Football season was finally over. That came as a disappointment to most of the kids at school. Friday nights had meant a football game and then multiple parties afterwards, sometimes even school dances. Football season was also the last opportunity for the senior jocks to strut their stuff for the whole school to oooh and aaah at.
For me, however, football season ending meant concert band beginning. And I’d been looking forward to that all fall. The previous Friday, after our last game and marching band performance, I’d trooped back into the band room and put the glockenspiel into its stand on the top riser with the other oversized percussion instruments, and to my surprise, I felt a twinge of regret. I still was not enthusiastic about marching band; it hadn’t been nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be, however, and not having to play the clarinet helped, but it had remained more of a chore than something I looked forward to each week. So, having some sadness it was over surprised me. However, I was reminded that something good had come from it. I was reminded when, as I was tightening the wing nut to hold the glockenspiel in place on it’s stand, I was nudged from behind.
“Last time you’ll be doing that for a while, huh?”
“You too,” I said, nodding at the cymbals she still held tucked under her arm.
Becky looked at the other kids in the room, most in the process of putting away instruments. Some were emerging from the two communal dressing rooms, their uniforms draped over their arms ready to be handed in. We didn’t wear them for concert band concerts. Mr. Tollini thought it looked smarter if we all dressed for those in dark suits and dresses. The boys all had the same tie in the school’s colors. I thought we looked rather sharp.
“You going to miss this at all?” I asked her, tacitly referring to the fact she didn’t participate in concert band; this was her last band activity of the year.
“Not really. I only was helping Mr. Tollini out. I’m glad I did, though.” She looked at me, then, and didn’t smile. I think she wanted me to see her sincerity.
“You want to go get a hamburger, maybe, or some ice cream or pizza?” I was hungry, as usual, but more, I wanted to talk to her. With the semester now past the halfway point, the teachers were all in their gung-ho mode and were piling on the work, and the two of us hadn’t had as much time to just hang together as we had earlier in the year. We still ate lunch together and tried to spend some time on the phone, but that wasn’t quite the same.
“Aren’t you doing anything with Kevin tonight?”
“No, his mother insisted they go out to eat. His father evidently has been trying to be somewhat conciliatory lately, and I guess they’re having a family dinner at a restaurant downtown. But Becky, even if I was doing something with him, it wouldn’t mean you couldn’t join us. You know that, don’t you?”
“I feel like I’m in the way sometimes.”
“You’re not!”
“That’s you talking.”
“Huh?” Then I got it. And pissed myself off by blushing. Why would I blush because she was saying Kevin liked me? That was dumb. But I still blushed.
“I want to talk to you about that.” She wasn’t smiling. I knew she was serious. “Can you stay out tonight? I mean, longer than if we just grab a hamburger?”
“Sure. My parents don’t expect me till eleven-thirty tonight. Let’s do it.”
We both had to change out of our uniforms. I’d begun changing with all the others after my first performance. I went to the boys’ room, she to the girls’, and then had to wait in line to hand in the uniforms. We each finally made it through and got our names checked off for returning our complete uniforms, and then we were on our own.
We ended up walking to a pizza place in our neighborhood where we frequently went. It wasn’t too crowded because it was well past dinnertime. The customers there were mostly kids like us, almost all of them having come from the football game. We’d been delayed, of course, having been stuck in line in the band room, so even the football crowd was thinning out now, and we got an empty booth in the back of the room where we had some privacy.
When we’d ordered, I said to Becky, “What you said earlier? About you feeling Kevin thinks you’re in the way sometimes?”
“What about it?”
“Well, it bothers me. I know what you mean. I can sometimes see it. The three of us will be watching a movie, or TV, or just hanging and talking, and I see him starting to sort of look at me all the time, and then sort of fidget. Like when you’re talking, he should be looking at you, and he’s looking at me. When we’re watching a movie on TV, he and I’ll be sitting on the couch, and he’ll sort of move closer to me, then sigh and look at you. It’s starting to bug me a little.”
Becky was staring at me, then shook her head. “Matt, you’re not stupid. You know why he’s doing that. Why are you asking me about it?”
“Because I want to be his friend, not his boyfriend, and he keeps making it clear he wants to be more than friends, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Have you talked to him about it?”
“He’s tried talking to me about it, several times, and I keep finding ways to avoid the subject. I don’t want to talk about it with him.”
“Why not?”
“You want the truth? Because I don’t want to go there with him. I don’t want to. I’m . . . I’m . . . well, I want to be his friend. That’s it.”
