up to the Dunkin' Donuts shop and he walked out of the shadows and got right in the car beside me.

"Hey" said Kevin, bumping my shoulder with the back of his hand. "Thanks for coming to get me."

"No problem," I offered. "You hungry?"

"No", he replied. "I ate already. I just want to spend some time with you."

We took the highway out of the city and I lay my hand between us on the seat. I saw him glance down a couple of times. Just a minute passed and he put his hand on top of mine. My heart jumped. Then he lifted my hand and placed it on his thigh. My blood pressure rose predictably. We rode the rest of the way in silence, but he had sent the signal that he would accept physical contact, and I knew already that I was going to be hard pressed to resist.

We got to my house and I switched the TV on and plopped next to him on the couch. We watched a few minutes of whatever was on, and he turned to me with a devilish smile on his lips. "Hey, wanna see what I brought?" he offered, and reaching into his shirt pocket he pulled out a 3.5" computer diskette (remember, this was around 1995. Much technology we take for granted now hadn't been invented yet, then)

"What's that?" I asked, fully aware it was a diskette in his hand.

"Come see," he said. "Where's your computer?" I pointed to my bedroom which doubled as an office with my desk in the corner. He jumped lightly up and led the way. I followed behind, knowing for sure that whatever was going to happen next would be exciting. Kevin popped the diskette into the drive, and a moment later there was a photo of a hot looking blond guy on the screen, wearing a white undershirt and reaching lewdly into his half-zipped pants. "It's a slide show. Watch him undress." And we did. As each photo faded into the next, together we watched him remove his shirt, his trousers, his boxers and then his jock strap, revealing a thick hard cock with a beautiful dark blond bush at its base. This might seem hard to believe now, but I still had not seen almost any gay porn at this point. I didn't subscribe to pay sites, and Internet delivery of films and high quality photos was still some years in the future. We lived in a slow-moving, still-photo, low-quality, dial-up world back then.

"This is so hot," I said breathlessly, absently gripping my own cock through my pants as I watched the blond stroke his cock frame after frame until after a few close-ups, his cum-shot erupted on my screen, sending bubbling sperm flying out of his cock and all over his belly as he lay back in gape-mouthed rapture.

At that moment Kevin pulled at my sleeve. "I want to do that now too, come on," pulling my arm and sitting down on the edge of my bed.

I wanted to do that too. But I stopped and asked him if he was sure. "So fast, Kevin? Are you ready for this?"

"Oh yes," he said gripping his cock through his shorts. "Please, I want to do it now."

If I had any principles, they packed up and exited my mind right about then. Kevin lay back on the bed and kicked off his black sneakers. I laid beside him and put my hand in the middle of his chest. His eyes were closed and he was trembling a little. I could see his cock sticking straight up making a tent inside his summer shorts. Feeling it through the cloth I was surprised to find it so hard- almost like a rock, so firm I feared it would burst. Wiggling and struggling he writhed to get his pants down, and in just an instant he was wearing only light blue boxer shorts. The fly gaped open and his cock poked out, red and so stiff and looking very angry. There was a big wet spot on his boxers and a big clear drop of precum on his cockhead, one which was surprisingly rather sharply pointed like an arrow. "Fuck" he cursed happily in lewd ecstasy and began tearing at my belt and trousers, almost desperate in his lust. I helped him undress me, and as soon as I was exposed, he dived on me, sucking my cock all the way to the base. "Fuck" he said again in a muffled way, his mouth full of my cock. I was amazed at his audacity.

I swung around so we were head to feet in a 69 position, and I examined his cock close up for the very first time. It was not so big, and he was definitely not fully grown up yet, as he still showed traces of baby fat around his middle and on his legs. His pubic region was the only place with any hair, as the rest of his body was smooth and pink. It was clear this was a boy who didn't get much time in the sun. Pulling his cock forward to examine its length I was amused to see that he had a little dark tan spot on his cock head, (it's the freckle on my schmeckle, he laughingly called it) and that precum beaded up from the slit at the end nearly as quickly as I could wipe it away.

