Flipping the Coin
CHAPTER 3
A BUDDING FRIENDSHIP
Throughout the fall, Orion, Roshan and I caught butterflies. As promised, I taught Roshan how to use a butterfly net and he became very adept at catching his own specimens. He was also fascinated by researching the butterflies—what flowers they liked, what their caterpillars were like, whether or not they migrated.
I was often at Roshan’s house after school. His mother was always gracious, providing a snack and milk when we arrived. I felt very comfortable there, unlike when we were at my messy house where I was afraid my father would show up.
One day, Roshan and his mother played the Fauré Sicilienne. His mother told me that it was originally written for harp and flute but had been adapted for piano and flute. It was absolutely beautiful! It was so expressive on the part of both instruments. I told him he should play it for a school assembly, and he said he would think about it. He was in the school orchestra, where he was the first chair flutist.
Another time, he played for me parts of a Mozart sonata for flute piano and cello, and told me that when he got good enough, he would play it with his mother and father. Of course, I told him I thought he was already good enough, but he just smiled and laughed a little.
As the weather grew colder, the butterflies disappeared and we spent more time indoors, although we sometimes rode our bicycles around the town. There were stores not far from us, and there was a park which we often went to where we fed the ducks bits of bread crust. They were so tame that they would come up and take the bread right out of our hands. There were pigeons and squirrels there who also wanted their share and sometimes tried to push the ducks out of the way, so we fed the pigeons and the squirrels on land and the ducks at the edge of the water. It was a bit of a juggling act to keep everyone happy because they were all quite quick.
On warm days, we sat together outside and read. I had become a fan of Tolkien and never tired of reading his books, even though I had read them all at least once. Roshan had not read them, so we started with The Hobbit and then continued through the trilogy. That got us sometimes playacting in the backyard, fantasizing about good against evil. We had to take turns being evil because we both wanted to be the bad guy.
One Friday, I was invited for dinner at Roshan’s house. Much of the food was unfamiliar to me as it was native to Iran, but it was delicious. This was the first time I had met Dr. Rajavi. At one point in the meal, I complimented him on his calligraphy, and he offered to make one for me. I was overjoyed. He asked me what I wanted it to say. I asked him for some examples of what his said. He said they were mostly religious texts so I asked him if he could do one about Allah. He said he would be very happy to.
After dinner, I thanked them both and Roshan and I went up to his room. Roshan explained that his father wasn’t a medical doctor but had three PHDs. He taught the Persian or Farzi language and literature and also the history of the Persian Empire at a nearby university. I guess he’s a very smart man, but in all the time I have known him he has never showed that off.
In Roshan’s room, we played video games until I had to leave.
Several days later, riding home on the bus, Roshan seemed a little quiet. When I asked him why, he said, “Because I want to ask you something and I don’t know how you’ll answer.”
“Well,” I suggested, “you’ll never know unless you ask.”
Finally, he asked, “Would you like to sleep over at my house some night?”
Oh my, I thought. Aloud, I answered, “I’ve never slept over at anybody’s house before. I don’t know if my parents would allow it. But I’ll ask.”
At supper that night, I asked if I could sleep over at Roshan’s house. My father said, “Of course not! We don’t do that!”
I guess I looked pretty sad, because Carl spoke up and said, “Dad, kids start sleeping over at other kids’ houses by the time they’re in third grade. Why won’t you let us?”
My father’s face grew very red. He never liked to be challenged, and Carl seldom did. My mother, who never spoke up in arguments like this, said quietly, “It’s a part of being a child. They should be able to do that.”
If possible, my father’s face grew redder. He slammed his hand down on the table, got up, and left the room shouting, “Oh, go ahead and spoil them! I don’t give a damn!” We heard the door to his den slam shut.
For perhaps a minute, there was silence at the table. Finally, I said quietly, “Thank you.” I knew it had taken courage for the two of them to speak up as they did. Nobody ever did that to my father.
The next day on the bus, I said to Roshan, “Last night, I asked at the supper table if I could stay overnight at your house. My father said, ‘of course not!’ But my brother and my mother actually challenged him for once. He got very angry but finally gave in.”
“That’s great,” said Roshan. “My parents suggested you come and stay over Saturday night unless you have to go to church on Sunday.”
I laughed. “I’ve never been inside a church in my life,” I said.
He said, “Neither have I!” and we both laughed.I asked him what I should bring with me. “Oh, bring Tolkien of course, and your toothbrush and toothpaste and stuff like that, and pajamas, and clean clothes for the morning.”
So, Friday night I happily packed. I was able to fit everything I needed into my backpack.
About 10 o’clock Saturday morning, after I had my usual boring breakfast of toast and orange juice, I rode my bike over to Roshan’s house, where everybody was still seated at the dining table eating breakfast.
“Am I too early?” I asked.
“No, we’re just finishing breakfast,” Roshan’s mother said. “Why don’t you sit down and have some pancakes and bacon?”