She was looking at me more intensely now. I was her entire focus, which can be a little disconcerting. She didn’t respond for a time. Then she grimaced at me. “Matt,” she said, “you like him, don’t you?”
“Of course I like him. I wouldn’t want to spend so much time with him otherwise. He’s my best friend. So are you.”
“Stop it, Matt. You’re in so much denial you can hardly talk about this. Here. I’m going to ask you some simple questions. Answer them honestly. Right now. Here’s the first one: you like me, don’t you?”
“Sure. You know I do.”
“Okay. I’m a girl. Some people say I’m cute. I’ve got a terrific personality.” She grinned, then continued. “Some guys think I’d make a pretty good girlfriend. I’ve been getting phone calls. But you don’t think of me that way, do you?”
This was getting personal. I drank some of my coke; it was suddenly getting hotter in the restaurant. She was waiting.
“You told me you didn’t want a boyfriend.”
“That’s unresponsive. And defensive. I just want honest answers to my questions, not a lot of bullshit. We’re doing this for your own good, Matt, and that won’t happen if you’re not honest. Now, answer the question. It’s a yes or no question. Anything else you say is mitigating, and we don’t need that here. You wanted to do this, remember? You wanted to discuss this. Why talk at all if you’re afraid to be honest?”
I hated it when she started talking like a lawyer, and using lawyerly words like ‘mitigating’ to boot. Her father was one, and she was thinking of being one, too. I stared into her eyes. She wasn’t clowning. Okay, if she could be serious, so could I. It was my idea, after all.
“All right. No.”
“Good. That wasn’t so hard. Now, next: you like me, you like Kevin. But the feelings are very different, aren’t they?”
Damn. I didn’t want to go here. I avoided thinking about it all the time. But her eyes had me fastened to my seat. Another yes or no question. Was I willing to do this? Could I?
I was saved having to answer because the pizza arrived. We asked for refills of our cokes, and then I spatulaed out a piece of pizza for her, then one for me. I was starting to take a bite when she said, “Matt, answer the question!”
“I’m eating!”
“You can eat and talk too. You’re not three; you can do both. Now, answer: your feelings for your two best friends are different, aren’t they?”
I chewed and swallowed. “Yes, they’re different.”
“So stop pretending. When I say you like him, you know I mean you like him in a different way than you like me. He likes you too, and makes sure you know it. So, what’s the problem? Why can’t you tell him you like him? Why can’t you let yourself like him?”
“There’s all kinds of reasons, Becky.”
“Tell me what they are. Count them out for me. One, two, three, whatever. Go ahead.”
“One, I’m not gay, and to like him like he likes me means I have to be gay. Two, he’s younger than I am, so even if I did like him that way, I couldn’t do anything like he wants to do, like I think he wants to do, because he’s too young for me and I’d be taking advantage of his age. Three, I’ll be leaving for college in a year and a half. He’ll still be here. If we got together now, I’d have to leave him, and he’d be here alone, and probably people would know he was gay, and I couldn’t protect him, and I’d probably miss him, and him me, and it would be totally unfair of me to do that to him and . . . .”
I ran out of words and stopped. I was staring at her now, and she must have seen the uncertainty, the confusion, maybe even the unhappiness in my eyes, because she put her hand on my arm that was resting on the table. This was why I didn’t think about this at all. It always left me feeling miserable when I did. I could never work out any outcome where I’d end up happy.
“Okay. You know, this is the first time you’re admitting to me you like him. I knew it of course. He knows it too. You’re driving him crazy, by the way. He knows you like him, he tells me he’s in love with you, he tells me you won’t let him talk about it to you, and you sure as hell won’t talk about your feelings to him, you won’t let things get personal at all, you hardly ever even hug him or touch him.”
“I told you, it wouldn’t be fair!”
“And that you’re not gay, and that he’s too young. You know, you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”
She was still staring at me intensely, and now looked angry.
I pushed my pizza away, the half-eaten slice still on the plate. I’d been really hungry before we started this conversation.
I had to say something, so I did. “I don’t know what to do, Becky. I don’t know how to make this work. I was miserable before we got together. I wanted him to like me. I liked him, but was confused about it. I’m still confused, but do know I like him, but I don’t see how we can ever get together, not the way he wants, and maybe even the way I want too, maybe I do want that, a little. So I’m still miserable. There’s no way to fix it. But what I can do is just be his friend, spend time with him, and be happy with that.”