He was going crazy sucking my cock, making slurping sounds and saying "fuck" over and over. I spit on his dick to make it more slippery, though with the amount of sticky liquid flowing out of it like a spigot that was hardly necessary. I rubbed him and if such a thing was possible, his dick got even harder and redder and even more pointy and angry looking. His balls were drawn up tight, and his scrotum was pinkish red and nearly hairless. I licked between his balls and his thighs eliciting moans of pleasure from him. "fuck fuck...FUUUUUUCK" he groaned, and as my fist slid up and down his shiny red pole he began to come, spurting first clear, then thick blots of cloudy white cum, followed by dots of the purest white cum suspended in droplets of totally clear liquid. The dots of perfectly white cum stood out from the rest. I distinctly remember being very young and having this happen to me, I always imagined it was because my testicles were still freshly minted and were producing Hi-Test semen from a brand new, recently opened sex-factory, my special and secret boy-equipment inside still being newly broken in. He made so much stuff that it was ridiculous, and it flowed all over my wrists and hands and fell on the clean sheets below as he lay on his side. "fuck, fuck, fuck," he panted softly and started to lose his rhythm as he rubbed me.

"Please don't stop!" I begged. "I am so close to cumming!" and so he began to rub harder, even too roughly so I had to put my hand over top of his to slow him down. "Not so hard, tiger," I whispered. "Do it just like you were before." And as he slowed down, the sight of his smooth hairless body, his wet red cock in my face, his thick semen all over my arms, his tummy and the bed caused my own orgasm to begin to swell. I felt it getting close to erupt and as it came closer, I leaned forward and sucked his wet dick into my mouth, and it surprised me suddenly with its bitter taste, almost tasting like smoky burnt rubber. I didn't expect that, as no other cum I had ever tasted was like his.

Now it was my turn, and I announced "I'm coming! Harder, harder!" Kevin obliged and tipping his head up so that my blast wouldn't go in his face, I started coming too, shooting my thick cream all over his upturned bare throat.

We lay back and rested, and as he finally pulled his hand off my cock it left a lewd string of gluey semen connected between us. "That was so beautiful", said Kevin softly. "I wanted you to be the first to have me. Since I saw you I wanted to have you too."

The first? I was slightly surprised, and I told him so. "Well, first GUY," he clarified. "I've, you know, messed with girls." He explained with a smile and a wink. "But you are the first GUY I've been with." He had apparently not even messed around with his friends, no sleepover shenanigans, none of the playful and experimental stuff I had done so often as a boy. When I asked him why he had missed out on this rather common ritual of boyhood, he just snorted with disbelief and said "What? With THEM? No way."

"Let's hop in the shower." I suggested. We were far too much of a mess to clean up with tissues. I had never seen a boy make so much cum. He readily agreed, and as we stepped under the water he held me, nearly a head shorter than me, his face buried in my neck and chest. The stream felt so good, just warmer than our bodies, and he tipped his face up to meet mine. I kissed him right there, under the shower, our tongues lashing together, his mouth tasting unfamiliar to me but so soft and clean.

"Another first," he whispered.

"What's that?" I asked

"You're the first guy I've kissed now, too." I was honored, and undeniably turned on as well.

*************

It was near midnight when I drove him home. On the highway we passed under the evenly spaced streetlights that rhythmically lit the interior of the car from dim to bright to dim as we drove along. He took my hand and put it in his lap, and I was surprised to find that his cock was nakedly exposed. He had unzipped his trousers and extracted the little monster, and it was again leaking seemingly gallons of sticky goo. "It feels so awesome when you touch me there," sighed Kevin. "Sorry about all that stuff... I leak like Niagara Falls. It just happens." I told him that it was alright, that it just meant that he was excited. "I am excited... I am excited to be with you."

