My mother and brother Shawn continued going to church every Sunday. I went, too, for a couple of months, but then stopped. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. My mother, in only two months, had become very involved with all the activities that went on there. She was on several committees and the head of one of them; she’d developed a certain status there. Shawn liked going, too, which surprised me, but since we didn’t talk that much anymore, now that he was a cool big kid, I didn’t know what about church kept him going back. But go back he did, and he’d actually grown closer to Mom by doing so.
I never did get to like that church or what they preached, and each week I fussed a little more about going. Finally, I told my mom I wasn’t going to go anymore.
“Of course you are, Tim. It’s a wonderful place. Maybe if you’d try listening a little closer to the sermon instead of falling asleep every week or fidgeting in your seat, you might understand the message and get something out of it. Reverend Elliston is an inspiration and teaches us so much. He is enriching our souls and showing us a better way of life. No, you’re certainly not dropping out.”
She was using that tone of voice that didn’t allow for argument. When she spoke like this, with a stern tone and flashing eyes, you’d just heard the word, and it wasn’t going to be changed by a whining 10-year-old. Of course, it was also a fact that I wasn’t a child who gave up easily. I’d had years and years of learning how to fight my battles and manipulate my parents. I was pretty good at it. In this case, I knew what to do. I simply picked a better battleground. I went to my dad.
He was in the living room reading his paper. I sat down next to him on the couch and waited till he looked up at me.
I had to be careful how I handled this, but I had a great relationship with my dad, and I knew how to work him. I made myself as cute as I could, which is a skill most 10-year-olds have developed. Then, with innocent and trusting eyes and using my best, most convincing voice, I began, “Dad, I don’t want to go to church any longer. Mom says I have to. But you said people should only go if they want to. I remember you telling Mom that. You said it when she first asked you to go to church with us. Since I don’t want to go any longer, I think I should be able to stop.” I was very conscious of keeping any sort of a whine out of my voice. But I did give him my best hangdog look. It couldn’t hurt, I guessed.
Dad looked at me, thinking. Finally, he said, “Tim, have you given it a fair chance? Do you want to stop just because it’s a little boring, or because you have to get dressed up, or some reason like that? A lot of what they teach there is probably good. Tell me why you want to stop going.”
I shook my head. He wasn’t getting it. “It isn’t that I want to stay in bed in the morning or anything like that. I listen in church. I’ve been paying attention, more so the last few weeks. I’ve listened and tried hard to understand what’s being said. I just don’t like what Reverend Elliston talks about. He’s always talking about what the Bible says—he mostly talks about the Old Testament—and he does a lot of yelling that if we don’t believe what the Bible says strongly enough we won’t be saved. He’s always saying most people are going to end up in hell because they are sinners.
“Then he talks about having to believing what’s written down in the Book to be saved and how we must take all the teachings into our hearts and become born again. I get tired of it, how much he repeats that, and the way he talks, he makes me think I’m a sinner all the time, and I don’t even know what it is that makes me a sinner. I’m pretty sure, though, that he thinks I am one, and he hates anyone who’s a sinner and it’s his talking like that that makes me think there might be something wrong with me.
“I don’t like thinking that! And I don’t even understand what it is that he thinks is wrong with me, but it makes me feel bad about myself. I start thinking I’m bad when I’m listening to him in church because of all this sin talk. I get really uncomfortable. It’s like I’m being lectured for doing something wrong, but I don’t know what it is.”
I stopped for a moment because I was getting too worked up. I tried to continue with a softer, less passionate voice. “I don’t really understand a lot of what he says. I just know I sit there feeling I’m not a good person, but when I’m not there listening to him, I don’t think that at all. Then, I’m fine with myself. When I leave the church, I start to feel good about myself again. It does take time, though, after church.”
My dad was just looking at me, not interrupting at all, and that felt like encouragement, so I went on. “He shouts a lot, he uses words like blasphemy and condemnation, that kind of word, and I don’t like it when he does, even if I don’t know exactly what he means.”
I shook my head, trying to shake some of these thoughts loose, I guess. “I’m not a bad person, Dad. I’m not! But he makes me feel like I am. It would just be easier if I didn’t go on Sunday, I think. Maybe I should wait till I’m older and more into doing bad stuff. Then I might get something out of it. Then I might need it. But not now. I don’t think I’m bad at all and hate hearing that I am and should be ashamed of myself.
