The Tennis Player

Chapter 7

I thought he’d be comfortable explaining what I was curious about, and that answering my question wouldn’t embarrass him.

“You said your grandmother gave you no personal privacy, and that continued as you grew older. Do you mean she still sees you naked, still is, uh, ‘involved’ with you when you’re naked?” I’d had to be careful with that last bit.

“No. I think she’d like me to be as immodest as I was when younger around her because it would continue to support her hold over me, but, no. She did still see me naked and even bathe me when I was ten, and that was embarrassing because when she was bathing me I was getting boners much more frequently then. She didn’t remark on them, other than to say that’s what boys did, they get hard—she called them erections—like that and to just ignore them. But when I turned eleven and puberty was beginning to burn, I began getting feelings I’d never had before. The erections at that point began insisting on more attention; no way could I ignore them.

“But when you started getting more boners, you had to start having sexual feelings then, too. She must have known that. But she and you never discussed it? How did that work?”

“I think it was difficult for her. I’d been having boners now and then since childhood. They never meant anything. But then, when I was ten, when I got them they felt different and were more frequent. I started rubbing them in the warm bath water when she was washing me all over. When she saw that, me touching myself, rubbing, she didn’t know what to do. Denying me the right to do that wouldn’t work; she knew that; I would have found a way, would have continued even without her approval, and in doing so, I’d gain some independence. I’d be doing something she’d forbidden me to do, and in that way she’d lose some of her power over me.

“So she told me boys my age often began doing what I was doing, rubbing themselves, but I could easily hurt myself doing it because of the intense sensations it could cause. So, I was only to rub myself that way with her there to watch and instruct, thereby making sure I did it right. She said she needed to be there so I wouldn’t hurt myself doing it wrong. So, for a short time, that’s what happened; she watched and commented.”

“She watched? And talked to you while you were doing it? No way!”

“Way,” he said, and looked out into the woods, not wanting me to see his expression.

After a few moments of silence, of him remembering, he said, “It was shortly after that when I asked her if I could take showers instead of a bath. She asked why, and I said it was hard work for her to bathe me, I could do it myself now, I was old enough, and showering would be easier, faster, and less work for her.

“That wasn’t the true reason I asked, of course. By that time, I’d realized that everything she said wasn’t necessarily true. So I was careful about it, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be able to lie if she could. And I’d found subtle ways to get what I wanted that I knew wouldn’t be something she necessarily wanted me to have.

“I told you I often ran naked from the tennis court to the pool. I did it because it was a stroke of independence that I knew she didn’t like, but how could she complain when she was the one who wanted to continue bathing me at my age? If she complained I shouldn’t be running around naked, I figured I’d just ask why; she was the only one who could see me and she’d seen me naked all my life. If she then said I was older now, I’d ask what difference that made. And I’d remind her that she’d even seen me rubbing myself.

“This line of talk was sure to lead to a discussion about sex. She didn’t want to have that conversation. Nothing about sex was ever mentioned between us.”

“She doesn’t still watch you jerking off, does she?”

“No, quite soon after she started teaching me about that, I told her I didn’t need her help with it any longer, and that I didn’t do it very often, anyway, and she was okay with that. I think watching me embarrassed her. I hoped it did. I also hoped that my not wanting her to watch meant I was straight, as maybe a gay kid wouldn’t mind her watching but a straight kid would.”

I decided this was the time to change the subject. It was a great time to ask more about what he hadn’t told me before.

“You came to school in first grade. My school. And you never joined in with anyone. You told me why that was, but you didn’t say why you came to school at all. Why didn’t she just have you tutored?”

“Yeah, that. It was one of the first times, maybe the only time, I ever saw my father stand up to her. I was five. He told her I’d never be able to run her companies if I was not socialized. That kids learn how to behave by being with and watching others their age. I had to learn how to act among my peers. And the way that had to be done was by going to school. They argued, and she pulled out all her weapons, but he didn’t fold. She knew if he grew a backbone, he could make waves with the board of directors. She didn’t want to have to deal with that, so she let him have his way on that. But she still controlled how I acted at school.”

I was loving riding my horse through the woods. I liked the privacy we had; it felt very intimate. We were very alone, just us and the horses and the woods, and I was really enjoying how that felt, the entire atmosphere. Clark was a big part of that, and my feelings for him were growing. He’d had an incredible life. All this repression, yet a lot of successes, too. He was smart; I knew that from the work on the paper we were doing. He was athletic, a great tennis player and swimmer. He was also deadly attractive to me in an offbeat sort of way. He had a very individual look, but the more time I spent with him, the more I was liking it. And him.

I was getting to know him, and so far, everything I’d found out about him was good. Very good.

We came back to the stables and Clark showed me how to brush down the horses and take care of the tack. I could see having a horse and riding it involved a lot of responsibility and knowledge. That led me to consider something else.

“Did Robert teach you about horses, how to ride and everything else?”

“Yeah; why?”

