Power Point

Power Point

Power Point
By John Yager

This is a story about two boys in love who learn a lesson or two about the politics of sex. If you shouldn't be reading it, don't. You know the rules. If you didn't like stories about boys in love you wouldn't be looking here anyway, right?

Andrew, thank you again for so much help, for good advice, for proofing and editing and, most of all, for making me look so much better than I am.

This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without specific written permission from the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the terms of their submission agreement but it may not be copied or archived on any other site without the written permission of the author.

jvoyager@hotmail.com

If you go out north of town about three miles and then turn off to the left down a little dirt road for another half mile, you come to the old Dade Quarry. It isn't much now, but my dad said when he was a boy there were a couple of hundred men working there.

These days the Dade Quarry is abandoned except for a herd of goats. They climb around on the rocks and sleep in the little tunnels which go back into the sides of the pit. We always call them wild goats, but really, they're just regular goats which somebody left there. My friend Dale figures somebody let a pair loose, or maybe the goats broke loose or something. They must have bred and now there is this small herd. Every once in a while somebody goes out there and shoots a few. It seems cruel but maybe it keeps the numbers down. At least the herd never seems to get too big and there is enough vegetation for them to forage on. It is sort of interesting to see how domestic goats revert to wild beasts when left alone like that. In a couple of generations they are as adept at getting along on their own as really wild goats which had never been domesticated would be. Maybe some animals wouldn't be as good at getting along on their own as goats are.

Dale loves photography. His folks like to tell how he found an old camera when he was about four and walked around for weeks clicking on everything he saw with no film in the thing. His dad started letting Dale take a picture of two when he had a camera out and was surprised how well Dale's shots turned out. I think he just has a natural eye for it. His pictures are amazing. So anyway, when he was about eight he got some cheap camera for a present and just took off. Now he has so much equipment his room looks like a camera shop. He and his dad built a dark room in their basement. About a year ago he got into digital and now most of his stuff is done on the computer. I won't even try to tell you what kind of equipment he has. I just know it's impressive. He's got some lenses that look like artillery pieces.

So Dale loves to take pictures of the quarry and the goats. He put together a whole show of those shots and it's amazing.

Sometimes Dale and I just ride our bikes to the quarry and hang out. Other times we go out because he has some specific photographic project in mind. He is so particular. If he wants shadows of a certain type he wants to be out there at a very specific time. But no matter what, you can bet he always has at least one camera in his backpack.

Dale is my best friend. We've been going out to the Dade Quarry since we were about twelve. It seemed like a long way then, a real adventure. Now it's just a cool place to go, to get away from town and a few older guys who sometimes give us trouble. They have a few favorite names for Dale and me.

The worst time with the bullies was when Dale and I were handing out notices for the first meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance at the school last fall. Okay, it was dumb for us to hand copies to some of the football team when they walked by. And it was even dumber to ask if they'd like to join. We got called a few names and pushed around a little.  The stack of notices we had with us got torn up and dumped in the trash.

"Hey," Dale had said from his rather lowly vantage point, "we're an official school organization."

"What fucking difference does that make?" one of the largest of the footballers had growled as he'd shoved us out of his way. I guess we were lucky not to have gotten our faces pushed in.

So Dale and I just find places to hang out where we aren't likely to run into those bastards. In a little over a year we'll both be old enough to get our driver's licenses and then maybe we'll find some other cool places to go, places which are further out, further from town and even more private. Of course that means we'll have to have a car and that may be a lot more difficult than just getting our license.

But for now the quarry is great. It's close enough that we can go out after school in the early spring and late fall. In the summer we can go out for a whole day at a time.

There are two deep pits which have flooded. They are great for swimming. The water is so fresh and clear that we figure that when the pits were dug the workmen must have hit natural springs. As long as the pits were being quarried they must have pumped the water out. But once the quarry shut down the water just accumulated until it overflowed through a little depression and out into Johnson Creek.

At Dade they quarried limestone. It was pure white and very hard, but still limestone, not marble. I guess about every bank within a hundred miles was built of Dade limestone, at least until the late 1950s when the quarry shut down. In addition to banks there are a lot of churches and even some big houses built out of the stone.