“I don’t want to go any longer. Would that be okay?”
Dad didn’t speak right away, looking out the window instead of looking at me. He sighed, and I don’t know why, but I got the impression he was thinking about things from his own childhood, things that had happened a long time ago.
When he spoke, it was in a soft, understanding voice. “I’m not going to give you an answer right now, Tim. I’ll talk to your mother. We’ll see. The two of us have to agree on things like this. But I want you to know, I think your reason is a very good one, well thought out and well presented, and I’m on your side with this. The reasons you gave for not liking church, those were the same reasons I didn’t like going to church when I was young, so I do understand.” Then, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and hugged me, which seemed strange as he didn’t do that much. It felt good, though.
That evening, when we sat down at the table for dinner, before we started eating, my mother made an announcement. “I’ve decided we should all say grace every night, to thank the Lord and pray as a family. So from now on, either Shawn or I will say grace before the meal. We’ll all clasp our hands, bow our heads, and stay that way till the grace is complete. I think this will be a wonderful, uplifting thing. It will make us even closer as a family.” She smiled at us.
I, of course, had an immediate question. “Mom, why only you and Shawn? How come Dad and I don’t have to say grace?”
“It’s not ‘have to’, Tim. Saying grace is a privilege, something that’s good and comes from the heart. I spoke to your father and we’ve decided you won’t be going with Shawn and me to church on Sunday any more. He also said he didn’t want to actually give the grace, but will participate in it, and we decided you should do that, too. If you want to say grace, you can, but if you’re going to, you should come to church, too.” She smiled at me again, then said, “I really, really hope you decide to do that. I hope you realize what you’re missing by not attending church every week, not hearing Reverend Elliston’s wise and wonderful preaching.”
I thought hard about this, maybe for three seconds.
“Okay, I won’t say grace then.”
She didn’t smile at that, but instead looked a little sad. However, she clasped hands with Dad and Shawn, made sure I did the same, then bowed her head and waited till we did, too. She said a brief prayer, said, “Amen,” afterwards, and then we all ate.
Later, when Dad and I were alone, I asked him about grace and talked to him about my not going to church. “Dad, it seems funny to me. We’re suddenly going to say grace every night, and I’m suddenly not going to church. Did you guys do a deal or something?”
Dad laughed. “You’re too smart by half, Tim. Let’s just say that everything costs something. I think you should be happy with what you have to pay for skipping church every week. And grace isn’t so bad, is it?”
“No. I just wanted to know, that’s all.”
And that’s how I ended up not going to church. But, as I say, my mother and Shawn kept it up. And, little by little, the graces got a little longer, a little more serious. Stuff about sin, and the stuff I didn’t like that made me feel a little embarrassed about even though I hadn’t done anything to make me feel that way. That stuff started creeping into the prayers. So did Jesus. He was in there a lot now. It seemed to me that both my mother and Shawn were taking this religion stuff more seriously as time went on. However, I didn’t spend much time with Shawn any longer, and Mom was now quite busy at church; I wasn’t around her as much as before. As a result, their growing devotion or piety or whatever you call it didn’t really impact me too much.
What did affect me was puberty!
As it has a way of doing, puberty hit me beginning when I was eleven and a half. Jed had grown to be a little larger than I was—not that he was much above average, because he wasn’t. I was just small and not growing very fast. I took after my father. He was only 5’ 7”, tall and slender, and it looked like I’d inherited my stature from him, unfortunately. When you’re a little kid you notice that but until you get a bit older and it begins to matter more, it doesn’t bother you much. When you hit middle school, little and weaker kids get picked on more and so they start caring more about their size.
By the time we were 12, Jed was a couple inches taller and probably 25 pounds heavier than I was. That might not sound like very much, but it is. He was a bigger kid than I was. And puberty struck him first.
I was in 7th grade now. Middle school. A lot different from elementary. For some reason, many schools decide this is the best time to make boys begin taking communal showers. Of course, this is also the time boys are beginning to develop, the time when there is a tremendous variation in development and so a tremendous variation in boys’ appearances, and a time when boys, no matter what their stage of development, are acutely embarrassed about their bodies. So what do schools do? They force these uncertain boys to take off all their clothes and display themselves to each other. If this isn’t abusive, then Daffy and Donald didn’t have ducks for parents.