We exited the highway near his neighborhood, and now on surface streets I told him he should button up, but he begged me to pull beside the paint store into the dark shadows, where he instead proceeded to push his shorts down to his knees, and said to me "real quick. Just do it real quick. I'd like that, please." I thought his politeness mixed with his desperate appeal for sex was so cute, and I rubbed his cock with my right hand while he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. I could see him swallow, saw his jaw fall open and watched him breathe in through his mouth and out through his nose. I could see his eyes moving behind their closed lids in the light reflected from the stores behind us. Then wriggling and thrusting, he again said "Fuck," and as I covered his cock head with my rubbing hand I felt the violent torrent of jism begin to spray. I believed I had trapped it all there, but while he was dressing I found a generous blob of it on the front of the dashboard. He laughed. "Sorry dude. I can't help it. I'm like a fucking squirting machine." We cleaned up with spare napkins I had left in the glove box, using all of them in the process. He was adorable, another tough boy who was happy with me, one who betrayed nothing feminine or swishy in his manner. On the cusp of manhood, he was both boyishly cute and manly handsome at the very same time. I pulled out of our parking space and dropped him again at the donut shop and drove away; his clothes were disheveled and wet; I hoped he could get inside his house and up to his bedroom without being noticed.

*****************

We became fast friends. I felt at ease with him, as we got together a couple of times a week during that summer. I tried to talk with him about college again a couple of times, but each time he abruptly changed the subject. "Not going to college," he finally flatly declared. "And I don't want to talk about it." I decided I should drop the subject for good, or at least until he was ready to bring it up himself. We'd go on real dates on Friday or Saturday nights, to the movies or out to eat. He occasionally did stupid teenage things that I had to address. Like wearing a clearly offensive t-shirt depicting a giant cartoon mouse with a oversized and erect naked penis, beckoning to a cat who cowered nearby, while the mouse summoned, "here kitty kitty..." I made him turn it inside out before I would go out anywhere with him, and while he objected vociferously, he later told me that he respected me for telling him the right thing to do.

All of our dates ended with sex. He was a horny fellow, and usually wanted to have sex at least twice each time we were together. I loved to tease him in the movies as he sat beside me, rubbing his trapped cockhead in wide circles with my thumb till he could stand it no more, as soon as we got in the car he would unzip and expose, howling with mock horror, "look what you did!" as I surveyed the huge wet spot from all the clear sticky juice that had appeared on the outside of his pants, four inches or more in diameter, soaked all the way through from the inside. Then I'd jerk his nakedly exposed cock a few times and within seconds he would be coming, right there in my hand, right there in the parking lot. When we got back to my apartment he would be ready to go once more, us sucking each other another to climax a round or two. He also liked to hold me close face to face and grip our cocks together in both our hands. As he came he would kiss me and breathe into my mouth, "Ohhh, Brad, I just want to be your big boy...please let me be your kid" And him saying that frankly drove me wild. He was comfortable with our age difference and it seemingly even turned him on. He didn't ever seem to notice that I had both a baby seat and a child's booster seat in the back of my car for my two small sons; he never asked any questions.

One night as we lay together I asked him why he liked me so much, and why he was not looking for a boyfriend his own age. "Easy" he replied without a moment's thought. "There are a couple of good reasons. First, you are cool and not stupid and immature." I smiled inside— I felt that none of these things were true. My wife had always told me to act like a grown-up, and I always resented that. "Secondly, I am not sure I can deal with all of this, you know, being gay or whatever, and being with you means I can try it out without having any of my school friends know." I had never thought of this, but it was in a sense quite the same thing I was doing in my relationship with him. "And third—I just prefer older guys. You have hair on your chest and legs muscles and on your shoulders and no pimples on your face." This made me laugh out loud. The thought of a younger guy preferring an older one seemed unusual to me, but I was finding out here that it was not all that uncommon. It seemed for every `yin' there was a matching `yang', and both of us had found ours.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned my family in a while, but I thought of them all the time. Mostly I thought about my two small boys. Brandon was six and little Frankie was nearly two. I drove them to daycare every morning, stopping outside my old house where they still lived with their mother: my wife, and we chatted on the way to school. I told them that I still loved them, but that I had to live someplace else for now. Frankie was too little to know, but Brandon cried sometimes. "Why, Daddy? Why?" I didn't have words to explain it to him, and so I promised I would come for dinner on Sunday. It broke my heart to be away from them. Since they had been babies, nights when they would wake up crying they would usually call for me, to the chagrin of my wife. I had always been the more sensitive one, the one who more naturally wiped noses and tears, fixed bee stings and scrapes, along with broken bikes and wagons. My wife knew she lacked motherly compassion and sensitivity, based on her own cold, puritan upbringing. She had never had it herself, had never learned it, and therefore could not share it now that it was time.