“Uh, I was just thinking. You told me not to worry about him telling your grandmother about me being here. You had to have spent a lot of time with him when you were younger, and then when you were into puberty. And during that time you grew to understand that you were attracted to men. Well, males. I don’t know if it was boys or men who got your attention, but it just makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Well . . .” He was looking at me with eyes showing curiosity, but they were guarded somehow, too. “I’m just putting two and two together and maybe getting seven for an answer, but, well, you spent a lot of time with him, and you said he keeps your grandmother aware of what’s what with you, yet you also said he wouldn’t tell her about me. That makes me suspicious. Do you have something on him that makes you sure he’d never tell her something you don’t want her to know?”

He gave me a crooked smile. “Well, if you need to know—I guess I can tell you. I didn’t want to go to Grandmother with questions, certain kinds of questions, but Robert, we were good together, he was a man, and he knew things I wanted to know. I couldn‘t ask my father. I could ask Robert. And I discovered Robert liked answering me. Sometimes, he’d demonstrate what he was telling me. I got to know him a lot better, and he does like his job here as he told you. If I ever told Grandmother some of what he showed me, he wouldn’t just be dismissed, he’d be in jail. No, he won’t say a word.

“And so, yes, we’re safe with him knowing whatever he knows.”

“So you two did stuff together?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. No, nothing like that. I did see him naked and aroused. But there was no touching going on.” He gave me a look. “Why? Are you jealous?”

I didn’t answer.

We worked some more on the paper. One of the things we learned about Eisenhower’s youth was that he’d had a knee injury that didn’t heal right and became infected. It got bad, the infection spread, and the doctor wanted to amputate his leg. David—he was called David Dwight at first and then later changed to Dwight David—refused. He knew early on that he wanted to join the military and wouldn’t be able to with only one leg. Therefore, he wouldn’t allow the doctor to see him after that. He had his brother guard the door so the man couldn’t get to him. And, eventually, the infection cured itself; the leg was saved. I thought that showed an exceptional will, even at a young age. I was impressed by that. Would I ever be able to show that much determination and courge?

I made sure we included that in our paper.

We had a difference of opinion about the paper. I could easily see that Clark was a better writer than I was, and so I was happy letting him do that from the notes we’d both taken. But there was one thing I didn’t like about what I was reading that he’d written.

“You’re putting citations in after a lot of the facts you’re including. I know why—we were told to do that—but it makes it difficult to read what the story is when it’s interrupted with citations all the time. We should find a better way to do this.”

“I hope you can! The way I’m doing it now interrupts the flow of the sentences I’m writing, so much so that I keep losing my train of thought.”

I read some more, kept being bothered by all the citations, and then sat up. “I have an idea. Why don’t you just add a number in parentheses instead of a full citation, and then at the end of the paragraph, supply the citations to fit the numbers?”

“Or better yet,” he said, sounding excited, “at the bottom of each page.”

“We can do it even better than that,” I said. “We’re breaking the story into several sections. I think we could put the citations by number at the end of each section. Placed there, they wouldn’t be interrupting anything.”

He smiled at me, and his eyes seemed deeper than usual. “You know, we make a great team.”

“I noticed,” I said, and laughed. It felt defensive. Probably was.

For dinner that night, after looking at all the fancy dishes that were available, he gave me his cockeyed grin and called out for a pizza to be delivered. I could see his grandmother’s effect even then. He asked me if green peppers and olives were okay with me as toppings; he said that’s what she always ordered.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, why would I be. What’s wrong with those?”

“Obviously your sheltered childhood was much worse than I expected. Much worse. It verged on child abuse. Here, dial the number and give me the phone.”

He did, and I ordered an extra large pizza with extra cheese and with sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and jalapenos. He gave me a funny look.

“Are you sure about all that? And no green pepper?”

“Trust me.”

The expression on his face when the pizza arrived and we’d both grabbed a piece and sunk our teeth into it was something to see. His eyes opened so wide I thought they were in danger of falling out. He chewed, swallowed, then looked at me and said, “Where have you been all my life?”

I grinned at him, but only for a brief moment because he’d finished his first piece and was going after his second, and I wasn’t about to let him get ahead of me. He’d already out-shined me at tennis, and at swimming, but I was going to stay apace with him devouring the pizza. I’d matched up pretty well with him stripping off; then we’d been equal. Now, with eating pizza, there was no way I’d let him beat me. Being equals was very important to me.

We finished the pizza together, both picking up the last two slices at the same time. He didn’t seem to realize it had been a competition, which had made my job easier. But he did thank me for introducing him to a whole new taste he’d never had before. He’d always let Grandmother choose for him. Now he’d let me choose, and it had gone awfully well. I had the feeling we’d be eating a lot of pizza together in the future. And that led to a disquieting thought: being together with him when his grandmother returned might be very hard to arrange.

Maybe impossible.

In bed that night—my mom called me; she wasn’t happy I was staying with him another night even though she’d said it was okay that morning. She said I had to come home tomorrow!—we were both excited. It had less of the first-time edge to it, but that actually meant we could take it a little slower, enjoy it a little more. It was all still new, but there wasn’t the rush to completion now. There wasn’t the same early shyness or embarrassment, either.