We know the place so well that we can ride our bikes around the rim of the pit to the far side and then down a sort of ramp to the floor. There are some huge stones around the back edge of the pit with space behind them and the pit wall big enough to ride a bike through. Then in the wall of the pit there are dozens of tunnels. Some go back thirty or forty feet but a few go back a couple of hundred feet before just ending at a solid wall of uncut stone.

The place is sort of weird. It's like one day all these guys were working there and then the next they didn't show up. My dad said the Dades went broke and the place just shut down. It wasn't big enough for all the new mechanized equipment being used in newer and bigger quarries up near Stoneville. Without that kind of equipment it became too expensive to compete with stone brought in from up north. But no matter what they say, Dade stone is whiter and harder. Once you know it you can spot it in a building in the blink of an eye.

Dade Stone is so white it sort of shines in the sunlight. Even buildings built a hundred years ago still have that kind of special sparkle. The quarry itself is like a white wasteland. On bright days it's blinding.

Sometimes when Dale and I are at the quarry a bunch of the older guys show up and swim in the larger of the two flooded pits. We just leave them alone and they probably never know we're there. We always put our bikes back in one of the tunnels which no one else is ever  likely  to find. It runs back into the wall of the pit like all the others, but just in front of the opening is a huge block of stone which completely hides the entrance.

When a bunch of guys shows up, we just hide out among some of the big stones along the back of the pit. From there we can watch them if we want but they can't see us. I guess they might see is if they were looking, but they never are.

Last Thursday afternoon Dale and I were out at the quarry. We'd biked out in the morning and brought some sandwiches and cokes. We'd hidden our bikes and climbed up over the back and then down to the second and smaller flooded pit where we liked to swim. Nobody else ever came there. Nobody else seemed even to know it was there.

Dale wandered around taking photos of the white stone of the quarry and the goats on the stones. There isn't much else to photograph there, after all, and you'd think he'd have gotten tired of the same old subjects again and again. Not so. He just keeps taking photos; white stone and goats. It's amazing how many variations he has captured.

We'd spread our towels on a large flat slab of stone just at the edge of the water and gotten out of our clothes. We always swim naked - always have since we first started going to the quarry.
We played around in the cool, clear water for a while, swimming, grabbing at each other, just a couple of young, frisky animals. Then we stretched out on our towels and ate lunch. It was a beautiful day, one of the first really warm days we'd had, and we just stayed bare assed, eating, then just lying there enjoying the sun.

It was peaceful and quiet and it wasn't long before Dale reached for me and I reached for him. He stroked my hand with his and in no time we were rolling together in a close, warm embrace. One moment he was on top of me and the next I was on top of him. Dale's lips found mine; we kissed deeply, our tongues exploring each other's mouth as our bodies moved together. It wasn't as if it was the first time we'd done it. We were best friends, after all. I knew what Dale liked and he knew what I liked, which was more or less the same thing. In no time at all my body went rigid and my cock erupted in the hot, damp space between us. Seconds later Dale came, too. We lay there in a daze for a while and then got back in the water for another swim, mostly to clean ourselves off. Once back out of the water, we stretched out again on our towels. I think we both drifted off to sleep.

About two o'clock I woke up. There was the sound of voices and I figured some of the bigger, older guys had come out to swim in the bigger pit back toward the front of the quarry.

"Dale, you asleep?" I asked, giving his shoulder a little shake.

"Humm?"

"Wake up, man. I think we've got company."

He rolled on to his side and looked at me and listened. The sound of male voices was drifting through the stones, close but not understandable. I pulled on my shorts and climbed up between the huge stones to a place from which I could look down on the larger flooded pit. Six or eight guys were swimming and four others were lying on the stone edge of the pit. They were all naked and they were all big.

Dale scampered up beside me and looked down at the view. "Looks like half the fucking football team," he whispered.

"Yeah, that's Jack Tucker over there," I said, nodding toward a guy standing on the far side of the pit, about two hundred feet from us. Tucker was the star quarterback and would be a senior in the fall.

