On Saturday, I went to Billy’s house and rang the bell. He answered and I followed him up to his room. He told me his parents were out doing some shopping.
“How do you feel the day after a game?” I asked.
“Sore in spots, but not too bad. I did wonder if you could rub some cream on my shoulders and back.”
‘What an opportunity!’ I thought, taking the tube he handed me. The cream was an analgesic for aches and sore muscles. He removed his T-shirt and trousers and lay face down on his bed in only his boxers. I began working the cream into his shoulders. At the same time, I admired his back, where his muscles seemed to ripple beneath his skin. Slowly, I worked my way down his back, applying the cream liberally and massaging the muscles at the same time.
“Oh, God, that feels good,” he said.
I continued as long as I could, but eventually I got to his belt and had to stop. By that time, I was very hard and wanting release.
“Thanks,” he said, rolling over. I was worried he’d get some of the cream on his sheets, but he didn’t seem concerned.
“Now would you do my calves and thighs?”
I agreed and went to work, diligently putting on the cream and not only rubbing but squeezing the muscles.
“You’re good at this,” he remarked. “Will you do this after every game?”
I said I would do it as often as I could.
He opened his fly and pulled out his cock, which was pointing straight up. Lying beside him, I took gentle hold of it, licked it, and took it in my mouth.
“O-o-oh, yeah,” he sighed.
It didn’t take long before he shot in my mouth. I swallowed as I continued to hold him.
Finally, he said, “Thanks.” I let go and he sat up. “Now you,” he said.
He undid my belt and pulled down my shorts until my cock popped out. At first, he just fondled my ball sac. Then he took it in his mouth and sucked gently, rolling my balls around in his mouth with his tongue. I thought I was going to cum without him ever touching my cock, but I didn’t.
When he released my balls and moved to my cock, using his tongue and sliding up and down, I came almost immediately.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “You are one horny tiger!”
I giggled and pulled my shorts back up as I stood.
We swam after that but didn’t do any racing as Billy was still a bit sore. When I left, he thanked me for helping him. I said I was glad to, and headed home.
I returned to his house on Sunday afternoon when we got home from my grandparents’. Billy had gotten a hook-and-eye fastener, so he could lock the door and not worry about his parents walking in. We repeated our activities, which we called our ‘exercises’, before swimming once again.
The fall passed slowly at school and quickly outside of school. I wondered how that was possible, but I continued to enjoy going to football games with Tommy and his dad and visiting Billy on the weekends.
* * * * * * * *
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I went as usual to Billy’s home, hoping I could give him the cream treatment as usual. When he came to the door, I saw a girl standing behind him.
“Oh, um, Hunter, this is Victoria Darling.” Then he said, “I’m kinda busy this weekend. Sorry.” And he closed the door in my face.
I wandered home sadly, wondering if I’d been replaced. That night, Billy sent me an email.
“Sorry about today,” it read. “I think I’m in love. Victoria and I just got pinned, so that’s a commitment to each other, and now we’ll be an item at school. You’re a great kid, and I hope you find someone else soon. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Was he just blowing me off? I thought we had something going. I lay on my bed and cried myself to sleep.
In the morning, I wrote him an angry email.
“You betrayed me. You led me along as though you really liked me, but you were only using me. You’re a bastard!”
I sent it and immediately wondered if I should have.
Another email came quickly. “I’m sorry you misunderstood. I do like you, but I told you all along that I wasn’t queer. I thought you got that. We were using each other. If you believed something else, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t really my fault.”
True. He had said that to me, but I thought we were getting somewhere together. I guess I hadn’t really believed him. Or maybe it was that I didn’t want to believe him. Now I was right back to square one.
I was tempted to make a big poster reading ‘Billy Sucks Cock’ and put it in the school hallway, but fortunately for both of us I didn’t.
I didn’t go to the last football game of the season. Of course, Tommy wanted to know why, but I told him I just didn’t feel like it.