The look in her eyes changed then. They softened. But she didn’t say anything, not right away. I wasn’t surprised. There was nothing to say. I’d already thought about this, just some, during the few times I let myself imagine what it would be like if I really was gay.
I asked the waitress for a box, and we packed up the rest of the pizza. We walked out without either of us saying much. We walked the rest of the way to her house that way.
When we were at her front door, I said goodnight to her. She didn’t let me go that easily, however.
“Matt, I’ll think about this. Or we all will. Believe that.”
I smiled. I guess it was what they call in books a wan smile. It didn’t feel very smiley. “Sure. Thanks, Becky.”
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, then wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long hug. She never did stuff like that. Then she let go and went inside. I walked the rest of the way home, walking slowly, feeling bad, feeling sorry for myself. I was doing a lot of that these days.
◊ ◊
Mr. Tollini sent a note getting me out of study hall again, and I happily walked into the band room to meet with him. I guessed he just wanted to touch bases before our first rehearsal today.
Before walking over to his office, I glanced at the board. Yep, his words for the day were up there: POCO, PIU, MENO. I grinned, then knocked on his door.
He greeted me warmly, as I did him. I could see some excitement in his eyes. I was excited, too, looking forward to getting started again, and thought it really cool that he, a teacher, would be excited about the same thing I was.
We chatted a bit, I gave him my views on marching band, admitting I’d had a much better time than I’d expected, and asked him about what we’d be playing this year in concert band.
“Actually, that’s why I asked you to come in, Matt. I want to do something but need to have you agree with the idea first. What I am thinking is, I’d like to perform the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. You could do a really good job playing the solo, and it would allow me to showcase your skill. What do you think? You want to do it?”
“Wow! Play a concerto with the band?” I was really shocked. Stoked, too, at the honor. No one had ever played a concerto since I’d been in the band, even though we’d had some very good high-school players. I started getting a funny feeling, like this was way too big an honor for me to have. I was embarrassed, and proud at the same time.
He was looking at me expectantly. I sort of nervously smiled, then said, “That’s really nice of you. Can I see the solo part before committing myself? Maybe work on it a bit?”
“Sure, Matt. If we do it, it won’t be till the spring concert anyway. We wouldn’t have time to work it up before then. We have to start preparing for our Christmas concert right from the get-go.”
He went to one of his file cabinets and leafed through some folders, then came and gave me the solo part of the concerto. I looked at it briefly. It didn’t look technically beyond me. I’d heard the piece, of course. Like a lot of Mozart, it sounded easier than it actually was. It looked like something I’d enjoy working on.
“When would you have to know?” I asked him.
“Matt, I’d really like to have you perform with the band in the spring. If not this piece, then something else. So why don’t you look at this and decide if you’d like to do that? If not, we’ll talk about it and come up with something you’d rather do. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great. I’d never even thought about playing a concerto solo. But I should be able to decide pretty quickly if I want to do this. Thanks, Mr. Tollini!”
He grinned at me, I grinned back, and then took the music to my locker.
◊ ◊
Kevin and I spent a lot of time together now. We ate lunch together with Becky, of course, and spent time after school and on the weekends, too. The fact his school hours were slightly different from mine was a constant reminder to me that he was a freshman. When I was with him, the age difference was becoming something that was easy to ignore. He was more mature than most freshmen and actually older than many of them, had a great sense of humor and was very assertive. Because of his personality and razor-sharp, often acid wit, he tended to take charge when we were together, being as much a natural leader as I was a natural follower. The only place I was a leader was in band, and that was because the position I was in demanded it.
I was doing homework after school, working on pre-calculus problems and swearing under my breath a lot when I heard the doorbell ring downstairs, and then soon afterwards someone tromping upstairs. I always leave my door open, and a moment later Kevin walked in. I smiled at him, then stretched, tired of math.
He walked over, looked down at the mess of papers on my work table and the open book, and laughed.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because it’s embarrassing,” I said with some petulance in my voice. “You shouldn’t know how to do this stuff, you’re a freshman, for cripes sake. I should be able to do the problems myself after being in class and reading the book. It isn’t right.”
I tried to pout a little because actually it did frustrate me, but Kevin made it hard to feel sorry for myself. He was always so upbeat. Sometimes I found it infuriating. Like now.
“How come you can do this stuff, anyway? I keep asking that and you never really answer. Not seriously.”
“I’m just gifted, Matt. A natural brain. I solve complex math calculations in my head as mental recreation.” He walked over to the bed and flopped down on it. His challenging smile leered at me. I got up and walked over to him, then jumped on top of him.