I looked down between us to see that Dale was still naked but he was holding his shorts. He had followed me without taking time to pull them on.

"Pull your shorts on, man," I whispered. If the older guys should see us, we didn't need to give them any excuse for thinking what they already suspected about Dale and me was true.

"Why," Dale whispered back.

"They see us naked they'll sure think we've been messing around."

"We have been messing around. Besides, they're all naked, Tommy," he whispered back.

"Well, it's different. They're all super straight jocks."

Dale grumbled but he pulled on his shorts anyway.

As we watched, the swimmers seemed to have started a sort of ad hoc game of Keep Away. Most of them were in a big circle, tossing a plastic beach ball back and forth over the center guy's head. There was a lot of shouting and at times the game seemed to get rough.

One of the guys who'd been lying on the edge of the pit stood up and dove into the pool to join the game. The guy who'd been talking with him got up and walked the other way, away from the pool and the game, and back into the huge stones along the back wall of the pit. At first I thought he was going toward the tunnel where our bikes were hidden, but then he angled off to his right and came almost straight toward Dale and me. Of course we were hidden high above him in the stones along the top of the pit and he never looked toward us.

As the first guy rounded an especially large stone I saw Jack Tucker coming toward us as well. A few seconds later Tucker joined the first guy, another senior named Bill Grant, in the space between the large stones and the back wall of the pit. They were not out of sight of the other guys but directly below us so we could look down on them from thirty or forty feet above.

As soon as Tucker joined Grant, they embraced. This wasn't some typical jock hug either. For one thing they were both naked and they were pressing their bodies together with real enthusiasm. Then I realized they weren't just hugging, they were kissing too.

"Holy shit," Dale whispered.

"Be quiet."

We both stayed silent and watched.

Tucker and Grant were really getting into it now. They were both great looking guys with muscular bodies and handsome faces. I knew every girl in school dreamed of just going out with either one of them.

So here we had two big time jocks making out behind stones a the back of Dade Quarry. After all the names they'd called US, it was not to be believed!

Suddenly I realized that the buzzing and clicking sounds in my ear were not being caused by insects but by Dale's camera as he shot image after image with one of his longer lenses.

"What you doing, Dale?" I exclaimed in a whisper. "Those guys see you taking pictures of them and they'll have your head."

"Be quiet, Tommy," he whispered back as the buzz and click continued.

Looking back down into the private, shadowy space below us, I saw that Tucker was now on his knees with Grant's cock deep in his throat. This was becoming more and more amazing. It was clear that it wasn't the first time Tucker had done this. What he was doing took experience and skill.

Eventually Tucker stood up and he and Grant again kissed. As they stood there with their mouths joined, Grant's hands roamed down over Tucker's back, down over his buttocks, where they began to massage and probe. Even from our distance we could hear their moans.

The two jocks broke away for a second and Grant leaned forward to say or whisper something into Tucker's ear. Immediately Tucker turned and put his hands out against the stone wall of the quarry, spread his legs and pressed his buttock out toward Grant.

Grant spat on is hand, worked the saliva into Tucker's crack and began to finger him. It was clear Tucker was enjoying it. He thrust back against Grant's invading fingers and wiggled his ass in obvious enjoyment.

Grant took a position behind Tucker and pressed the head of his drooling cock against Tucker's now lubricated pucker. Grant pressed in as Tucker gradually relaxed. Once all the way in, both guys began to fuck energetically.

It was amazing. I was fully aroused and knew Dale was as well. Below us in the deep space between the quarry wall and the sheltering block of stone, Tucker and Grant continued to rut. Their powerful bodies thrusting. Within moments both of them froze. They held very still and seemed to be locked in grip of powerful contractions. From where we were watching we couldn't see with certainty what was happening between them, but it was clear to me that they had both reached climax. Their hard football player bodies were fused together, every powerful muscle flexed, bulging.

After several minutes Tucker seemed to slump. He leaned forward and pressed his hands still more powerfully against the white stone wall. Grant leaned against him, slowly stroking Tucker's shoulders and then moving to kiss his cheek. It was over and we'd witnessed it all!

