A Work of Art
Not a journal
Seventh Entry
The study that involved us freshman boys had been the subject of the initial assembly. What happened was, all the boys who’d been entered into the study by their parents, which turned out to be about 95% of us—the letter was very persuasive—were being called to the nurse’s office in groups of ten. Alphabetically. And what that meant, of course, was that Toby and I were in the same group when we were called.
The ten of us entered a medium-sized, one-room office which was being called into service for this project. It was mostly empty with just a table against one end, a number of chairs and a couple of other pieces of equipment, linoleum on the floor and bright lighting from above. Nurse Adams was a middle-aged, going-grey lady of medium-going-on-stout build and a severe manner. She didn’t have much bedside manner, and I’d heard she wasn’t very popular with the student body. Just looking at her, I could see why. She didn’t greet us with a smile. In fact, she didn’t greet us at all. She had her back turned to us as we filed in, standing and leaning over the table on which some papers were scattered, making a note of something.
We didn’t spend much time looking at her back. What grabbed our attention was the young girl who was looking at us and smiling. I noticed that the other nine boys couldn’t keep their eyes off her; from the looks on their faces, their imaginations were running wild.
“Hi,” she said, still smiling. She looked to be the age of our senior girls, and she was very pretty. She had long, light-brown hair styled like many girls in our school wore theirs, pretty brown eyes and a cute nose. I might be gay, but I know pretty in a girl when I see one, and she had that down cold. Top-ten looks.
She spoke to us after we were all in the room and the door had been closed. We gathered around her and ignored Mrs. Adams. “I’m Missy Garner. I’m taking the nursing course at my college with a specialization in adolescent medicine. What I’ll be doing at your school is a field-training assignment for me. I’ll be here to help Mrs. Adams. I’ll be working with you guys, and she’ll take notes. What I need now is for you all to undress so we can begin. Please set your clothes on the chairs behind you and remain standing.”
We weren’t the first group in here; a few groups had preceded us, and we’d heard vivid and frightening tales of what would happen. We hadn’t believed all of them. They’d seemed made up. This wasn’t imaginary now, though. Missy had spoken very matter-of-factly, friendly but assertively. We were to do what she asked. Mrs. Adams turned at that point and stared at us.
I’m not sure why, but it seemed we couldn’t look at each other, like doing so might make this even more embarrassing. From the corner of my eye I saw Toby starting to pull off his tee shirt. I also saw him smiling. Well, yeah. For him, getting undressed with a pretty girl standing by watching admiringly was probably pretty exciting. He didn’t have a shy bone in his body. I’d inherited all of those.
I didn’t want to be last getting naked. I started shedding garments, too. All of us were doing so. But there was no normality in what we were doing. We were all very aware we were being watched. For a group of boys who’d grown up without ever experiencing communal nudity, to suddenly have it thrust upon us, allowing our bare bodies to be observed by a girl who very much resembled a slightly older sister—well, this all seemed unreal, almost dreamlike, or even nightmarish. Shirts off, pants off, shoes and socks off. We all rather chastely left on our boxers or briefs or boxer briefs. The boys in briefs looked especially nervous because it wasn’t hard to see their shapes within. Well, they didn’t have to worry long about that. Mrs. Adams cleared her throat. “Need help with the rest, boys? I will if you won’t,” she said threateningly and ungrammatically and stepped towards us.
We all dropped our underwear. We all looked at each other. Boys will, you know. We all appeared rather as one would expect. We were all 14; most freshmen early in ninth grade are. At that age puberty had had its wicked, adamant, relentless way to a varying degree with us. Some of us had a full set of pubes; some of us had only a few scraggly, lonely hairs. Some of us, like Toby, had definite musculature. Some, like me, were mostly skin and bone and ribs that were easily seen, along with prominent hip bones.
There were differences in penises, too. Some had begun the growth spurt that had already taken effect on our statures. A few hadn’t had any sort of enlargement there and looked very much like their younger, pre-teen brothers must still look. There was embarrassment on the faces of those boys, a wish-I-were-anywhere-but-here look, and they were quick to cover themselves with their hands.
The face I was looking at was Toby’s. As mentioned before, I’d seen Toby nude often, and that hadn’t changed as he’d grown. He still walked out of the bathroom after showering carrying his towel rather than wearing it. He didn’t really care who saw him naked. Perhaps he even got a thrill out of it. I know he always gave me a smug look as he walked past me as I was passing him on the way to my own shower. I’d still be discreetly covered by my boxers. I was more reluctant to be seen naked than he was.