But now, she questioned me as to what I was doing with my free time, and I was decidedly vague. It was none of her business what I was doing, I had concluded. As long as I paid all the bills and took care of the kids she didn't need to know anything about my self-discovery, as I knew it could all be used against me if we got to the point of child custody discussions. I wished I could continue my relationship with my children but discontinue mine with her. I felt no malice towards her, I was just too busy now doing what I rightly should have done ten years or more prior, figuring out myself before I got mixed up unfairly with another person's life.

It was late August, and Kevin had been away on vacation for two weeks. As soon as he returned he called me up. "Brad! I want to see you!" and I wanted to see him. I liked the sex, but I also liked our long, usually deep conversations in bed that followed the sex. We talked about our upbringing, what our families were like, our shared love of music, and how we feared losing everything if others knew we were gay. Over vacation he had acquired a deep, painfully red sunburn on his cheeks and his arms, but oddly not on his legs, and his nose was starting to peel badly. "I can't take the sun," he said, poking at his sore nose. "Damn Irish Skin!" As we lay on the bed listening to music that evening, staring at the ceiling, out of the blue he said, "Shit, Brad, I just don't want to grow up to be the guy who lives in the house on the street where the kids walk by and point and say `that's the house that the gay guy lives in. What a freak'. You know what I mean?" I did know what he meant, of course, and it was the same core fear I had as well. I wanted to be liked where I lived. Clearly, being gay and being liked by normal people were mutually exclusive in my mind. My feelings about being gay alternated wildly between wanting to love myself and still feeling ashamed and angry about who I was. I wanted being gay to be OK—but in my heart I didn't believe it ever could be.

That next Friday afternoon he invited me to visit him at his house, a first. His brother had gone back to law school for the fall term, and both of his parents were away. I knocked on the antique oak door of his late-19th century row house, and waited for him to answer. He opened the huge door and smiled, wearing a T- shirt, gym shorts and no shoes or socks. "Come in and hear a song I wrote" he said. I stood behind him as he sat on the piano bench and played a beautifully melodic song. He had a real talent for playing, and his ability to compose music was very impressive to me. I stood behind him as he played the baby grand piano that dominated the living room and I rubbed his shoulders, feeling the smaller muscles of his arms move as he played the long ivory keyboard. When the song was over, he turned and smiled at me, and I kissed him on the lips, sucking his warm tongue. "Come up to my bedroom," he offered when the kiss ended. We ascended the wide dark oak staircase with its oriental runner, passed carved wooden railings and ornate woodwork that continued halfway up the walls. At the top of the steps I followed him into his bedroom at the end of the hall, and it was a little like going back in time for me. Rock posters adorned the walls, stacks of record albums, cassettes and CDs were piled on the floor, and at least two weeks' worth of dirty laundry had piled up covering every inch of the carpet. He had a well worn stuffed teddy bear on his bed. "That's Max." he laughed, tossing him aside, sitting down and patting the bed for me to join him there. I did, and in each others' arms again we stripped off our clothes, and made love together in the afternoon sun coming through the ornate arched window. As always, I was amazed at the river of precum that he made, practically dripping off his slick cock as I rubbed it "That means I'm excited to see you," he told me, kissing me deeply again. He deep throated my dick, allowing it to go all the way back in his throat so I could feel its head lodge deep in his gullet and then pop back out. "I learned to do that pretty good, didn't I?" He smiled as he pulled off. Then diving deeply again and again, I felt the pressure start to build, and I grabbed his hair and covered his ears as his head bobbed up and down, nearly coming off my dick completely with each upstroke. Fucking a girl had NEVER felt this good. The tickle built, the pressure rose, the itchy numbness grew, and suddenly shouting a warning, I was cumming, and yet he never took his mouth away. His cheeks filled with my cum as I shot squirt after squirt of my white honey into his waiting mouth. He knew just how to do it too, not sucking too hard as my sensitivity grew, and when he finally pulled off my dick was nearly dry it was so clean. "That was fucking awesome," he said, sitting up and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Your stuff tastes great, I think of how it tastes when I am jerking off alone on nights without you."

