A Work of Art
Not a journal
Fifth Entry
I guess if anyone’s still reading this, they’re patiently waiting to know the outcome of my near disaster at the pool with TJ. Remember? When I was sporting a hardened-steel pole that felt like it was 10” long, and I was so fearful of it showing itself to the world and how that would play itself out with the humiliation I’d suffer? Yeah, that almost disaster. Okay. Might as well get this over with. Sooner’s better than later. What’s the expression, get thee behind me, Satan?
Well, see, that near disaster was good and bad. Or all good, if you want to look at it that way. See, I turned my back to the pool when I jumped in, which meant I turned my magnificence toward TJ for the brief moment I was in the air before splashing into the water. I was pretty confident no one else had seen me. No one but TJ, of course, and there was no way to avoid that. I figured one guy seeing me was a whole lot better than everyone seeing me, and I’d already given TJ a beautifully believable explanation for my condition.
What I’d not considered was what seeing me like that might do to TJ. It did what I’d neglected to take into account. He saw me floating through the air with my prominent projection flying by waving at him, giving him a bird’s eye view of everything I had to show, and he immediately got hard. It doesn’t take long for that to happen when you’re 14! The bad part was, he was facing the pool. He was in sight of everyone who happened to be looking in our direction. Okay, I’m sure for him that was the bad part of the good and bad, but I thought it was also good, because what could he do at that point? Putting his hands over himself would simply draw more attention to him, and he wouldn’t be quick enough in any case. No, he had one choice and one choice only.
“Catch me,” he said, panic in his voice as my head bobbed up above water, and he trustingly jumped into water that was over his head and, hopefully, into my waiting arms.
That was brave of him because he had no idea how to swim and was quite frightened of the water. I think he was more scared of showing a bunch of boys his hard-on, though. He leaped. And I was there to catch him. I hadn’t been sure how to get him into the water. I no longer had to worry about that.
No, I had other worries. Because I was still hard, rampantly hard, and now he was, too, and we were face-to-face hugging each other. And he was holding me as tightly as he could in his panic. Meaning our two fronts were snuggly conjoined, pressed together, interlocked, together.
Parts of us were very happy with this arrangement. Truthfully, I was mentally enjoying it, too. Here I was, a gay boy with no experience at all with anyone else similarly inclined, when suddenly, out of nowhere, here I was pressed tightly up against a boy I’d been leching on—a very, very, extremely cute boy—and he was holding me tighter than I was holding him. If I hadn’t had to fight so hard to keep us afloat, I might have just enjoyed the moment with abandon and forgotten everything else.
I didn’t know if it was his fear of water or if it was something else entirely, but he wasn’t only grasping me for all he was worth. He was also squirming. My God, why here? Why not in a soft bed with no one observing?
As close together as we were, I didn’t have to move my head at all to speak into his ear. I did so, urgently. “TJ, we need to be moving closer to the side of the pool so you can grab that. I’m doing my best to stay up, uh, in the water, but your squirming is, uh, distracting me. Hold still.”
He stopped squirming, and my kicking did move us the very few feet I needed to get us to where his back was touching the pool coping. “Feel that?” I asked, still speaking into his ear.
I could tell, once he’d felt the edge of the pool against his back, his fear had abated. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice was no longer so panicky.
“Okay, let go of me with one arm and reach back and grab the side of the pool.”
He didn’t do that. Instead, he squirmed a little again and then asked, “Do I have to?” Then he giggled.
“Bastard!” I whispered, laughing. “It feels as good to me as it does to you, but there are about seventy-five boys in here with us. How long before someone wonders why we’re still glued together?”
I heard him sigh, and then he stretched out one arm and caught onto the pool coping, and I was free. Still hard as a girder but free. I was facing the side of the pool, so no one could see me. When he had both hands on the coping, he quickly turned to face it, and so we were side by side and not showing anything to onlookers. But we also were no longer enjoying the frisky rubbing and totally delightful feelings we’d enjoyed moments before.