“You’re not getting away with it this time,” I said and reached for his ribs.
He put up a struggle, but I was considerably bigger than he was, and he was ticklish. He’d tried to hide that fact from me, but I’d found out in some of our skirmishes. Two young, healthy teens, when together a lot, end up wrestling around sometimes just as part of the natural order of things. He initiated it a lot, and I sometimes wondered a little if he did it simply because he liked the contact. But once, when I was holding him down and he was wriggling, my hand slipped off his arm and my knuckles rubbed against his ribcage and he let out a shriek. From then on, the balance of power had been totally on my side.
“No fair, no fair,” he shouted, wriggling powerfully to get his elbows down into a defensive position.
“All’s fair in love and war, and this is war,” I said menacingly. “Now, how come you can do this math and I can’t? I want to know.”
“The why you can’t is because you’re dumb. The why I can is because, as I told you already, you dumb shit, I had a tutor. I already had pre-calc. I happen to be good at math.”
“Dumb shit? You think I’m a dumb shit? We’ll see how dumb I am!” I said, and feinted towards the soft area under the bottom of his rib cage, and when he covered that, I attacked his ribs mercilessly.
He rolled and jumped and was all over the bed, but I kept it up till he finally yelled, “Okay, okay, you’re not a dumb shit. Just a cruel one, and a bully for beating up kids smaller than you.”
“Okay, that’s better,” I said, laughing, and then falling next to him on the bed. He took a moment to calm down, then looked over at me. We’d been in this position before, several times, lying next to each other on my bed. He’d always given me the impression he wanted to say something at these times, but never had before. This time he did.
“Matt, I’m 14,” he said, enigmatically.
“I know. You told me.”
“Do you remember when you were 14?”
“Of course I do.”
“What do you remember most?”
“I don’t know. Lots of things that happened. The problems I had at school. The way my parents supported me. How I managed to live through it. How I had to steel myself to return to school, and feeling proud after I did. Things like that, mainly.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, how did you feel, at 14?”
I stopped for a minute, then without rolling over to look at him, still looking up at the ceiling, I said, “Just what is it you’re trying to say, Kevin?”
“I’m trying to get you to remember what it’s like to be 14. Now, I’ve never been 16, so I don’t know how that is, but I get the impression from you that it’s pretty dreary, getting that old.”
“Dreary? What kind of a word is that? I’m not dreary.”
“Well, you’re sure not young and alive like I am, so it must be the age. 16 must be well past it.”
“What are you getting at? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He rolled over on his side and propped his head up on his hand with his elbow on the bed so he could look at me. “All right, I’ll spell it out for you. Sex. I’m talking about sex. I’m talking about being 14. I’m 14 and perpetually horny. All the time. I’m sort of a walking hard-on, if you want to know. We roll around on the bed together, and I get so hard I think it might burst. But we don’t even have to be on the bed together. Just sitting talking to you at times, or swimming with you and rubbing your wet body against mine, or talking to you on the phone. I get hard. You’ve noticed, haven’t you? You have to have noticed!”
Yeah, I’d noticed. I’d noticed in the pool and I’d noticed just now, and before, on the bed. You can’t roll around on a bed with a kid who’s sporting wood and not know it. My problem was, when he got hard when we were rolling around together, so did I, and while he didn’t seem to go to any pains to hide his, I did mine. I didn’t want him to know. I guess he didn’t care if I knew about him. Maybe he even wanted me to know.
No, if that was the case, he’d have said something. Heaven knows, he wasn’t shy. So perhaps he didn’t want me to know, he simply didn’t care if I noticed.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation with him. He’d told me, when we’d first talked, that he was gay and liked me. We’d more or less avoided the subject since then. I was older, and even though he was brash and self-confident and cocky as all hell, I had seen that he watched me to some extent and even followed my lead in some things; he did that when it came to being demonstrative about sex. I didn’t bring it up, I’d ignored what he’d originally told me after we’d first talked about it, and he didn’t make an issue of it either. Perhaps he was wanting to do that now, and I wasn’t sure what to do. What I wanted to do was—well, that was complicated. But what I intended to do was try to cut this off. We were doing so well just being friends. That’s all we could be, and so this kind of talk was dangerous.
But I didn’t want to censor him. I just wanted to sort of naturally talk but then lead the conversation away from here. To just ignore him would be deceitful and mean.
“Yeah, I noticed. And yeah, I remember being horny sometimes when I was 14.”
“But you’re not any more? Now that you’re 16?”