A lot of boys have major problems shedding their covering with other boys standing around gawking at them, and of course I was one of those boys. In my case, I was a smaller boy than almost everyone else to begin with, and then, for who knows why, I hadn’t started developing as soon as most of the others. Puberty was just a word to me, not a fact. So I wasn’t just smaller, I was smaller in all the important places as well. I was also completely hairless, so my smallness wasn’t a bit under cover. When I had to undress, it was all there for everyone to see, what there was of it, and it wasn’t much.
Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t the only one in this situation, but that didn’t help a whole lot. Or at all, actually. To this day, I can still remember in painful detail how that first time went.
It was our second day in 7th grade, our first year at middle school. The day before, we’d learned how things would work. For the first time, we were going to be moving from classroom to classroom. We had lockers with locks, and we had books we were responsible for. We were introduced to all our new teachers, we found what rooms we had each period and how to get to them quickly, and we learned a bunch of the new rules and procedures. Jed and I had four classes and homeroom together and three classes that were different. Luckily, we shared the two important periods: lunch and gym. In gym that first day, we were given lockers and told what was what.
“Okay guys, I’m Mr. Mahoney. I get to have my way with you guys all year. If you listen up and pay attention and don’t give me any grief, you’re going to enjoy this class. However, if you screw around and give me trouble, I can guarantee you won’t be happy campers. Now, my rules are pretty simple, but I expect them to be followed. First, everyone dresses out every day. No exceptions. If you don’t dress, you’d better have a note from someone explaining why, and the note will be checked. Otherwise, if you don’t have a valid note and you don’t dress out, your ass is mine and you won’t like what I decide to do with it. Okay? Got it?”
He looked at us, not an unpleasant look, but we’d never heard a teacher say “ass” before, so we were pretty quiet. He inspired quietness anyway. He was a large man, not fat, but large, with well-developed arms that filled the sleeves of his gray tee shirt. He had short black hair and was tanned. He stood with his feel slightly apart and had a deep voice. He didn’t look angry or upset, but his demeanor just shouted at us, a group of 12-year-old boys, and it would have been in bold print had it been in a newspaper. It screamed out his ‘don’t mess with me’ message. That message certainly came through loud and clear.
“You’ll dress out in a white tee shirt and gym shorts. I’ll pass out three of each to you in a minute. You’ll have to supply your own white athletic socks, sneakers and jock straps. If you don’t have any of these, buy them after school today. Best if you get more than one or two jock straps and socks so you can wear clean ones every day. If anything you wear gets to smelling so I can notice it, I’ll make you take whatever it is off, and if you don’t have your spare, you’ll just go without it that class. If you end up naked from the waist down for the rest of that period, that’s on you, not me. The times we’ve done that have been pretty happy times—for everyone who still has all their clothes on. Lots of laughs, lots of pointing on those days. Most of you don’t like being laughed at, so I’d suggest you have clean stuff and have it every day. Okay? Got it?”
I looked at Jed, and he looked at me. Both of us had wide open eyes. I was thinking, no way, Jose, but I wasn’t saying it out loud.
“Okay, last rule you have to think about. And follow. Every day, every boy will get in the showers after gym. Again, no exceptions. Not even any notes on this one. If you dress out, you shower. Period. I know, I know, half of you don’t want to get naked, and half of you want to show off how big you’ve gotten all of a sudden, and half of you don’t know what to think. Makes no difference at all. The rule is, everyone showers.”
Then he smiled at us, and said, “You know boys, I was in your position a few years ago, and I remember it. So I’ll say this. I know some of you are just a teensy bit shy, almost all of you are feeling modest at this age, and so most of you hate this, and I mean really hate it. But you’ve got a friend here. The thing I hate worst in life, really despise, is a bully. Some of you are going to see this showering business as the perfect opportunity to start teasing other kids about what they look like, how they aren’t as muscular, or how much or how little hair they’ve got down there, or the size of their equipment. Is that going to happen in here? Huh? Is it?”
He looked at each one of us. That took some time because there were probably 60 of us there. But he looked each one of us in the eye and held the look for a moment. The room was quieter than an undertaker’s cold room after working hours. We all tried to meet his eyes, and maybe some of us were able to. Not many, though.