He lay back on the bed. I was deeply appreciative of his affection and I told him so. "What do you want me to do for you, Kevin?" He was quiet for a minute, laying on his back with his eyes closed, playing with his stiff red cock a bit with his left hand while his right hand was tucked behind his head. "I want you to try to fuck me. But please go slow, OK?"

And I was suddenly hesitant. "I don't know, Kevin... I've... I've never done that before. I sort of don't think it's something I want to do." He opened his eyes and surveyed my face. "OK. We won't then. I have never thought it was something I wanted to do until I was with you. Maybe you can think about it and we can do it next time?" I promised him I would consider it, and that if I would try it with anyone it would surely be him, and it would be my first time too.

"Please lay on top of me," he asked. I did, and he held me tightly and whispered in my ear, "I like being your big boy, Brad. I just want to always be yours forever." I kissed his mouth, wondering where guys like him were when I was in school, tough and straight looking and acting. I realized they were probably all around, just hiding out like I was too. I nibbled his chin, and then sliding my lips down I kissed his bare pink chest, his tummy, and then sucked his hard red arrow into my mouth, tasting his familiar clear stickiness that dripped from the slit at the top as usual. I kneeled between his spread legs, and pumping his cock up and down in my fist, he groaned and lifted his legs up and put them on me. "Stick your finger in me" he asked. "Please." His pink hole was open about half the diameter of my pinky, but spitting on my index finger I probed the puckered opening. I had never touched another guy here before, even though this seemed to be something that "everybody" did, if I believed what I read. Gasping small intakes of breath, I pushed a little, then a little more, then a little more, and eventually found my finger lodged all the way inside of him. His muscles grabbed me like a vice, and I couldn't have even imagined my cock going in there; he would have pinched it off for sure. But he relaxed a bit and his grip loosened, and as I wiggled my finger he thrashed his had back and forth, with both palms down on the bed he thrusted and bucked like a wild horse. It was all I could do to keep a rhythm going on his shiny wet dick, still oozing drop after drop of clear jizz, one drip after the other. I saw his pink balls pull up tight, his ass lifted up off the bed, and thrust in the air with a loud groan he said "oh, Daddy yesssssss, fuck me... " and he began shooting, the first two squirts landing on his shoulders, the third and fourth on his chest. The final squirts went about four inches , landing above his belly button on his slightly plump stomach, and then he realized and was still, beads of sweat having broken out on his cheeks, his chest and his forehead. He lay still, and opening his eyes he said "That was FUCKING AWESOME. Thanks Brad"

Daddy? That little word had thrown me for a loop, a little. It was kind of hot, but kind of kinky, and a little unsettling. I tried to dismiss any thoughts about what might be going on in his fantasies, considering that most people would be greatly disturbed by what was going on in mine. We cleaned up, and he asked if we could go to a movie, this time near his house. We could walk there, he said. It occurred to me that he must be feeling more comfortable with me, as until now he always avoided being anywhere near his home with me, for fear we'd run into anyone he knew.

