Gang of Five

by Douglas

Chapter 11

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It was later that night, back inside Zach’s bedroom, when I had my real revelations.  Or realizations.  Or whatever.  Two of them, anyway.

                                     *

“Christian?  Come closer, dude, I want to hold you.” 

I crawled over Zach -- all of us naked, resting, for the time being, on his bed; twilight growing, outside the French doors -- and kind of slipped myself between him and Liam.  Zach’s arm came around me, low, from one side, and Liam’s arm came around my chest, from another.

“Christian,” went Liam, moving his body against mine.  “God, it’s so good to have you back again.”  He pulled me into a closer snuggle, a kind of comfortable, stretching, snuggle, and I felt his free hand roaming over my skin.  “Hey, it feels good just to FEEL you again.  Mmmmm . . . . ” and he followed up with a quick kiss on my cheek.

“Oh, yeah,” I sighed, and I reached over, and snuggled him back, for a second.

He just didn’t know how good it really felt.  To me.

*

I always used to always love nighttimes at Zach’s house; in his room.  All of us, together.

Used to be, we’d haul the mattress and box spring off of his bed, and fit them together on the floor, to give us a big enough place to sleep.

Now -- well, Zach’s bed is bigger.  Big enough.  If we cuddled up together, anyway.

So, right then, the five of us were sprawled, kind of propped up on each other, cushioned on each other  --

Yeah, I know.  It sounds incredibly erotic.  But it weirdly wasn’t.  We were pretty thoroughly tired, fucked out, swimmed out -- it was more just sort of LOVING, and free, and so, so very COMFORTABLE -- being bare, I mean, and the warm of skin to skin, and the feeling of each others’ bodies --

That’s when my first revelation hit.

I promised myself, then.  I promised myself I would never, ever, ever let myself go so long without -- well, sex; I thought about it more as human comfort -- ever again. 

Looking back on the last three years -- I don’t think I was, maybe, entirely sane, in London.  Celibate; alone.

I don’t think anybody can be completely sane, without some sort of sexual outlet; well, any post-pubescent male, anyway.  I think, even if you’re wanking like crazy every day, if you don’t have some kind of sexual contact with another human being -- you get a little crazy.  Obsessive; kind of warped . . . . the way I was obsessive about sex, and other boys, and The Question.  Doubting myself, doubting my friends.

And I couldn’t help but wonder -- how much misery, how many wars, how much violence in the world, happens because -- well, maybe because people just NEED TO LIGHTEN UP ABOUT SEX?  Maybe because people just-aren’t-getting-enough, or can’t stand the fact that someone else is getting-more-than-they-are -- ?  Call it sex, call it physical love, or call it both physical and emotional, psychic love; it’s all the same.  And it drives so many people so, so crazy.

Not that profound a revelation, maybe.  Not all that original, either.  But right then; coming from three cold, celibate years, back to this, back to this bed, these boys . . . .  it was all so, so clear to me.  Clear, right at that moment, to my body, as well as my mind.

My second revelation was simpler.   

I promised myself, I’d never go so long keeping my body all covered up, ever again.

After all this time, coming back to this -- Zach’s pool, the air, the sun, the water, this soft duvet -- I was just now, just this evening, beginning to get back in touch with myself.  With my own body.  The way it looks, bare; the way it feels, BEING bare.

So, I promised myself.  Whatever happened to us -- to all of us, with college, or moves, or Tim and Jarod (and THAT was still something I had to think about) -- I was going to stay a naturist, a nudist, whatever anybody called it.  I was going to live bare, as much as I could; when I could, anyway.  Be comfortable with myself, again.  Comfortable with my body.  Comfortable with other peoples’ bodies.  Not as a sexual thing -- well, except with these friends of mine, anyway. 

It’ll always be exciting, and sensual, and sexual, being naked with them.