“The answer to that question is, someone will probably try to say something along those lines. Someone does most every year. One of the less bright and more primitive of you. I’d better not hear it. If I do, the phrase ‘running laps’ will mean something entirely different after that than it does now to that someone. Do any of you know what ‘run till you collapse’ means? Well, you will.
“I’m serious about this, fellas. Everyone is a little uncertain about his body right now, no matter what it looks like. So, we’re not going to have personal remarks in here. Unfortunately, a few of you won’t believe this or won’t remember it or just need to test me. Maybe they’ll think I won’t hear them. But it won’t be very many, I can assure you of that. Not after the first one.”
He looked at us again, then asked for questions. No one had any. I think we were all thoroughly intimidated, though I, for one, was feeling very good about gym in general and this coach in particular. A lot better than before I’d met him. I’d thought gym every day would be a period of constant intimidation. Now, it didn’t look like that would be the case at all.
He then had us line up and come forward. He asked our waist size, which most of us didn’t know, then gave us each two pairs of shorts with Lakeshore Middle School stenciled in red letters against the gray cloth. He also handed us a slip of paper with a locker number on it and a combination number for the built-in lock.
When we went to put our shorts in our lockers, instead of going to mine, I walked with Jed. His locker wasn’t anywhere near mine, but I followed him anyway. When we got there, I asked the boy who had the locker next to his if he’d trade with me and handed him my slip. He looked at it, then shrugged and gave me his slip. So now, I was going to be next to Jed all year. Pretty cool.
Which brings us to the second day of gym, the first day we’d be dressing out. I’d gone with my mother and bought a couple jockstraps the evening before. It was embarrassing for me because we had to shop in the little kids department to find one with a small enough waist. It also had a tiny pouch which unfortunately was plenty large enough for me. As they say, them’s the breaks. Deal with it.
That first day, everyone was changing and no one knew what to do with their eyes. Somehow, instinctively, we knew looking was forbidden. We were all curious as hell, of course, but dared not look directly at anyone else. Almost everyone was keeping covered as much as possible, too, some even draping their shirts or pants over themselves while slipping out of their underwear and into their jocks. I decided that was silly. In less than an hour I’d be on full display in the shower room, so why delay the inevitable? I stood facing the row of lockers, slid my briefs off and my jock on, then looked up at Jed.
He wasn’t shy about his body. He also was a normal sized kid with a healthy attitude, even if he was still socially shy. He merely took his boxers off and put his jock on as if he’d been doing this all his life. I caught a glimpse of his dick while he was doing this. But then, I knew what he looked like. Oh yeah, I knew.
~ ~
Jed and I’d been best friends forever. Well, from age six to twelve was forever as far as we were concerned. We’d slept over at each other’s house more times than either one of us could count. It seemed we each had two sets of parents. And, when we were nine, we’d messed around a little. Now we were 12, and we still slept over. And we still messed around. Only now, we were better at it.
That first time was still imprinted in my memory. It had been a hot summer night. Being nine, we both wore pajamas. But that night, it was just too hot. I took off my top almost as soon as we were in bed. He had a double bed so we spent the night at his house more than mine. I had only a twin, and we didn’t fit in it as well as in his. Pretty quickly, he took off his top, too. But it wasn’t enough. Even without covers over us, it was one of those hot, muggy summer nights that southern Ohio seems to specialize in. We were still far too uncomfortable to fall asleep easily.
“Tim,” he said a few minutes after we’d been lying there, “are you as uncomfortable as I am?”
“I can’t stand this,” I replied. “It’s so hot I’m going crazy. Even my legs are sweating.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m going to take my pajama bottoms off.”
And he did. He picked his bottom up a little and pushed his pajama bottoms down, then kicked them off. I looked over at him, and he was lying there next to me, naked. I stared at him, and in the dim light coming through the window, I could see him clearly. I stared at him, and I stared some more. And then, I got the funniest feeling down low in my stomach. It was a sort of tingling, unsettled feeling, and then I started to get a boner.
I didn’t know what was happening. Oh, I knew about getting hard. I just had never felt this way before because of Jed. I’d had boners now and then all my life. It just happened sometimes. But happening because of looking at Jed, or thinking about him, or getting naked with him? This was really weird.
