TKD Traveling Team
Chapter 2
By Matt
**This story is substantially true, and based on events in my own life. All names and locations, as well as certain tell-tale details, have been changed to provide anonymity for the people involved.
This story involves consenting sex between underage persons of both sexes. If this type of material is illegal where you live, leave now. If this is not the type of material you're looking for and want to read, leave now.**
I woke with a start from a dream I didn't remember. James shifted beside me, his sleep obviously uneasy.
The alarm clock read 5:15...just fifteen minutes before I had planned on getting up any way. Cursing silently (nothing annoys me more than missing that last fifteen minutes of precious sleep), I gently rolled out of bed.
I ordinarily worked out in the mornings, but it being the day after a tournament I just did some light warm-ups and stretching. I was close to getting my full side split back. I had been able to do it several times during my training, but then had neglected stretching for a few months and lost it. This time, I vowed I would keep it.
With a light sweat coating my body, I went into the small bathroom and showered. As I stood under the hot spray, I considered what I should say to James. He was probably pretty confused...I had been at his age, when I had had feelings for other guys, and my parents were pretty easygoing about sex. James was from a Catholic family, and his dad had died a few years before to boot. How much worse it must be for him!
I finally decided that there really was no preparation for such a conversation.that I would just have to take it on the fly and hope I didn't fuck it up. With that thought I stepped out of the shower, quickly dried off, and dressed.
James was just beginning to stir. He had hit the snooze button a couple of times, whether out of real tiredness or a desire not to face me I wasn't sure. I shook him and told him the bathroom was free. He got up without actually making eye contact and padded softly over to the shower, moving with the unconscious grace that marks a well- trained martial artist.
I packed up my things in about five minutes then began making up the bed...admittedly an odd thing to do in a hotel, but my mother had drilled into my skull that one never, ever left a bed unmade after one got out of it. In the meantime, James had finished his shower and was getting dressed.
I snuck a peek as he was struggling into his shirt, and was surprised at how beautiful his body was to me. Slim, with only a slight flair out from the hips to the shoulders, he was just beginning to show the signs of definition that his many workouts had earned him. His abdominals, still mostly perfectly flat, were just beginning to round up into a definable washboard, and his pecs and shoulders were just beginning to broaden and fill out. He was desirable, not because of what was, but because I could see what would someday be.
I sat on the now-made bed and patted the bedspread next to me. James, moving slowly and with great reluctance, sat down beside me.
"So...what happened last night?"
James immediately looked at the floor and blushed, his nose doing a fair imitation of a radish and his ears turning almost purple. He was silent for a long moment. "I had a dream."
I lightly touched his arm; he started, but didn't move away. "James, I don't want to embarrass you, but I want to help you. And to help you, I have to know what's going on, and what you're thinking."
He looked up at me, his eyes brimming over with tears. "I think I'm gay."
I had thought he might say something like that. "James, you're pretty young to make that kind of conclusion. What makes you think you're gay?"
"I...I have dreams. And I think about...about guys."
I crooked another grin; the imp in me just couldn't resist. "Like me?"
He nodded. "And other guys. Even my little brothers."
Hmmm...THAT was interesting. But I dropped it. "And I suppose you look at guys in the showers?" He nodded.
"Maybe you've even fooled around with other guys? Jerked off together?" At this he shook his head.
I let the thick silence envelop us for a moment before I went on. "James, I hate to break it to you, but you're completely normal. I did all those things when I was your age."
James looked up at me with an expression of shocked disbelief. "No way!"
"I did. I even fooled around with some of the guys at school. All of those guys are totally straight now." I paused, trying to put on air of knowledge and authority. "Right now, James, you have huge changes going on in your body. There are hormones running around in your blood that make you constantly horny. I'll bet it doesn't take anything at all to give you a hard-on. You go to a Catholic school, right?"
He nodded again. "So you never get to get near the girls, right? See, I was in public school, I could fool around with girls, and I did, but even then I still fooled around with a few of my buddies. So you can't go by that kind of stuff, it happens to every guy, and almost all of them end up being straight. And even if you are gay, or bi, there's nothing wrong with that. It just means you're different, not bad or wrong."
I paused for a moment, exhausted by the effort of trying so hard to sound like I really knew what I was talking about. I later found that I really believed these things (if in a slightly more complicated way), but at that point it was all bullshit designed to make James feel better.
He looked up at me, returning my gaze for the first time in the conversation. His blush had faded a bit; now he just looked like he had a light and blotchy sunburn. "What about YOU?"
I didn't understand. "What ABOUT me?"
He stammered. "Are you- I mean- are- are you gay?"
I had expected this question, but it still felt a bit like a sledgehammer to the chest. "Well-" I coughed, clearing my throat unnecessarily. "Well, yes and no. I'm bisexual. That means that I like having sex with both guys and girls. But I've been going steady with Heather for about a year, so I haven't fooled around with any guys."
"And that's not...wrong?"
I took a deep breath. "Well, some people think it is...but I thought about it, and I wondered, why did I have the feelings I had? I didn't want them, because they frightened me, just like yours frighten you. They just seemed to come out of nowhere. And I thought, feeling this way, and doing these things doesn't hurt anybody or anything...it's just the way I feel, sort of like the way you feel like you like a sundae instead of just a scoop of vanilla. So I don't think it's wrong, as long as you are considerate to the people you're with, and love them." It occurred to me that my logic and rhetoric were growing more disjointed as I went on, but by the end James was nodding his head almost imperceptibly. Then he dropped the bomb on me.
"What if I think I love you?"
At those words, my mouth was suddenly dry as a desert. My tongue swelled up to five times its normal size; I felt the room spin. I couldn't speak for almost a minute, but thankfully James waited.
"James-" I actually rasped, my throat was so dry. I swallowed. "James, there's love and then there's LOVE. You don't think...you don't feel like you, you know, want to spend the rest of your life with me, buy a little beach house in Florida and walk down the beach holding hands when we're both forty. You don't, do you?"
James shook his head. "What you really want is sex, right?" He blushed yet again when I said it. "You want to fool around. Okay, sex I can handle. I'll tell you what-"
There was a loud knock. Master Kim's voice sounded through the door. "Matt? James? We're meeting down in the foyer in five minutes."
I somehow forced my heart down out of my throat. "Okay, Master Kim. We're almost packed up."
I waited a moment, then turned back to James. Where before he had been blushing, he was now as white as a sheet and swaying somewhat drunkenly. "James. James!" I slapped him lightly on the cheek, feeling the perfectly smooth texture of his skin. He shook his head and started. "I think that's for the best. You've had a pretty wild night, and an even stranger morning. This will give you some time to think about what you really want. C'mon, we have to pack up your stuff quick."
We quickly scoured the room, picking up everything. Under the bed I found James' boxer briefs from the night before. There was still a small wet spot on the front, surrounded by a halo of dried cum. It was then that I knew, two years older or no, going steady Heather or not, I wanted very badly to make love to this boy.
I folded up the briefs and handed them to James. He blushed furiously again (I was beginning to realize just how cute this kid really was), then stuffed them into an inside pocket of his gym bag.
We made it down to the lobby right on time, then piled into the van for the drive to the airport. James and I sat next to each other in the back seat.
Thanks to all the people who have responded about the story. Despite the worldly wise tone I'm using in writing it (the lens of experience looking back on the chaos of youth. there should really be a lot more "um" and "uh" in the dialogue), it was really a very confusing episode for me, and I feel like I'm sort of starting to figure out what it means now. Thanks and kudos to Nifty for providing an outlet for writers of alternative sexuality.