We took our time, neither of us reaching nirvana till late in the game. After that we kissed, and I realized that wasn’t something I’d seen in the few videos I’d watched of boys doing it. They often kissed at the beginning, probably scripted—I assumed what they were doing was choreographed—and they’d been told to kiss then. They never seemed to kiss when it was over. Often it just ended with an orgasm. We didn’t end like that. We ended by kissing and expressing our deepening feelings with our lips and tongues and body language. Spooning again, we fell asleep happily content. Life was good!

I felt better than I ever had before. This was the way I always wanted to fall asleep, in the arms of someone who was showing me his feelings for me were as strong as mine were for him.

Sunday, I was ready to work on the paper again. Okay, maybe I’m a little too Goody Two-shoes. We’d been given an assignment, and I wanted to get it done and done well. Clark had other ideas of how to spend the day. “We’re way ahead of everyone else. Many won’t have even started yet. No, we’re just going to hang today. I want to get to know you better.”

“Really? That’s what I want, too. Oh, there’s something we need to discuss. How do we act at school?”

“Just like we always did. I can’t let anyone know there’s been any change. They’d all want my story if it looked like I’d changed, if I were approachable.”

“They know we’re working together.”

“Yeah. Why don’t you just tell them we’re each doing different parts, we’re working on our own, and I’m still hardly talking at all.”

“They may have seen me get in the limo with you Thursday and Friday.”

“That’s easy. Just tell them I had the limo driver take you home. In the limo, we talked about who’d do what on the project. Or, better, you told me who’d do what on it.”

“It’s going to be hard, you being right there, and I can’t even grin at you.”

“How do you think I’ve felt, having this crush on you for years and not able to look at you except briefly and casually?”

That gave me a warm, tingly feeling, and I kissed him.

A while later, he said, “Come on,” and we walked outside, crossed the lawn and made our way into the woods. We didn’t go along any of the horse trails. Instead, he took me off the path and into the trees. It was easy walking as the trees weren’t locked close together and the ground wasn’t covered with vines or brambles or low-lying rubble of this or that kind. It was quiet, other than bird calls, and I thought this was a better, more celestial Sunday morning experience than being in church would be.

It was a warm day, and as the sun passed its zenith and the breeze capitulated, the day warmed further. Outside the woods, the air reached easily into the 90s; inside, it was still quite warm at over 80. I’d assumed, with the sun’s fury restricted by overhead branches and vegetation and only splashes of it filtering through the leaves, it would be cooler, yet I was still working up a significant sweat.

Clark was enjoying the ambience as much as I was and didn’t seem to notice the heat; I could tell by the look on his face how happy and relaxed he was. He smiled now, something I’d never witnessed at school. Neither of us wanted to break the spell the setting was creating for us, and so we weren’t talking.

After about a ten-minute walk among the trees, the light before us brightened, and quite soon thereafter we stepped out of the woods. In front of us lay the lake he’d told me was on their property but I hadn’t seen.

It was beautiful, a small lake surrounded by trees and grassy areas along the shore abundant with wildflowers. Clark walked to the water’s edge, crouched down and stuck his hand in the water. Then he stood up and took off his shirt. When he didn’t stop there, I had to ask. “What’re you doing?”

“Swimming. Come on. You chicken?”

“No, but you have a pool. Why swim here?”

“Why not? It’s warm enough, and, don’t tell anyone, but I like being naked outdoors.”

By that time he was pulling down his pants. He gave me a look, a challenge, and I started undressing.

Naked outdoors in the wilderness. What a feeling that gave me. Okay, maybe not that wild a wilderness, but for a boy who’d never had this sort of experience before, I felt rather wild. Civilization, I can’t hear you!

The setting was beautiful. A private lake with trees as bodyguards. Sunlit vista with a naked boy in it. Me, naked too. He was right: it felt terrific.

Clark didn’t even get in the water right away. He strolled naked around the shoreline, probably feeling some of what I was feeling. I followed him, liking the way the air felt on my body. All parts of it. Liking looking at him, his musculature on display, his perfect skin, his body moving.

The sun was still with us, bright and strong, announcing its vigor. However, with no clothing muting its presence, by then I was dripping sweat. He was, too, and so when I finally got tired of random rambling, erotic as it was, I couldn’t stop myself. Didn’t want to. When we were in an appropriate place covered in thick grass, I tackled him.

The combination of both of us being naked, the sweat flowing freely, and the feeling of togetherness I had with him here in the open with no one around, I discovered I had lost whatever semblance of inhibition I might have been accustomed to. We were both very wet, very slippery. I was on top of him, wriggling, and he flipped me over and wriggled himself. It didn’t take us long, as young and randy as we were. Sliding on top of each other, well, wow! That described it better than any poet I’d ever read could. Just wow!

Afterwards, we cooled off in the lake.

The water was warm. He said there was a natural warm spring under it that kept it that way. We didn’t swim long. We were both anxious to get back to the house. We were dry and happy, very happy, walking back. We held hands all the way, and when we came close to the house, Robert stepped out of the stable and saw us. Clark tightened his grip on my hand; it seemed he wanted Robert to know, or perhaps he felt such joy that it felt limiting to keep it hidden.

That afternoon, Robert drove me home.

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