“Kevin, that’s kind of personal.”
“Matt, if you and I aren’t personal, what the hell are we? What, we can’t talk about this?”
I sighed. Leading a conversation with Kevin where I wanted it to go but he didn’t wasn’t something I was very good at. “If you want to, yeah, we can. And yes, I’m horny. You don’t stop being horny till you’re much older, I think, or are getting regular sex. Most teens don’t get regular sex, at least not with a partner, like every day or 5 or 6 times a week, so most teens are horny.”
“Well, I am a lot. All the time. And as for regular sex with a partner, that would be great. Can we start now?”
“Kevin!”
He laughed. “Well, at least you’re talking about it. That’s great. It’s better than nothing.”
I knew I had to stop him, stop his hopes. It was better that way. He couldn’t go through high school hoping that the two of us would get together. It wasn’t fair to him. Maybe now was the time to stop the worrying about this I’d been doing for a while now. I supposed this was as good a time as any to talk to him about it.
“Kevin,” I said, and looked right into his eyes. “I know what you told me. That you like me. Well, I have to tell you something, I have to be honest. It’s this: I like you too. And the more time we spend together, the more I like you. But it can’t go anywhere. I’m just too old for you. And I’ll be going away to college when you still have two years of high school ahead of you. You need to find a boyfriend who’ll be here, who you can do things with now, and after I’m gone.”
“Why? If you like me, and I like you, and we want to have sex, why can’t we? Other kids do all the time. Boys and girls do it, and gay boys do it, too. The statistics say most kids start having sex when they’re in high school. We’re in high school. It’s our time. Right now. Saying we might not be together after you go to college is a crazy reason not to do anything now. We have two years. Well, we have about a year and a half. That’s not something we should waste. We should start having sex right away.”
Damn him anyway! He was going to make this hard. And I only had so much resolve. But I couldn’t take advantage of his age. I just couldn’t. I was two years older than him. It wasn’t right for me to use him like that. And that was forgetting about the fact that I wasn’t really gay. I might be in the process of falling in love with him, but that didn’t mean I was gay.
“I’m too old for you, Kevin. I keep telling you that. You never seem to hear me. I’m too old for you.”
“So you mean you’re not horny, being so old? I know I felt something when you were tickling me just
now. I think you might be horny.”
“Goddammit, Kevin, of course I’m horny. I told you I like you. Don’t you know how hard this is
for me? I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, too. I . . . .” I stopped,
suddenly realizing everything I was saying would only encourage him. I had to say things to cool him down, not heat
him up.
“Kevin, I’ll graduate next year. You’ll only be a sophomore. If we were closer together in school, I might feel differently, maybe the age thing wouldn’t matter so much. But it is what it is. There’s just too much space between us, and I’m not going to corrupt you. Period. Besides which, I’m not even sure I’m gay. I mean, I’m not gay. What if I meet a girl and fall in love? It could happen, you know?”
“A girl? Yeah, right. Let’s get real here. You won’t be corrupting me, Matt. It’s what I want. I think about it a lot.”
“Well, I do, too, sometimes, but I’m not going to do things with someone a lot younger than I am. I’m just not. Not a freshman when I’m a junior. Not a sophomore when I’m a senior. It isn’t right!”
Kevin pouted a moment, but I could see him thinking. He wasn’t one to give up. Ever. Finally he spoke. “Look, you say having two class years between us is too much. So that means, if there was only one, that would be different?”
“Sure. A senior and a junior getting together happens all the time. It wouldn’t look so bad.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t do things now. Since we’re going to be together when I’m older, and we’re going to do things then, we should do them now, too. It’ll be the same thing, we just won’t be wasting all that time waiting. When you go away, Matt, I’ll have to deal with it, and I’ll be really unhappy, but why be unhappy now, when we can be together now? Either way I’m going to be unhappy, but without doing stuff now, I’ll be unhappy a whole lot longer. That doesn’t make any sense. Do you want to do stuff with me, Matt? I mean, do you want to kiss me? Think about this: do you want to touch me, down there? Me to touch you? Do you ever dream about us being together, naked? And making out? Maybe lying on top of me, naked, rolling around a little?”
I realized what he was doing. He was trying to seduce me! Unfortunately, it was working. I was thinking about it, and getting hard in the process, picturing what he was talking about. I squirmed a little on the bed, and he saw it.
“Okay, so you do want to do those things,” he said triumphantly. “I do too. You won’t be corrupting me, and no one has to know, but I’m getting terminally horny. We have to do something. Anything, but something.”