“You can see,” said Dr.Rajavi, “that we don’t follow the Muslim dietary restrictions.”
I nodded, sat down, had a second breakfast, and really enjoyed it.
After everybody had finished breakfast and cleared away the dishes, the Rajavis gave me a concert. First, Roshan and his mother played the Sicilienne again just as beautifully as they had before. Roshan told me that they were going to play it in a holiday assembly before Thanksgiving.
Mr. Rajavi tuned his cello, then the three of them played the Mozart sonata, which they told me was “K 13,” whatever that meant. It was in three movements all of them very nice. I think I liked the third, lively one best. When they finished, I applauded again.
Later when Roshan and I were alone, I said, “I guess I’m showing my ignorance, but what does ‘K 13’ mean?”
Roshan laughed and said, it means, “Koechel 13. Koechel was the man who catalogued all of Mozart’s works. This was number 13 in the catalog, which makes it a fairly early composition. I think it was originally for violin instead of flute, but I like the version we played.”
In Roshan’s room, I put down my backpack and he showed me where to put my clean clothes in his closet before we spent some time on the computer doing further research on butterflies.
At lunch, we again had delicious Persian dishes. I didn’t recognize much except the yogurt, which I loved. His parents told me the names of them all, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t remember them.
In the afternoon, since it was a fairly warm day, Roshan and I rode our bicycles to the park. There were kids playing basketball and I told Roshan that he should join in if he wanted to but that I was really no good at the game. He told me no, that he had plenty of chance to play it and he wanted to spend the time with me. We rode over to the pond again, where we fed the ducks and the pigeons and the squirrels with pita bread.
At bedtime, Roshan and I both put on our pajamas. We had seen each other naked in the locker room so this was not really anything new. We went into the bathroom and peed and brushed our teeth.
When I asked Roshan where I was going to sleep, Roshan pointed to his queen-sized bed and said, “There’s plenty of room for both of us. Will that bother you? If it does, I can sleep in my sleeping bag.”
At first, I was surprised. I hadn’t thought about where I would sleep until that minute. I thought for a moment and then decided that that’s probably what happened at sleepovers, so I said, “No, that’s fine.”
We both climbed into bed and lay back to back. I immediately sprang a boner and I wondered if he did to, but of course I didn’t ask. I desperately wanted to jerk off. I lay there trying to think about anything but sex. Finally, when I began to think about math, my cock went down. Well, I thought, I finally found a use for math. At last I was able to go to sleep.
In the morning when I awoke, I was again very hard. Roshan still seemed to be asleep, so I sneaked out of bed, went into the bathroom, and jerked off. I came quickly in the sink, dried off my cock, and washed down the sink.
When I went back into the bedroom, Roshan was lying on his back, smiling. He got out of bed, clearly sporting a large hard-on which was tenting his pajamas. He went into the bathroom. I heard the water run, and he came back also with a relaxed cock.
We both laughed. Finally, he asked, “Did you have a boner last night too?” Again laughing, I admitted that I did. Then I told him how I had gotten my hard-on down in the night, which made him laugh again. “Oh my,” he said, “what are we gonna do about that next time?” I told him I had no idea.
Breakfast was fruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. I was sure that if I ate with Roshan and his family often, I’d put on weight.
After breakfast Roshan and I read for a while talking about the Hobbits as we did. I was always sad when I got to the end of that series. There wasn’t anything I could think of that could top it. Oh, of course, there were other fantasy series, but none of them appealed to my imagination as much as the hobbit series did. Roshan enthusiastically agreed.
Late in the afternoon, I refilled my backpack, put it on, and bicycled home.
That night, I lay in bed thinking of Roshan. In my imagination we were both naked, cuddling, and kissing while we jerked off. I had the best wank of my life that night!
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we had an assembly and Roshan and his mother played the Sicilienne. It was beautiful, and I was disappointed that there wasn’t more applause. I told that to Roshan on the bus as we rode home, and he said something about Philistines, but that meant nothing to me.
Then my phone notified me that I had an email, which I opened. “Hey, faggot,” it read, “do you two get it on?”
Immediately, Roshan got a similar message. Of course, the email came from an address we didn’t recognize, but someone had clearly found our addresses.
I emailed back, “Fuck you!” and closed my phone. Roshan thought it wiser not to reply. A steady flow of message-notifications followed which we tried our best to ignore. We decided that we both needed to change our email addresses, so we did. Then I gave my new address to Roshan and he gave me his. We also changed our notification tones for our new email addresses. I changed to one which would only sound for an email from Roshan and he did the same for me.
That night I called Roshan and we talked for a long time. We talked some about the nasty emails, but we also just talked, as kids do, about anything and everything. When we finally hung up, I knew I was in love with him. I realized that, in the beginning, I had had a crush on him because of his looks, but that now my feelings had evolved into full-blown love. I knew he considered me a friend, but was our relationship any more than that for him? I fell asleep wondering.