“You’re doing fine for someone afraid of the water,” I said.
He chuckled. “I had something to take my mind off dying.”
“Well, while you’re right here, a good thing to do is to hold on to the pool like you are, but then, stretch out some so your belly is flat in the water. Like that, you can practice kicking your legs. That’s part of swimming, being flat in the water and kicking your legs. Do it now and see what it feels like.”
“Uh, okay, but stretched out like that, what about, uh, my keel?” He laughed. I didn’t know him at all, but this was incredible. He was smart and had a joyful personality, much more outgoing than I’d thought. I hadn’t known! I was going to really like this kid; I already loved this pool-buddy assignment.
“Your keel,” I said, bursting into laughter. “Well, I’ll tell you what. If you walk your hands down the pool to the shallow end, then I can stand on the bottom, and you can stretch out like I said and practice both kicking and using your arms to practice your stroke; uh, your swimming stroke. And, ta-da, I can hold you up with my hands under you, and if you start to move away from me, I can grab onto that keel to keep you from getting away. Or, I can simply hold onto that to preclude the possibility of escape.”
He began immediately moving toward the shallow end. He must have liked the program I’d suggested. Safety first, that was my motto.
The shallow end was much more crowded than where we’d been. By the time we reached it and made our way to an empty spot where TJ could lay out flat and kick, both our excitements had ebbed, and I thought that was a good thing. This wasn’t the place for our youthful enthusiasm to run its course. There would be time for that later.
-- -- -- --
We showered after swimming. Everyone was naked, but as we’d all been swimming together, the communal awkwardness along with the modesty many of us had felt was mostly absent. I was surprised at how quickly it had become normal to be standing in a shower room full of naked boys, and how the sexually arousing aspect of that seemed to have vanished.
That was true until my eyes fell on TJ. Suddenly, all those feelings rushed back, and I had to get out of there as quickly as I could. Luckily, I was already rinsing off and was near the door. By the time I was done and walking out, I was already past the half-mast stage and still rapidly growing. But everyone else seemed to be enjoying the uniqueness of the camaraderie wrought by a communal naked shower, and they were all staying put. No one seemed aware I was leaving, nor why.
As I was finishing dressing, TJ came by my locker. He’d been in the shower a long time. Enjoying the festivities, I imagined. He must have had better control of his unit than I did mine.
“What are you doing after school?” he asked. His eyes were very bright.
“I don’t know. Going home I guess.”
“Your parents will be there?”
“No, and Toby’s not, either. He has some sort of practice most days and doesn’t get home till after five, just like my parents. Why?” I was grinning as I said it. And maybe getting a little of the excitement I’d felt in the showers back as well. It was obvious where this was headed.
“Well, I was just thinking that maybe we should get together to, uh, talk about swimming and stuff. We didn’t get to talk much. There might be things I should practice doing at home. We could discuss that. Don’t get me wrong, though.” He gave me a magnificent grin. “I did like the help I got today, though. It was excellent.” He looked a little flushed. And maybe he was having a hard time standing still.
“Well,” I said casually, “we do have a pool, and we could practice swimming in it.”
He nodded, then came that grin again. “Or maybe not in the pool.”
He came to my house with me after school. We were both feeling it. I know I was, and the way he was acting, he was, too. When you’re 14 and never fooled around with anyone, there was no question but what you’ve thought about doing it. Probably a lot. And then you’re like I was right then, imagining things that’d be happening soon, wonderful, amazing things, and you’re thinking about this really happening, truly about to happen, and your Magic 8-ball is reading it is decidedly so, and, well, it’s hard not to be hard. Impossible, actually. And I think we both had our tents pitched as I unlocked the door and led him in.
We went up to my room. “I always change when I get home,” I said, a little breathlessly.
“Go ahead,” he said. His voice was higher pitched than usual. Maybe mine was, too. “If we’re going to swim, maybe I should get undressed, too.”