“Are you going to take yours off, too?”
I gulped. I sure wanted to. I was hot, and suddenly even hotter than I’d been before. Did it matter I was hard? He’d see it. Did I want him to see it? Did it matter?
Jed was my best friend. We didn’t have any secrets. Maybe you had to have been a boy with a best friend who knew everything about you, one who had been through the same things you’d been through, felt the same emotions you’d felt, to understand.
I didn’t really understand why I’d become hard looking at Jed naked now when I never had before, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. I went ahead and pushed my pajamas down my legs with only good feelings and no doubts whatsoever. I was hard, but so what?
I lay back down, my boner pointing up in the air. Jed looked at it.
“Neat,” he said. And as I watched, he got hard too, which was exciting to watch. We were both about the same size, a little less than three inches I’d guess, but we weren’t thinking about size, we were both thinking how thrilling it was to lie next to each other with stiffies.
“Do you get like this a lot?” Jed asked.
“Yeah, do you?”
“All the time. I didn’t know you did, too. It’s cool, knowing that.” He grinned at me.
“Can I touch yours?” I asked. “Do you ever rub it? I rub mine sometimes and it feels really good. Exciting, sort of.”
“Sure, go ahead,” he said eagerly.
I reached over and grasped his erection gently. He gave a little gasp and I held him a little more firmly. Then I did what I’d recently learned to do with mine, sort of lightly stroked it up and down, sometimes rubbing over the tip with my thumb. To do this, I only used two fingers and my thumb. I went slowly at first, then squeezed just a bid tighter and after a bit started going just a little faster.
Jed started rolling back and forth, then began moaning softly. “Oh, Tim, that’s, that’s, oh, wow,” he gasped, his breath coming in short rasps. “Keep going, don’t stop.”
I kept it up. I was loving how he was reacting, rolling back and forth, lifting his butt, squirming. I slowed down, sped up, slowed down, and eventually he started going even more crazy. So I sped up a lot, and his body suddenly went rigid. A gargled half scream, half moan came from his throat and his body started jerking.
When I did this to myself, my dick always got sensitive at this point, so I stopped rubbing him. I slowed way down and just easily moved up and down his hard-on with my fingers and thumb. After a short time, his body lost its rigidity and he slumped back onto the bed. I stopped stroking him and just held his dick.
It was a good couple of minutes before he spoke. When he did he said, “Wow, Tim.” He was still a little breathless. “I thought I was going to explode, then I thought I was going to pee the bed, and then my whole body just—that was the best feeling ever! That was amazing!”
“I’ve been doing that for a couple of weeks now,” I told him. “I was waiting to show you. Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah, it’s fantastic. Can I do that to you?”
I was still hard and stiff. Watching him experience what I already had a number of times was almost as good as feeling it myself.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and flopped back flat on the bed. He got up, sat cross-legged next to me, and reached down.
I wasn’t expecting, when he did it to me, that it would feel so different, so much better, than when I did it myself. Wow! It was spectacular. I loved it.
From that night on, sleeping over took on a new meaning. We always played with each other. And we slept over a lot.
~ ~
As I was saying, in the locker room, seeing him naked, that wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. But it still had the same effect. I started to firm up. I knew I would, which was why I’d dressed quickly, getting my shorts on before he did. Now, I turned around, sat on the bench and waited while he finished. This gave me the opportunity to eye the rest of what I could see of the room. As we were in the middle of a row of lockers, that wasn’t much. The kid next to me was sitting on the bench pulling his socks on after already having changed into his shorts at the same time I had. I’d missed it. The kid next to him was just sliding his underpants off. He was turned slightly away from me and my sightline was being blocked by the kid next to me.
I couldn’t be too obvious in my staring. Oh well, there was always tomorrow. Or the showers. I looked back toward Jed again and past him. There, the next kid in line was just pulling up his jock, and I got a good view of his dick and balls. Nice. I got a little thicker.
“Time, guys,” I heard the coach shout. “Everyone on the floor in one minute for rollcall.”
I quickly tied my shoes, dicks and balls forgotten in the rush to get done. Jed hurried too, and we rushed to the gym just in time. Showering was to be an adventure waiting for us and to be experienced for the first time in school, just 47 minutes later.