And yeah, if you’re reading this, you probably know the one, enormous thing I WASN’T thinking about, with all this.  I wasn’t LETTING myself think about it; namely, me and Zach, or more to the point -- how things, maybe, just changed between us.

Or maybe just changed in my own mind.  Or maybe -- shouldn’t have changed, at all.

So.  I lay there, happy, warm, in the arms of my old friends, and just sort of blocked it.  Pretended it wasn’t an issue at all.

Yeah; I know.  Pretty dumb, huh?

Actually, it got worse.  Before it got better.  But that’s jumping ahead too far.

*

Liam’s free hand was roaming over my chest, now, caressing it, feeling it, making me feel just a little less innocently contented . . . but also reminding me of the way he’d felt up Tim, earlier; and reminding me what he’d said about Candace.

I had to ask.

“Uhhhh . . . Liam?”

“Mmmmm?”  His hand kept up a lazy kind of squeezing and caressing rhythm, on my left pec.

“Couple of things I’m not really . . . sure I understand,” I went, slowly.

“Oh.  Yeah.”  He kept on feeling up my chest, and I felt him kiss my cheek, lightly.  “Like -- ?”

“Well.  Does it matter to you that I -- we -- maybe don’t have all the right, uh, parts?  For your taste, I mean?”

Muffled “mmmmphh” of laughter, from Tim’s general direction. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Liam; but I could tell he was kind of smiling, as he said it.

“Well -- I mean, you and Candace.”  I tried to put it a little -- cautiously.  Slowly.  “I know you’re like, a couple now . . . ”

“I love her,” he said, simply.  I blinked, for a second.

“Yeah.  So . . . well.  You, uh, like girls, then.”

More muffled giggles, from Tim; and now I could see Liam really stifling his own smile.  “Yee-ahhhh, I think Candace would say so.”

“But . . . you’re also, here.  I guess you’re, like, bi, then -- ?”

“Oh, Lord, labels again!”  He lifted up on an elbow, and looked me in the eyes.  “Christian.  Have you decided you’re gay?”

“Well -- it’s more like a factory setting, than a decision,” I went, a little weakly.

“How do you know?  Have you ever done anything with a girl?  Have you ever even KISSED a girl, before?”

“No . . . but to be honest, I never really wanted to.  I’ve always been, like, really focussed on boys.  Really focussed.”  Even before Zach, I didn’t add.

I’d had time, in England, to wonder what my life would have been like, without Zach.  Which was another way of saying, without Jarod, or Tim, or Liam, either.

Pretty bleak; that’s for sure.  Frustrated; lonely . . .

“Dude.”  He looked down at me, kind of gently.  “All I’m saying is . . . don’t, don’t let yourself be labeled.  Don’t accept it.  Don’t let the label, like, define you.”  He plopped back down on his pillow, still holding me, tight.  “It’s SEX, dude, and LOVE, it’s not an on-off switch.  It’s who you love, and when, and, and, it’s, like, letting yourself be HUMAN.”  He lifted his head up, and looked around at all of us.  “I mean -- I love you guys, I LOVE you, and what we do . . . but I love Candace too -- just, differently.”

“We know,” went Jarod, soothingly, from further down the bed.  He reached over Zach and caressed Liam’s calf.

“She’s just so different,” Liam went on, his voice getting a little softer, a little dreamy.  “She’s so different; the way her hips curve . . . and, and, her chest . . . oh my god, her breasts are so SOFT, and, like, her whole BODY is so soft . . . ”

I glanced down.  Yep; he was getting -- tumescent.

“No, you’re right, Liam,” Zach said.  His head was sort of pillowed on my chest, his arm still around me.  “You know we’re not arguing.  It’s just that, well, maybe we’re not as, as versatile as you are.”  I reached down and squeezed his hand.  “Maybe I wish I was.  But speaking for myself -- I’m not.”

“Don’t say that yet!  You just don’t know.  Someday, I swear, I’ll bring Candace around with me, here.  For a swim; you know.  You’ll see.  You just -- haven’t met someone like her.  Yet.”