But the effect of this was that I’d seen his nudity often and he hadn’t seen mine since we were both around ten. Now he was looking, and the expression on his face was one I’d remember for a long time.
The thing is, who can explain why some boys develop faster than others? Sure, it has to do with hormones, but why? I didn’t know, that was for sure, but I did know I’d been a late bloomer in many areas, but not in the one hanging there right then for everyone to see. To put it succinctly, I was well-endowed. The largest in the room by a fair margin. And Toby wasn’t. Toby was very much the average of the room. A few boys were larger, a few the same, a few smaller. Then there was me.
Was it true that gay men on average were somewhat larger than straight men? Had anyone really studied that? I had nothing to gauge with and extremely little personal knowledge, but from what I’d seen at the swimming pool and on the football field and now in this office, it was easy for me to say that, if gay men are indeed larger, then I was in the right grouping, sexuality-speaking.
Toby was staring at me. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to mine. I looked back, back at his eyes and not lower, and was exceptionally careful not to show anything that would suggest any signs of disdain or contempt or conceit. No smugness, not even any personal pride. That wasn’t who I was. I didn’t lord it over anyone about anything. The fact Toby enjoyed showing his greater abilities than mine in several areas didn’t affect how I behaved. I’d never felt he was trying to rub in his superiority to me, just that he was proud of himself. And truthfully, he wasn’t excessive about showing off, either. He wasn’t boastful and never tried to make me feel small. It was more that he was taking pleasure in his self-knowledge of who and what he was, taking comfort in his abilities and successes. But he did make it clear he was happy being Toby. If sometimes I got a little hurt about that, it was my fault, not his. I wouldn’t hurt him that way for the world.
He’d now seen me nude. He’d seen I was larger than he was. It shook him; he would have to reassess some long-held feelings. The fact is, boys care about size. They measure their masculinity by it, rightfully or not. For him to see I was larger than he was in an area that he’d been taking some pride in and having no doubts about, well, he was going to have to readjust his attitude. This was a shock to him.
We were all standing up, feeling very nude, and Missy picked up a ruler. “I’m going to measure you all and then ask you some questions. I see a couple of you are not circumcised. You’ll get some special attention. I need to make sure your foreskin retracts easily and isn’t too tight. I’ve also been instructed to talk about hygiene, which is important with a foreskin. Please understand that what we’re doing today is nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s common for a nurse to see males naked. Because of my specialization, I’ve seen hundreds of boys your age being examined. I’ve also seen boys erect, getting erect, losing their erections. None of this is embarrassing to me and shouldn’t be for you. It’s just part of life. Boys your age get erections and often can’t control that. I’m very aware of that, and I’m sure you are, too. So, if it happens here—and it probably will— don’t let it overly bother you. It’s actually good if it happens. I’m used to it. I’ve dealt with many an erection, and if your bodies cooperate, it’ll allow me to get more measurements that I wouldn’t be able to take without your, uh, cooperation. It’ll help advance our study.” She grinned.
I wasn’t happy to see that grin. This wasn’t a grinning topic for us, and I didn’t like her being humanized doing what she’d be doing. I wanted her to be a white-coated medical technician, staid and anonymous, not a pretty girl being friendly with us. We lined up in alphabetic order, and I’m sure every one of us was thinking, no boners. No boners. For God’s sake, no boners!
Alphabetical order meant I was immediately ahead of Toby in line. A before T. There were two boys ahead of us. Missy took hold of the first boy’s penis and measured it. She read off the measurements to Mrs. Adams. I wondered why Missy was doing the handling of the boy parts instead of Mrs. Adams. Seemed to me it should be the other way around.
The first boy, Tony, was nervous, but managed to stay flaccid somehow. Fear or embarrassment, probably. She measured the length with a ruler, then used a cloth measuring tape for the circumference. He was two-and-a-half inches long and a little less than two-and-a-half inches around. She let go of his penis after measuring it and asked him how frequently he jerked off. She used that word rather than masturbated, to my surprise. Maybe she was trying to make him more comfortable. It didn’t work. He blushed and said, “None of your business.”
We all laughed, and Mrs. Adams said, “Quiet! Answer the question, Tony!”
Tony looked at her and said, “No!” and said it quite defiantly.