I got an email from Billy after that game. “Hunter, can we just be friends? I’m so sorry you misunderstood and I hurt your feelings, but I like you and I hope we can get together.”
I received a series of emails through the winter, all saying approximately the same thing. I didn’t answer any of them.
Meanwhile, I pulled back into my shell. My mom saw my old self returning and asked about it, but I wasn’t able to talk about it with her. At school, I was sure kids at the table wondered what was going on. They all tried to get me involved in their chatter, but I didn’t really respond. I was the same with Tommy.
One day he asked, “Hunter, have I done something to upset you? You’re just not the same.”
Sighing, I said, “No, Tommy. It’s not you, and I’m sorry I’ve been so morose.” That was a vocabulary word we’d recently learned. He smiled but then again looked concerned.
“Did something happen?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna talk about it.”
He accepted that but said that he was there to listen when I wanted to talk.
A few days later, we had our first snowstorm. I’d been dreading it as I did every year. I put on all the warm clothing I had as well as my new boots and went out to shovel the walk and the driveway. When I was back inside, I was both shivering from the cold and sweating from the exercise. My clothes were damp, so I had to change them and just barely made it to the bus, which was running despite the snow.
A week later, the temperature dropped to 12 Fahrenheit and the wind chill was below zero.
At the lunch table I asked the kids how they could stand it. They laughed and said it was just part of living in the North.
I told Mom that despite the fact I’d lived in the north all my life I was freezing. I asked if we could go to Florida, even for a few months, but of course she said no. I did adjust somewhat as I did each year, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in the North.
* * * * * * * *
As the year dragged on slowly, I kept looking for possible soul mates. Occasionally I saw a boy, usually a little older than me, and began fantasizing about him, but as I watched him flirting with the girls, I realized that he was probably straight. (Much later I learned that gay guys often flirted with boys and girls indiscriminately.)
I had a crush on Tommy, but I knew that was going nowhere fast. We were still friends, but we never did anything sexy, even though I routinely sprang a boner when I saw him in the locker room or the showers.
My problem was made worse by the fact that I couldn’t talk about it with anybody. Mom was definitely out, as was Billy. I didn’t think any of the lunch table kids were up for talking. That was where I was wrong.
One day, at the end of lunch, Molly said to me, “Hunter, I know something’s bothering you. I can tell just looking at you. Can we talk about it?”
“I’ll think on it,” I said. And I did think. It had never really occurred to me to talk about it with a girl. But then, maybe a girl would be easier, It would be embarrassing, but eventually I thought, ‘What the hell? What do I have to lose? Just my reputation and I don’t really have one.’
The next time I saw Molly, I agreed to talk. But where? She didn’t even leave me a choice. “My house, after school,” she said. And that was that.
Since we rode the same bus, I knew approximately where she lived, and I knew I could walk home if I needed to escape.
As soon as I sat with her on the bus, someone in the back sang, “Hunter’s got a girlfriend. Hunter’s got a girlfriend.” Soon half the bus was singing it.
“Don’t pay any attention to them. Some boys think if you have a friend who’s a girl, she must be a girlfriend. But you and I know otherwise.”
At Molly’s house, she introduced me to her mother before we went into the kitchen to make snacks. ‘Why am I always so hungry?’ I wondered. Sometimes it seemed that half an hour after supper, I was hungry again. And I was always hungry after PE, which followed lunch. It got so that I carried snacks to eat between classes, and I realized that a lot of the other boys were doing the same.
Molly and I took our snacks into a room which she called the den, where we sat across from each other in comfortable chairs. The room had a lot of bookshelves, and I was eager to look at the books, but I refrained.
When we finished our snacks, Molly asked, “So, Hunter, what’s going on?”
I knew this was Oday—‘Out day’. Either I talked with her or I probably wouldn’t talk with anybody.
Taking a deep breath, I said quietly, “I’m gay.”
“Yeah? Of course you are. Is that the whole problem?”
“What do you mean, ‘Of course you are’? How long have you known?”
“Oh, for about three years.”