I looked carefully down at Zach, and met his eyes.

I didn’t think for a second it would ever happen either, but -- his expression said what I was thinking.  A kind of horrified, ‘THAT would be interesting . . . ’

 

“Anyway,” Liam went on, “just think about it?  About girls, I mean?  Just -- keep your eyes open; keep an open mind, okay?  Tim said he would, right, Tim?”

I looked over Zach’s smooth chest, to where Tim was sprawled, mostly on Jarod, legs kind of draped over Liam’s, a bare foot casually caressing Zach’s thigh.  “Right,” he said.

And one eyelid just fractionally, almost unnoticeably, went down.  And then back up.

Tim’s always had depths.

Talk went on, and came around, pretty much inevitably, to me, and my time in London; Liam hadn’t been there earlier to hear much about it.

So I was kind of going on about my life there -- the good parts about it, visiting my grandmother and grandfather, seeing Oxford, a weekend trip we took up to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, that sort of thing -- and when I came to a pause for a second, Liam went, “I didn’t have any idea, about most of this.  It sounds like you really miss it.”  He paused for a second.  “But I thought the Brits mostly aren’t really happy living there?  A really low satisfaction level?  Like, they mostly want to move to Spain, or something?”

“True.  Totally true; and, you know, I could tell you so much, about all the bad stuff . . . their own politics, and the war, and all the surveillance, and . . . . ”  I shrugged, then kind of smiled, wryly.  “But I’ve always been weird.  And maybe it’s a little easier to appreciate a place, coming from the outside.  When you don’t grow up there.”

“He’s thinking about moving back,” said Jarod.  Maybe a little pointedly.  I opened my mouth again -- and closed it.

“For real?” Liam asked quietly.

“I -- no.  Not anytime real soon, anyway.”

“Good.  I TOLD you not to go away like that again.”  He squeezed me against him, gently.  “I meant it.  But you’re thinking about it -- someday?”

Long pause.  That slightly lost, slightly misplaced feeling, again.

“Yeah.  Maybe.”  I caressed Zach’s shoulder, his smooth upper chest, his neck, with my free hand.  “Maybe for postgraduate work.  Or -- I don’t know.  But I think it will happen, for a while at least, someday.”

Zach didn’t say anything.  And he didn’t caress me, back.

*

After we rested a bit, Zach booted up his laptop again, and Liam did his too, and we looked at some of pictures and videos of us -- of them, really.

We were tired, but we were going to do some more -- sexually, I mean, and we all knew it.  This was one way to ease into it.  And besides, I had an awful lot of catching up to do.

“I can’t believe this!”  I said, for the fourth or fifth time.

It wasn’t just the sex; I swear, it wasn’t just the sex.  It was seeing, like, a chronological record of what I’d missed; I was actually WATCHING them grow up, almost, in pictures.

And not just their bodies; their poses with each other, their smiles, their growing maturity -- everything.

Including what they did with each other.  I found out pretty quickly, they must have started having anal sex pretty soon after I left.  To me, it was beautiful, and still kind of -- exotic, maybe, or unattainable; I’d only really seen it for real twice, now, and I still hadn’t done it, myself, but to all of them, it was no big thing.  Normal; comfortable.

Even with my dick getting hard, I felt a kind of twinge, watching it.  Self-pity, maybe?

 Feeling left out; more like that.  Not something pleasant.

But the videos . . .

It turns out, Tim was the one who made most of the videos; it’s his camera.  And, it turns out, Tim’s really, really good at it.  And it’s something he wants to do.  Not pornography; film.  As a major, and as a career.

“You’ve got so, so much here!”, I went, at one point, looking at the open windows, and at all the file icons.  “Can I get copies?  I really, REALLY want to spend some time with these…”

Looks between them, all around.