Missy said, “It’s okay, Mrs. Adams. Just mark his answer as ‘non-compliant’.” Then she asked him if he’d had sexual intercourse. He told her no. She nodded and said that was all, he could sit down again, but not to get dressed yet.
The next boy, Jeremy, wasn’t circumcised. She lifted his penis, measured it, then said, “I’m going to check how easily the foreskin can be retracted.” She looked up at him, and he was looking very uncomfortable but didn’t say anything. Jeremy had never been an assertive boy. He was the go-with-the-flow type, the don’t-make-waves sort much like I was. I knew him a little; while he was complacent and easy-going, he’s always seemed to possess a quiet self-assurance to me. Missy took his penis in one hand and with the fingers of the other hand slid the extra skin back and forth over the crown so that it seemed to wink at us. She did this over and over. The skin moved quite easily. But that didn’t cause her to stop. Yeah, it was loose and moved easily and she kept on doing it. It was obviously more than necessary, and Jeremy did as expected: he got hard. From soft to very hard very quickly. She told him while still exercising the foreskin that he was doing good, very good, and kept up her manipulation a few seconds longer, then measured him again, calling the measurements out to Mrs. Adams to record. He was just a hair under six inches long and four inches in circumference.
I’d never seen a boy with a foreskin before except in those videos I watched with my door closed. I’d never seen one retracted like she was doing with Jeremy. I tried not to watch because it was, well, you know, incredibly erotic, and I didn’t want how seeing that was causing my body to react.
Jeremy just stood still all the while this was happening, but what choice did he have? Showing his self-confidence, he didn’t even blink when asked how often he jerked off. “Every day,” he said. He sounded proud of it to me. “Only once?” Missy asked, a grin in her voice that sounded to me she was trying to repress, and I had to chuckle at his answer; there was a pause, then, “Sometimes.”
Jeremy was a freshman like me. He was also quite cute. Seeing her stroking him, seeing him get hard, was about as arousing as anything I could imagine. I didn’t want to in front of the other boys, but I couldn’t help it. It was way too much. I got hard watching it all play out right in front of me. I was next in line, and so was standing right near Missy. She saw me erecting and smiled. I half turned so I didn’t have to meet her eyes and, by doing so, saw that what had just happened had affected every other boy in the room as well. We were all rampant or quickly getting that way.
Now, I was a gay boy seeing a boy my age, a cute, attractive boy, being stroked and getting hard. No wonder at all that it aroused me, too. Big time. But why, I asked myself, were the others getting hard as well? I could only surmise but thought it possible that they were aroused by seeing a cute girl sliding her fingers up and down Jeremy’s shaft. It very much appeared they were watching an attractive, slightly older girl give a young boy a hand job, and that had turned them all on. Another factor, of course, might have been that we were all young enough that just seeing an erection, any erection, would cause us to get a sympathetic one.
Missy sprang into action. She quickly measured each of us and called out the numbers for Mrs. Adams to record. While doing this she said for us to maintain our erections till she could get to us. “Use your hands if you need to. I want you completely erect when I measure you.” I noticed no one complying with this request, but then, I didn’t see any wilting going on either as she handled each erection, one after the other.
Toby, not being a bit shy, said accusingly, “You did that on purpose so you could measure us.”
Missy didn’t look at him or answer. When she had taken all our erections in her hand and measured them, she returned to Jeremy. She asked him if he’d like her to show him the proper way to retract and wash under the foreskin. Finally, this was all too much for Jeremy. “I can do it fine,” he said. “Been doing it for years.” Then he finally showed some of the spirit I knew he had. “Now if you want me to show you the proper way to wash yourself down there . . .”
Missy didn’t let him finish. “Jeremy, do not get personal with any of the nurses you’ll have to deal with in your life. It’s improper and very rude.”
Jeremy was undaunted. “Well,” he said, “you started it.”
That brought a blush from her, and she quickly dismissed him to a chair. She’d already measured me and everyone else when hard, so with me, circumcised me, she only needed to get the flaccid measurements and then have me answer her questions. Yes, I jerked off, and how often? Just as often as I wanted to and I didn’t keep count. “Daily?” she asked. I grinned as I had an answer ready. “At least.” She looked up. “More?” I told her that was what ‘whenever I wanted to’ meant. Had I had intercourse? Only in my dreams.
She told me to take a chair, not get dressed yet, but wait with the others.