Well, to be more precise, I had witnessed it, Dade had photographed it.

Dale had just gotten into Power Point. It was his newest toy and he was determined to become an expert at putting together the neatest productions possible. The Dade Quarry sequence was clearly his finest work to date. When he showed it to one of the teachers when school started the following fall, the teacher was so impressed that he insisted that Dale should enter it in a state-wide contest for high school students. Needless to say, it won. With that honor in hand, it was shown at a school assembly.

Dale put his images together in an amazing way. It was a regular slide show with a neat choice of music to back it up. When it was shown in the high school auditorium, projected on a big screen, it was incredible. The first shots were almost abstract, just studies in light and shade. He'd shot many of them for maximum contrast so what you saw were the brilliant whites of the huge stones played off against the absolute black of the shadows between them. When seeing the first few shots you probably wouldn't have recognized them as Dade Quarry. Then there were a few shots of the white stones with goats nibbling the sparse grass which grew in cracks and crevasses.
It was at that point that at least some of the audience began to recognize the location.

As the sequence continued the music picked up, gradually building to an increasingly strong rhythm.

The images then began to include shots of splashing water, details of the energetic game of Keep Away. Again, the shots were almost abstract. If you hadn't know the source of the images you would probably never guessed.

The shots of splashing water were followed by equally abstract shots of rounded, organic forms. The forms were beautiful in and of themselves but they were especially striking when played off against the stark, hard edges of the abandoned quarry. The rounded organic forms were, of course, isolated details of muscular arms, curving buttocks and the stark shadows playing over them.

The rhythm of Dale's sound track had speeded up again, this time pulsing with the urgency of passion. The images on the screen were changing in time with the rhythm of the music.
Now, on the screen, anatomical forms flickered and dissolved. The curving forms of legs and arms, the muscular mounds of male buttocks, driving, pulsing, changing as the tension built.

Then suddenly the movement on the screen froze and the music stopped. With the suddenness of orgasm, the auditorium was silent. Then the screen exploded with a flash of brilliant white.
The slide show was over and the music returned, slower now, sedate, as the first of several screens of credits appeared.

"Images and power point production by Dale Rogers with assistance from Tommy White," the first screen said in crisp black lettering against an image of the stark white stones.

Then, as the screen changed to an image of organic forms, the lettering appeared saying, "With special thanks for the assistance of Jack Tucker and Bill Grant, without whom this presentation could not have been produced."

The assembly wrapped up and Dale and I left the auditorium. Tucker and Grant were in the lobby waiting for us.

"You fucking queers," Tucker snarled. "We're goin' pound the two of you into dust."

"How the hell did you get those pictures," Grant said. He was mad but it was clear he was also scared.

"Don't worry, gentlemen," Dale smiled. "Nobody but the two of you and the two of us knows who was in those pictures. They probably didn't even realize they were human forms."

"But we know it was us," Tucker said, his voice almost a whisper, but still conveying his anger.

"Well," Dale smiled, "let's keep it that way."

"What do you mean?"

"We aren't going to tell anyone who our models were, so long as you agree to just back off."

"Back off?"

"Yeah, leave us alone, leave the rest of our friends alone."

"You two little queers think you can bully us?"

"Look, Tucker," Dale said, his voice still even and polite, "first off you'd better watch who you're calling queer."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And second, maybe it's time you and your football buddies join the Gay-Straight Alliance and help us achieve a little more acceptance around here."

"Like hell we will."

"Well, you are one of us."

"You little fucker..." Tucker almost screamed.

"Back off," Grant said. "I think they have us by the balls."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Dale said. "But it wouldn't take a lot of time to re-edit that slide show and include a lot of recognizable images."

"Oh shit," Tucker said. His voice had slipped from a growl to a whine.

"See you Monday night, gentlemen," Dale said as we turned to go. "We meet at seven-thirty in the Library."

Not only did Tucker and Grant show up, but the rest of the football team came too.

The Gay-Straight Alliance became one of the most popular and powerful student associations in the school that year. If you weren't a member, you were nobody.

The end.