“Sure,” said Zach; pressing up against my side, arm around my waist.  Both of us, with boners wagging out front, again, working up to the next session.  He kissed me on the cheek.  “We already agreed, a long time ago, we all share these.  But -- just between us, okay?  And obviously, we have to keep it all totally safe.  I mean, totally safe.  You can see, we use some pretty decent encryption.”

Again, that feeling; the faintest echo, of being a little left out.

“Well, of course.”  I tried to make a joke out of it.  “I promise.  Unless -- if they bring the draft back -- these would be perfect for getting you all out of it . . . ”

Jarod gave a kind of quiet snort.  “A little late.  Zach?”

“What?” I asked, after Zach didn’t say anything for a second.

“You know . . . . . . about recruiters coming to campus?” said Tim, into the silence. 

“Huh?”

“Military recruiters,” went Jarod.  “They come to our school, trying to sign up kids for the Army and the Marines.  Especially the Army.  And -- by the way, you should tell your parents -- if you don’t fill out a form, they get your phone number, and your class schedule, and your grades, and lots of other personal information, and they start calling you.  At home.  A lot.”

“I didn’t know.”  I looked at Zach.

“So there’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, you know about that, right?”  Still from Jarod.

“Yeah.”  You can serve in the military, but if you tell somebody you’re gay -- or if somebody even THINKS you’re gay -- they kick you out.  And make you pay back tuition fees, if you’re in officer training, I think.

“This coming semester, Zach’s going to tell.  He’s going to go up to one of the recruiters at lunchtime, and tell them he’s gay, and see what they say.”

“In front of . . . . . . as many people as . . . . . . . possible,” from Tim.

I looked at Zach, without saying anything. 

That basically meant -- coming out.  Coming out as openly gay, in our junior year of high school; with more than a year to go, before graduation. 

Coming out for all of us.  Well, all of them, at least; most other kids wouldn’t remember me, or recognize me.  Right away, anyway.  But with how close Zach and Jarod and Tim and Liam were, all this time --

Liam.  It might make things . . . . complicated for Liam.

But it wouldn’t be like I was immune, either.  Like, I was going to claim some distance from Zach?  My best friend, my more-than-surrogate-brother?  Was I going to, like, distance myself from the other three of them, too, because I didn’t want to go public?

In the light from the laptop screens, Zach’s smooth, beautiful face was -- set.

I knew what that expression meant.

*

I remember, really clearly.  Once, a long time ago, when we were all twelve, and in middle school -- not too long after Tim started in with us -- we were all eating lunch one day, in the playground; sitting on the asphalt at the side of the basketball court, our backs up against the chain link fence, lunch sacks in front of us.  It was Zach, me, Jarod and Tim, in a line.

A boy we really didn’t know all that well sort of wandered over, and wound up standing right in front of us.

“Hey,” he said to Zach. 

Of course he’d talk to Zach first.  That’s just how it was.

“Hey,” went Zach.

 “So,” the boy said, without any hesitation at all, “I hear you guys like to take off your clothes for each other, and show off for each other, and swim naked, and other stuff.”  Not sneering; not accusing; not smiling or joking either.

But the way he said ‘other stuff’ made it pretty clear he knew about us.

I almost choked right there on my peanut butter sandwich, and I felt my stomach tie up in a knot.  Jarod next to me went still as a stone statue.

Zach just looked up at the boy from where he was sitting, totally composed, totally casual.  Totally fearless.  Afraid of nothing.

“Yeah.  So?”

Long pause.  Then the boy smiled.

“Cool,” he said.  “Mind if I eat lunch with you?”

And that boy’s name was Liam.

*

I twisted in Zach’s arm, used my free hand to turn his face towards mine, and gave him a long, tender, and wet kiss; as tender as I knew how to give.  Remembering that middle-school moment; and all the other times he’d been strong, and brave, -- and compassionate, and ethical -- in the past.  Mostly for other people.  Including all of us.  Including me.

“Cool,” I said.  “I’ll go with you.”

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