We got cleaned up in the bathroom, and he checked carefully to make sure that there were no traces of our escapades left behind in the house. "Make sure you have everything," he advised. "My parents will probably be home when we are done," implying that I would need to leave without coming inside. Clearly, he wasn't going to cross this threshold yet, and I was certainly glad of that.

While waiting for him to get ready, I stood in his dining room and looked around. There was the usual family stuff, but stacked in very neat piles on the dining table. I mused that either his mother or father (or both) were neat freaks; people who had the knack of making even clutter look organized. There were food store coupons in individual piles secured by paper clips or rubber bands. There was a folded section of the city newspaper on the dining room table, one dated the prior Monday, and it featured an article about a church youth group that had gone to Haiti to build houses for the poor people there. I casually read it over, and looked at the accompanying photograph that depicted kids hard at work. One boy with a bandanna on his head drenched in sweat but wearing heavy working pants and boots was pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks. The caption read "David Donnelly, 15, of Holy Redeemer High School moves a load of building materials at the site." Utility bills were stacked in another pile with the top one having its total circled in red with the pen notation "why is this so high in May?" He was still not coming down the steps. "Cummon, Kevin," I shouted. "The movie starts in twenty minutes." I heard him rummaging on the floor above me, and as I sat down at the table to wait, he finally appeared at the bottom of the steps "I couldn't find two shoes that matched!" he grinned sheepishly.

"No wonder, with a room that messy." I said playfully and he pretended like he was going to punch me, but I grabbed his arm and hugged him instead.

"Let's go," he said. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a fresh T-shirt, with board shorts and black Converse hi-tops as always. As we walked towards the movie theater, I asked him about his recent family vacation. "Where did you go on vacation?" I asked.

"Someplace hot." He answered. "We were on the beach for a week. It was actually boring. That's how I got so sunburned." he said, pointing to his nose.

"How did you keep your legs from getting burned?" I asked "You are always wearing shorts, even when it isn't warm out."

He laughed. "I was, um- wearing a wetsuit a lot of the time. My brother and I like to surf."

"That must have been incredibly uncomfortable" I said. I had only worn a wetsuit once and it was like a whole body tourniquet. I remembered I wore it for the briefest time I could. I just could not wait to get out of the thing.

"Yeah," he said. "and when I wasn't wearing it I stayed under shade. I burn really easy and my Mom makes me stay covered all the time. She is a real pain in the ass. Hey- do you wanna get some popcorn?" I smiled. He was like having a boyfriend and a kid brother at the same time.

"Sure. Here's some money, you wait in line and I'll stay here," I said. He stood in line and looked back at me smiling every minute or so. Some other very young looking boys approached him and greeted him loudly "Hey yo! Dude!" one said. Kevin looked immediately nervous and talked standing very close to the boys while he waited for the line to move, shifting his weight from foot to foot, furtively glancing at me every few seconds. I realized that he was nervous being with me here, and so I wandered further away and leaned with my back on a column so I couldn't be seen. From a distance I marveled at how red his neck and arms were, and wondered why on earth his mother, if she was so fastidious about his skin would have allowed that while making him keep his legs covered. And suddenly it dawned on me...

"Bye David! See you later!" said the boys as they walked away. And my breath caught in my throat.

I reappeared from behind the column as he walked towards me with the popcorn."Hey," he said. "Let's go so we won't miss anything." I wasn't smiling anymore, and I am sure he noticed, though he said nothing.

"David?" I said as we walked along.

He hung his head. "It's nothing, a nickname some guys call me. My middle name. I don't like it. I prefer Kevin."

"Is that right?" I asked. "So how was building houses in Haiti?"

He was silent as a stone and deliberately looked away from me as we walked down the aisle. We sat near the back of the theater, there were many open seats around us. "Why did you lie to me?" I asked.