“Maybe you should,” I agreed enthusiastically. I looked at him suggestively. Well, that’s the look I was trying for. He didn’t need to be a genius to catch on and, as I pulled my tee shirt over my head, he did the same with his. I grinned at him. Damn, he was cute. I’d be pulling my pants down in a few seconds, and he’d see me hard. I hoped I’d see the same. Watching his tee shirt being pulled up and off, I could see he had the beginnings of a thin tuft of hair in his pits. Just about the same amount I had.
When we were both naked and both in the same state I’d assumed we would be, he giggled and got on the bed. I’d thought he was shy. He’d always acted that way in school, the only place I’d ever seen him. He never raised his hand or said much in class unless called on to do so. But he didn’t seem shy now. What he seemed was eager.
Eagerness is an especially attractive quality in a naked boy sitting on your bed and looking longingly at you.
I got on the bed, too, and he was suddenly all over me. I fell back flat on my back as he crawled on top of me. If he was squirming against me in the pool, there had to be some other word for what he was doing right then, which was about five times more vigorous. He was rubbing all of himself against all of me, and I found it hard to breathe with the excitement I felt.
I grabbed him to hold him a little more still, but not too much—I did like the wriggling. He was groaning, but it sounded strange, and I realized why: I was, too. Groans in two-part harmony. If I’d recorded that, we could have made a fortune selling it to porno websites that specialized in boys.
It didn’t take either of us more than two minutes to explode. That at least settled him down. The wriggling stopped. He must have been exhausted. I know I was. But, oh so happy, too.
He finally rolled off me and lay by my side. I somehow wanted to maintain body contact, and he did, too, as he remained up against my side.
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. I think we were relearning how to breathe. Finally, he said, “I thought jerking off was the best feeling in the world. It isn’t even in the same ballpark compared to what just happened. I don’t know how to describe the difference. I don’t think they invented the right words for it.”
Me, being pedantic as I was, said, “One difference was passion. Jerking off has lots of feeling involved, but not a lot of passion, not a lot of sharing emotions with someone else who’s feeling the same thing. This was magnificent.”
He giggled. “I knew you’d be like this.”
“Like what?”
“That you’d react intellectually to it. I wasn’t sure you’d be into it as much as I was, but I could tell. You were. You’re as horny as I am. Even if you do want to overthink it.”
He laughed, and I followed suit. Yeah, I was going to like this kid a lot. I already did.
We were both exhausted, but it doesn’t take long for kids our age to recover. And when we did, we were still horny. This time, we could take our time. It wasn’t so much a rush now. It was more an exploration. He was right about how horny he was. I hadn’t realized how much I was, too. It was great fun learning that. We used our hands more than our bodies this time, but the end results were just as good.
When we still had an hour before anyone else would be home and we’d rested again, I told him we should go cool off in the pool, where he could get further used to being in the water. I picked up some clothes, but he stopped me.
“You said we have an hour at least?”
“Yeah?”
“Then why get dressed? You have a watch. It’s fun walking around naked. I do it whenever I can. Let’s go.” And he got up and headed for the door. “It’s more exciting this way,” he said over his shoulder. “We get to worry about being caught.”
I liked how TJ thought. He walked down the stairs and waited for me at the bottom. I took him to the kitchen and got him a plastic glass filled with ice and a can of Coke, the same for me, then led him out onto the patio. We both sat in the chairs there and drank our Cokes, our eyes fastened on each other.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?” he said.
I blushed. “People have told me I’m cute, but only family members. They don’t count.”
“Well, you are. I’ve crushed on you forever.”
“Are you gay?” I never thought I’d have the nerve to ask anyone that.
“Maybe. Or not. Maybe. I find a lot of girls hot. But boys, too. Especially you. I never dreamed you’d be like you are. You gay?”
“Same as you. Maybe,” I lied. “But I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Me neither. We’ll keep this on the down low. But I don’t want it to end. What we did today. Dope! I’d like to be still doing this when I’m 80. With you when I’m 80. No matter if either of us is gay or has 100 kids. I still want us to do this.”
I laughed. He was so serious! When I laughed, he did too.