Toby was next, and he gave me a look as he came forward and I stepped back. The look wasn’t at my face. He’d heard my measurements called out, peeked at me of course, and I guess he was checking again to see if I was real. By now he could only eye me in my softer state, but by his frown, I could see he was still bothered. I’d heard his numbers, too. I wondered if he’d ever want to talk about it. If so, it would be quite a change for both of us.
He also refused to talk about jerking off but did say he hadn’t had intercourse yet. I was a little surprised at that. I wondered if he was telling the truth. I can never tell when he’s lying. But he’d dated quite a few girls. I assumed with some of them things would have got hot and heavy. Some girls are like that, more eager than even the boy is. So I’ve been told. I’ve also been told that their eagerness may be because they’re feeling sexy like we are, but for some, it’s more about the status they achieve by becoming sexually active.
“Okay,” she said when she was done with the really embarrassing part of the operation with everyone, “that’s about it except for getting your weight and height and then filling out some forms. Get back in order so it’ll be easier for Mrs. Adams to have the right paper in front of her and I’ll begin. You’re first, Tony.”
We all got up and stood in line again. I had Jeremy’s cute butt right in front of me, and I did look at it but managed not to get hard. We were all getting used to this nakedness, I realized. Tony stood on the scale, had his weight and height called out to Mrs. Adams, and was told he could get dressed but not to leave.
When we were all dressed and seated, she gave each of us forms to fill out. They asked many of the questions she’d asked, but also about personal things like crushes and same-sex attractions and abuse and family dynamics and what we dreamed about and if we had wet dreams and just a lot of stuff that I didn’t think they had any business knowing. The thing that shocked me was that the forms had our names on them. This sort of information given anonymously would have been okay. But asking if we were gay and having our name on the paper? After giving answers to only a few of the first questions, I read through the form, the entire thing. Then I stood and took the form back to Missy. It was easier to talk to her than Mrs. Adams. I was very happy to be dressed, however. This would have been much more difficult if I were standing in front of her naked.
“I’m not going to fill this out,” I said.
“Your parent signed you up,” she said, sounding adamant. “This is for a large study. Your answers are important to us.”
“They’re important to me, too, but they’re too invasive. Way too invasive. Very private. Very personal. If they were asked anonymously, that would be one thing, but that isn’t the case here. If this is a national study, why do you need our names? I have a feeling there’s a lot more to this than what we’ve been told, and I’m not comfortable with it. Tell me, why are our names needed?”
She stared at me, opened her mouth, closed it, and said, “Your parent okayed this.”
“Well, I’m not going to do this. Here.” I offered her the papers. She didn’t take them. I laid them on the table next to her. “Are we done? May I go now?”
She was very unhappy with me, but what could she do? She had no authority over me. She appeared flustered and uncertain. What she did was look at Mrs. Adams. Mrs. Adams scowled at me, but she’d been scowling ever since we’d come in. Maybe that was just her face.
She spoke to me so quietly I’m sure the others couldn’t hear her. “We can’t force you to do the questionnaire, but if you leave, the others will see that and want to do the same. So, please, take the papers and go back and sit down. When the others begin finishing and leaving, you can turn your forms in unfinished and leave when they do.”
I smiled at her, said thanks, and retook my seat. It gave me time to think. One thing was pretty clear to me. We weren’t as embarrassed being nude with each other now. We’d all seen each other’s erections. And how developed each of us was. It wasn’t a big deal for us now, not even having been seen that way by two females. If part of the project was to desensitize us about being naked around other people, it was accomplishing that, if for only the moment.
It had done something else for me. It had given me a bit of body pride that I’d never had before. And I’d found I wasn’t as shy as I’d thought I’d been. Well, actually, I wasn’t shy. I hadn’t been shy. What I had been was quiet. Reticent. I think maybe a lot of gay boys are like that.
There was another thing about what I’d been going through at school, especially this latest adventure. I now had visual evidence of something I’d only wondered about. I was bigger where it counted than anyone else in this room and hadn’t seen anyone larger anywhere else, either. As large, yes, a few times, but not bigger. That was kind of neat. It felt good to have that to feel proud about, even if I hadn’t really had anything to do with it.
As we walked out of the room, another bunch of freshmen boys was waiting to come in. They looked worried. We couldn’t help ourselves. We laughed as we passed them. I think it was from relief as much as their apprehensive expressions.