He looked like he might cry. "Because if I told you the truth you would never have been my friend," he said, his voice had lost all of its usual bravado and was thin and almost shaking. "I know because I tried to make friends with guys online and when I told them the truth they dumped me immediately." The truth he was talking about was not, of course, his real name, but instead his real age.

It all made sense now. He would never talk about college because he didn't have to think about going there for another couple of years. He looked younger than 18 because he clearly was. His legs were not burned because he had been wearing long pants while working; he had not spent any time at all on the beach surfing. I was angry and confused. Mostly I was angry at myself. One does not go asking a new friend for a driver's license or other proof of ID. But my wife always told me I was gullible and I admit that I often was.

"Fifteen, Kevin?" I said, unable to use his correct name. I had known him as "Kevin" all summer, and I couldn't just start calling him by a different name now, even if it was his real one.

"I'll be sixteen in three weeks," he said quietly. He sounded like he was about to cry, and I was glad. Did he realize the trouble I could be in? Now the baby fat, his smaller-sized frame, the smooth skin, the profane taste in t-shirts, it all made sense. I sat there watching the screen but not seeing the movie at all. The sound droned in my ears but all I heard were my own thoughts, screaming at me. What should I do? I was angry, but not entirely at him. I was angry at myself. I was angry at the way of the world in general. I questioned myself brutally as well. Had I known he was 15 would I have walked the other way at the first meeting? I like to think I would have. But there was the nagging reminder of my affair with Nick, and I well knew his actual age. And where Nick was boyishly passive and quiet, answering questions when asked and speaking when spoken to, visiting when invited, Kevin was brash and confident and clearly knew just what he wanted. Kevin clearly wanted to be in a relationship with someone older, as hard is that would be for most people anywhere to ever understand. Cursing myself again, I reminded myself that it was not just Kevin who I had been attracted to. There had been Nick, Wes, and then Gabriel... all in the course of a year or so. No, this was more than just an accidental one-time happening for me. I was clearly fatally interested in them, and them in me. It wasn't his fault.

My brain was still in turmoil when I felt his hand slip into mine. "Please don't be angry with me. I always want to be your friend. Please don't give me up now." My heart wanted to melt, but I was feeling the most confusing mix of emotions at one time that I had ever felt—compassion, anger, disappointment, love. I gripped his hand back. This event was no isolated accident. I knew now that I was going to be perpetually fatally inclined to get into situations like this, as it had clearly happened again and again, and in short succession. My attempts at taking roads that would have led to relationships with men my age had never gone anywhere, losing appeal to me as soon they began. But clearly I could not continue this relationship with him, and I knew it.

He snuggled close to me in the seat and reached around me to hold me. I held him back and silently played with his hair. I was still attracted to him, in spite of our realities, and I honestly did not know what I would do next. I resolved to spend the next couple of days alone, thinking about it. I certainly could not confide any of this in my therapist, he would never believe my story and he would surely need to report me to the authorities as well.

The movie ended without a single thread of it entering my consciousness. The lights in the theater came up and he dropped my hand like it was a hot poker. He brushed his hair back from his face and I could see that his eyes were red, and it looked like he had been crying though I hadn't heard him crying. I was moved, but I knew that I needed to get away from him so that I could be alone to think. I imagined the all-too-sane words of admonishment that anyone in my therapy group would have said with alarm. "What's to think about? Don't just walk, you must run away! Your very freedom and self preservation is at stake here! Don't even think about him, protect yourself. Do you realize the penalty for what you are doing?"

We walked side by side outside the theater, still silent and headed in the direction of his house. When we were about fifty yards from the main street and in the dark, he reached for my hand again and gave it a squeeze. "Please..." he said. I turned and hugged him. "We can't do this anymore Kevin..." I said. Then suddenly he stiffened "Oh shit... there's my dad..." And he suddenly and violently pulled away from our embrace. I felt my heart jump, and I turned and saw a man looking from the window of a parked police cruiser just across the street.