We finished our drinks and got in the pool. We got in some good practice. He didn’t seem as frightened of the water. Maybe what had happened in gym class had taken some of this fear away. I got him to lie flat on my hands face down again, and this time put his face in the water. He did it without protesting, telling me he trusted me completely. Maybe that was manipulation, knowing after he said that I’d be especially careful. But if it was, I didn’t mind.
We practiced some, then just played some, splashing and climbing on each other. Eventually, that led to us getting hard again. Hey, we’re 14; it happens.
So, I used that time to show him where our outlet jets were, and how they could be used for more than just circulating filtered water. He was thrilled. At one point, we stood using the same jet, pushing each other away so we could each get the full impact. He was stronger than he looked. I finally gave him full use of the jet, and it didn’t take long before he was panting, then groaning, then backing away with the biggest contented grin.
Then it was my turn.
If anyone thinks like ‘oh, come on now, you’d already gotten off twice, and now some pressurized water would do the trick, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ then you don’t know nothin’ about 14-year-old boys.
We were dressed and sitting on the patio when Toby came home. He got a Coke and joined us.
He must have seen TJ through the window because he wouldn’t have come out to sit with me normally. But then, to give him his due, normally I wouldn’t have been sitting out on the patio, sitting by myself, when he came home. It felt good, him coming out like that.
“Hey,” he said, “I’ve seen you at school.”
I spoke up. “Yeah, Toby, this is TJ. I’m helping him learn to swim. For school.”
When I looked at TJ while introducing him, I saw the shyness again that he always evinced at school. I realized that now I wasn’t sure if he faked it or not. He certainly hadn’t been shy with me, but he said he’d had a crush on me for a long time. Maybe when you’re crushing on someone, thinking about them, thinking about what you’d like to do with them, perhaps when you’re actually talking to them, you become more open than you are with people you don’t really know. Anyway, he just nodded at Toby and didn’t say anything.
Toby asked if we’d been swimming and I said yes, and he looked at TJ again. TJ was looking out at the pool and didn’t meet Toby’s eyes. So, Toby got up, said, “See ya later,” to no one in particular, and went inside.
But when we were talking at dinner that night, Toby kept asking questions about TJ. I wondered why. He never seemed very interested in what I was doing or what was going on with me, and TJ was a new part of my life, so this wasn’t usual for him. He asked about swimming at school when I said I was teaching TJ to swim, and I told him about all of us swimming naked there, and then he wanted to hear about that, too. When I told him about TJ jumping in the pool and how I’d caught him and got him to the side of the pool with him playing the part of a limpet, his eyes got big.
“You were both naked? And he was clinging to you?”
“Yeah. I had to keep him from drowning.”
“But wasn’t that, uh, kind of, well, two naked boys together like that? Didn’t that feel, like, funny?”
“You think I was paying any attention to anything like that? I was trying to get him to the side of the pool before we both drowned. What would you have done in that situation? Worried about, uh, proprieties?”
I felt good about that answer. I hadn’t lied. I’d implied that nothing racy had happened but didn’t say it hadn’t. Then I asked him another question. “Why all the questions about TJ, anyway?”
He grinned at me, and his eyes looked a little wicked. Not mean, but humorously wicked. “Just that you were swimming with him here this afternoon, and after I went inside, I looked around. I couldn’t find any wet bathing suits.”
Oh, shit. Think, Artie!
I did. “I told you we’d been swimming naked at school. We’re being encouraged to be less modest; you know that’s our new school policy. But, when he wanted more practice than he can get at school, I brought him here, and it made sense, as we’d already been swimming together suit-less, to do the same here. He didn’t have a bathing suit with him, so, why not? You seem to want to make something sleazy about this. It was just swimming practice. Jeez.”
Toby grinned. Maybe I was being too defensive. Toby could probably read me more easily than I could read him; always had done. I didn’t know if this was the end of what he was thinking or not. But the talk turned to the subject of nakedness in school, and I let Toby voice his views on that and be questioned by the parentals. I was off the hook.