“How did you know?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like the idea came to me in a flash. I never said to myself, ‘This boy is gay’. I just knew.”
“Who else knows?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never talked about it with anyone. I thought it was your private business, and when you wanted me to know, you’d say something.”
“Well, I’ve said it, but only to you. I don’t want others to know.”
“Like I said, that’s your choice. When you do want them to know, you’ll say something. But I’ve a feeling there’s more to the issue than that. Do you have a crush on someone?”
I told her about Billy. I hadn’t meant to, but I got into some pretty heavy details. She just listened. She didn’t seem put off by anything I said. Maybe the sex ed classes paid off. I wondered if the girls’ sessions talked about boys and what we did. I suppose they did since we talked about girls.
When I finished, Molly said, “Hunter, I’m sorry you were hurt. Billy did tell you he wasn’t gay, and I suppose you just didn’t want to hear that.”
“Yeah, but since I started having sex and then Billy turned it off, I’ve been really frustrated.”
We talked for a while, and I began to see that my view was wrong. I wasn’t looking for a friend; I was looking for sex, and that was backwards. I should be looking for friends, and then if something developed that would simply seal our friendship.
At the end of our conversation, I said, “I guess I was pretty stupid.”
“No, you weren’t, you just tried to move too fast.”
I smiled and said, “Now tell me you want to be a psychiatrist.”
She laughed and I laughed with her. Getting serious, she said, “Well, perhaps a psychologist.” Again, we laughed.
When I left her house, I thanked her, and we exchanged an affectionate hug.
As I walked home, I felt much better.
* * * * * * * *
At school the next day, I told Tommy I needed to talk with him, so after calling his mother to tell her where he’d be, he rode home on the bus with me. Mom was glad to see that Tommy was back in my life.
Grabbing a couple of sandwiches, we went to my room.
I took a deep breath and said, “Tommy, I need to tell you something, and I hope you’ll still be my friend after I do.”
“I can’t think of anything you could say that would cause me to not be your friend.”
I said, “Tommy, I’m gay.”
“Is that all? I’ve known that since I first met you.”
I was shocked. “How did you know?” I asked.
“To be truthful, I’m not sure. I suppose you know that I’m not.”
“Well, I assumed that you weren’t.”
I went on to tell him about my relationship with Billy, leaving nothing out.
“Weren’t you a little young for him?” he asked.
“Maybe, or maybe I just like older guys. I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I guess that’s part of my problem,” I said. “I do tend to crush on older boys. Is that weird?”
“Not that I know of. I think it might be better than crushing on boys who are two or three years younger than we are.”
“Oh God! Crushing on a fourth grader? I don’t think so.”
We both laughed uproariously, thinking that was the funniest idea I could have. I waited a bit and then asked, “So, we can still be friends?”
“Certainly we can.”
I hugged him and he hugged me back, and it felt good.
At our school lunch table, I was back to being my involved self. The kids all asked what had happened. Of course, I didn’t tell them everything. I just said that I’d been trying to work some things out.
Thanks to Molly and Tommy I was really feeling better, and Mom quickly noticed. It seemed like I couldn’t hide anything from her. Then I panicked. ‘Does she know I’m gay?’ I wondered. Of course, there was no way to know unless I asked her, and I certainly wasn’t about to do that. There are some things I just wasn’t going to share with my mother.
Throughout the remainder of the school year, I kept my eyes out for a boy who I might ask to be my friend. I even went to sporting events. I know it sounds like I was looking over a stable of horses or something. Maybe I was, but I have to admit that I enjoyed looking at the bodies on the field.
I even went to some of Billy’s lacrosse games. I was sure he knew I was there, but we never said anything to each other. One day I walked right past him on the bus and didn’t say a word. It was awkward, but I just didn’t want to talk with him.
When school got out for the summer, I had no real plans, and I began to wonder what I would do, other than reading, which I always enjoyed and never had enough time for during the school year. ‘Oh, well,’ I thought, ‘something will turn up.’