Circumstances 18

He pulled his tee shirt up over his head.  I could see he was beginning to get some pit hair.  I wasn’t. 

He threw the shirt onto his bed and reached for his belt.  I was just staring at him, and he noticed.

“Get undressed.  You can’t swim in your clothes.”  He laughed, showing it was a joke.

He unbuckled his shorts and dropped them to the floor.  He was wearing boxers, a blue pair today.  He sat on the bed and started to unlace his sneaks.  I hadn’t moved.

He got his sneakers off, then his socks, and then stood up and put his thumbs under the elastic of his shorts, one thumb at each hip, and slid them down and stepped out of them.

He turned to look at me, then said, “What’s the matter?  Why aren’t you undressing?”

I blushed.  “Uh...”  I didn’t have a reason!  What could I say? 

I knew what I should say.  Sometime, sometime really soon, I needed to tell him what I was.  To say, “Gary, I’m gay.  And I’m attracted to you.”  I should be honest and say that.  The longer it went that I didn’t, the worse it would be when I did.  I knew that.  I also knew this wasn’t exactly the right time to tell him, him being naked and me not being naked, him being naked and me not being naked but standing there staring at him.

“How can we swim naked with your mother here?”  There!  I’d figured out something to say!

He laughed.  “We’re not going to swim naked.  You don’t need a suit because I have one for you.”  He walked to his dresser, found two suits, and tossed one to me.  Then he put the other one on.

He went into his bathroom and came out with two towels.  By then, I’d removed my tee shirt.

I’m not sure people realize what a young teen just beginning puberty, especially if he’s just beginning and is already 14, feels about his body.  Embarrassment is probably the best way to describe it, but it’s a little more complex than just that.  You don’t really want people looking at you, or saying things like, ‘Man, are you skinny’, or ‘how come you don’t have any hair?’, or things like that.  At the same time, your hormones are slushing around in you and you get hard easily and you’re pretty proud of your dick since it doesn’t look like a little boy’s dick any longer, but you don’t really want anyone to see it, yet you sort of do, especially if they’ll be saying something nice about it, and you have the thought that maybe they will if they see it, and as I say, it’s complex and I’m not sure I even understand it.  And I am one.

Gary came over and sat on the bed, and didn’t really have anything to do but watch me.  Which I didn’t want him to do because of the embarrassment part, and because I was afraid I might get hard, which would probably mean I wouldn’t have to put off telling him about the gay thing.  It would be kind of obvious. 

Why did I always end up with circumstances like this to contend with?

I didn’t know what to do, and it was now or never, I had to do something, and so I did what I probably should do more of.  I spoke, and I spoke honestly.

“How come you could just get naked in front of me like that and not be embarrassed?”

“Why should I be embarrassed?  I’ve been getting undressed in front of guys in the locker room for three years now.  Haven’t you?”

“Not really.  Showers haven’t been mandatory until this year, and we’re allowed to wear underwear in them.  A lot of us do that, then change to dry ones in the locker room still covered with a towel.”

“Why?  What’s so embarrassing?  You’ve got a dick like everyone else, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but everyone’s different.  Mine isn’t very big, and I’m not as far into puberty as most guys my age.”

“So it’s because you’re shy?  And maybe that self-esteem issue you talked about?”

“Yeah.  You see how skinny I am.  The rest of me isn’t any better.  It’s embarrassing.”

He looked at me, at my bare torso, appraising it.  Then he said, “Get naked so I can see.  If we’re going to be friends, best friends, we shouldn’t have secrets, not unimportant ones like that at least.  You’ve seen me.  Let me see you.”

I swallowed and just looked at him.  What he said made sense.  If he saw me naked, right now, I wouldn’t have to worry about it after that.  It’d be a done deal.  And I trusted him.  There was something about him that encouraged that.  Even if he thought I looked funny, or babyish, or something, he’d be polite.

So I undressed.  I wanted so badly to turn away from him when I lowered my briefs, but I didn’t.  I just lowered them, stepped out, then stood there.  Trusting I’d remain soft.  With him eyeing me.  Eyeing the goods.

I didn’t get hard.  Probably my nervousness saved me.  But it really wasn’t an arousing moment.  I was too worried about what he’d say, or how he’d react.

He looked, scanned over me with his eyes, then raised his eyes to  meet mine.  “So?  What’s to worry about?  You’re thin.  You probably don’t eat enough.  Don’t exercise enough.  But you don’t look like one of those starving children you see in advertisements.  You just look skinny.  You don’t have much hair yet, but you’ve got some, which means in a few months you’ll have a lot more.  Your dick isn’t as big as mine, but it looks just fine to me.  It fits with the rest of you.  I’m no great expert on dicks, mind you, but in the showers I’ve seen all kinds, circumcised, uncircumcised, big, little, fat, skinny, red, dark, freckled, whatever.  Yours is fine.  Since you’re just starting puberty, it’ll grow bigger than it is now.  In any case, how big it is when it’s soft isn’t as important as how big it is hard.  Now, if you want me to evaluate that...”  He stopped, wiggled his eyebrows at me, and laughed.

I knew what he meant.  He meant it as a joke.  If he were gay, he’d have put more innuendo into it, more question than statement, maybe some tension, maybe, well, something.  He’d meant it to be funny, not as a come-on.

I put on the bathing suit, and he said, “You look fine, Keith.  Really.  And I admire your courage in showing yourself to me when you didn’t want to and were afraid of what I’d say.”

He punched me lightly on the shoulder, then grabbed the towels, and we went to the pool.