“Kevin . . .”
“I’ll tell you what. Come with me.” He stood up, and reached his hand toward me. I took it, and he pulled me off the bed.
I had no idea what he was doing, but this was the dominant Kevin I was dealing with, and though he was shorter and younger than I was, he could get me to jump through hoops when he tried to.
We left the house and walked down the street. I live in a very nice area of town with large houses and landscaped properties. At the end of our street there was a large area that was designated to be a park someday. It was entirely undeveloped, but they did always keep it mowed. Kevin led me to it, and we walked across the grassy field and then down a slight hill to where a creek burbled through some rocks and led into a small woods. Just inside the woods, there was a pond. Kevin led us to the bank of the pond, where he sat down on a fallen tree, then pulled me down next to him.
“Matt,” he said, sounding very serious, “I’m not going to do anything to violate what you believe in. I respect you for wanting to protect me. But I just have to have this, for a number of reasons. Look at me.”
I was sitting close enough that our thighs were touching. I turned to him. He was turned towards me, so our faces were inches apart. He slowly raised his hands, and put one on each side of my face. Then he moved his head towards me.
I knew what he was doing. But I couldn’t stop him. I was gazing at him, and my emotions were high, and there was no way I could resist. I didn’t want to stop him. I wanted this as much as he did.
His lips touched mine, tentatively, briefly. Then he pulled a couple inches back and looked deeply into my eyes. I looked back. He must have liked what he saw, because he moved his head towards me again, and when his lips touched mine this time it wasn’t tentatively.
I couldn’t help myself. My arms came up and wrapped themselves around him. I held him, pulled him even closer, and we kissed.
This was my first kiss, and while it was clumsy and inexperienced, it was also heavenly and full of fire. I got hard immediately. This wasn’t a chaste, passionless kiss. All the feelings I had for Kevin went into it. As good as it felt as we kissed, I wanted more. I needed more. We held the kiss for probably a minute, our lips moving over each other, and for a brief moment I felt the tip of his tongue brushing my lower lip. Then he pulled back.
I wanted him back! This wasn’t fair. How was I supposed to maintain my resolve if he did this?
I was still holding him, and he nestled his head against my chest. We were both breathing rapidly. He was silent, gathering himself, and when he’d done that, he let out a large sigh. I looked down at him and could see his pants tented as boldly as mine were.
I didn’t want to let him go, but sitting there, I knew I had to. The more I held him, the harder it would be not to do so again. And we couldn’t do this again. We couldn’t!
I removed my hands and sat up straight. He sat up, too.
“I’m sorry, Matt, but I had to do that. And I had to know. Now I do. You do care for me. Maybe that’s too weak a word. It is for me. I love you, Matt. And whatever you say, I’m going to wait for you, till you’re ready. And I’m going to try hard not to mess around with any other boys while I’m waiting. But even if I’m not that strong, you’re the one I want, and I’m going to be waiting till you stop objecting.”
I simply looked at him, at his strength, at his beauty, at all of him. I knew now, without a doubt, that I loved him, too. I loved him for his intelligence, his quick wit, his independence, his spirit. I couldn’t believe such a boy would love me, but I didn’t doubt for a minute that he did.
But I was too old for him. He was a young, innocent boy, just starting high school. It was up to me to control this relationship, not him. I had to set the limits. That was my responsibility.
“Kevin, we just can’t do this. I’m an inch away from tearing all your clothes off. It’s too tempting, sitting here with you. And it’s not right.”
“Matt, we love each other. At least I love you, and you like me. We’re living our lives, right now, Matt. We can’t be afraid to do that. I’m not asking you to marry me, I’m asking you to show me how you feel. To let me show you how I feel. For us to experience sex together for the first time for both of us, to see how wonderful it can be can be if two people love each other. No one has to know but us. We can do this till you go to school, and then I’ll wait. I’ll wait whether we do this now or not, but why? Why not now? There’s no reason in the world not to.”
I was so torn! I wanted this so badly, maybe even more than he did. And he made so much sense!
“There is a reason, Kev,” I said, regretting every word. “I have to be true to my principles, my beliefs. I can’t take advantage of a boy two years younger. You have to be free to get to know other boys, ones your age. You can’t waste your high-school days waiting for someone that won’t even be around. I don’t think we should kiss again. It just makes it too hard.”
I stood up, and reached for his hand. He gave it to me, and I pulled him up. Then I led us back up to my house, where I told him goodbye.