My grandfather whirred off to San Diego in the Packard shortly after breakfast. Breakfast had been sublime: Granmum had made potato pancakes, scrapple, and eggs fried precisely right; there were fresh strawberries in that light syrup they make if they’re sliced and sugared lightly and left alone for a while. We lavished the strawberries over the pancakes. There was no Devonshire cream to put over the strawberries. For some arcane reason, Pobbin approved of Devonshire cream which sounded thoroughly English to me, but strongly disapproved of whipped cream. I mean, really, how can you disapprove of whipped cream? Since I like both, I paid it no mind. I drank milk. My Grandparents drank coffee, which I thought smelled great. I was old enough to tie my own necktie, and to carry a pocketknife, and to do some other things that I would never offer in support of an argument to my Grandparents; but I was still too young to drink coffee. Just one of the mysteries, I guess.
I had asked if I might be able to sleep over at Gary’s some night. Pobbin, invariably expansive when there was scrapple for breakfast, did not say “no” even though he’d not yet met Gary. But Granmum had spoken right up for Gary, so that was a “yes” for all practical purposes. Pobbin went on to insist that I could not be gone for the night, if he was also gone. Such a situation would leave Granmum home alone. But, if all agreed, such an adventure might be possible a little later. It felt good knowing that I was depended on.
There was a muffled clatter outside, the kind that is made when a bicycle, still in motion, is released and allowed to park itself on the grass. The screen door rattled knockingly and I yelled, “Hey Johnny!” For it could only be he. It was. He bounced into the kitchen in bare feet and cut offs. Smiling hugely, he pulled his t-shirt from his hip pocket and pulled it on with a flourish.
“Hi,” he greeted us with infectious joy. Granmum informed him that he was hungry (these sorts of things were seldom left to chance or choice) and, seating him, prepared him a plate of scrapple, eggs, and pancakes as well as the last of the strawberries. ‘He’s worth it’, I thought; ‘I must be in love with him if he gets the strawberries without a contest.’
“So, Johnny, what did you and your Father do this weekend,” Granmum inquired. Johnny finished chewing (a veteran of our table he knew not to talk with his mouth full); he paused with a fork laden with pancake and strawberries poised. “Nuthin’ much,” and the pancake and strawberries disappeared.
Experienced and completely unfazed by this response, Granmum proceeded to discover that they had: gone to Santa Monica, had visited the pier, had a steak dinner, “we rid” on the Ferris Wheel, gone to a John Wayne movie, bought some books and clothes for Johnny, and that his father wanted to take him deep sea fishing soon. To be sure, “we rid” did not escape unpunished. This mild censure was followed with some entirely amiable comments on the vital importance of correct verb usage and sentence construction. But aside from that, Johnny had acquitted himself very well. I asked if we could go out and play as Johnny was thanking Granmum for breakfast.
“Yes. You are very welcome, Johnny.” Granmum replied as Johnny rinsed his dishes and stacked them neatly in the sink. We exploded out the door.
“Let’s go to the jungle,” I suggested, hanging my t-shirt in the arbor. Johnny nodded. But went first to his bicycle where he recovered a small brown paper bag. It looked like it might contain a book. I really like books and have quite a few. I led the way through the arbor, into the Catalina Cherry jungle, down to the corner behind the roses. Johnny had his fingers in my waistband the last few steps. When I stopped, he spun me into a hug and a deeply wonderful kiss.
“I missed you,” Johnny said. “I wish you could have come with me and we could have slept together.”
“Mmmmmumph,” I rejoined and resumed the kiss. What was I supposed to say at this moment? Somehow: ‘Oh yeah, and I met this kid named Gary and we had a great time skinny dipping and you know while you were gone;’ didn’t sound like it would do the trick. But I had to do something.
I had been all up in the air about this since I left Gary at the pool. Is love sex? If I have sex with two boys, do I love them both, or is sex an act of friendship, too? I knew from church that sex was something that was supposed to happen after marriage and was between a man and a woman. That kids, not pleasure, was supposed to be the point. But I also knew that I was not interested in girls sexually and I didn’t think I ever would be. Nothing could compare to what I’d experienced with Johnny and Gary. Kids? Probably not.
So, what to do? There was no way I would be able to juggle the two with some sort of inspired deception. My Grandparents knew them. There would surely be some casual mention of them at the worst possible time. Then where would I be? Nope. This was one of those times when telling the truth was not only the “right” thing to do; it really was the “only” thing to do.
In the jungle, we shucked out of our shorts and sat on a towel we had left stored in our favorite corner. “Lookee here,” Johnny grinned. “My Dad bought me this book when we were in Santa Monica.” On closer examination it proved to be some kind of ‘Young-Persons-Guide-to- All-About-Sex’. There were several chapters about girls that we skipped over as neither of us were in the least interested in that topic. We concentrated on the parts about boys and learned a number of new words as well as a considerable amount of real information as to how everything worked. We had become very concerned about something called a “foreskin” that was clearly illustrated in the pictures in the book. We carefully examined each other and came to the conclusion that the listed bit was missing. “That’s odd,” I commented.
Several chapters later, however, we discovered the word “circumcision” and we didn’t like it one bit.
“Those fucking assholes!” Johnny proclaimed. “They cut our dicks off!” You can always tell when Johnny is really angry. He blushes with fury. You can see a vein throbbing on his temple. It’s kinda scary. He doesn’t get angry very often so there’s no doubt when he’s really mad. I was pretty pissed too. Why would anyone chop on a baby's dick? But then I remembered it was mentioned in the bible, I just hadn’t really understood what they were babbling about with all that talk of the “uncircumcised” and “foreskins”. It never occurred to me that a holy book would be all that concerned about dicks.
“Those fucking assholes!” He repeated. He was furious and some sort of calming action seemed in order.
“At least we know that everything works, okay,” I said as I reached for where his foreskin wasn’t and began to soothe.
Having restored calm with a trifle of passion, I returned to the problem at hand. “Johnny I really do have to tell ya something and it’s really important.”
“Kay,” Johnny murmured while I sat up Indian style and regarded his beautiful sprawl.
“Well. There’s this new guy named Gary. He just moved to town a coupla weeks or so ago. And he just lives over there a block or so” (tossing my head in the general direction). “He’s got a swimming pool and his folks are in the Navy.
“So I was up in the walnut tree,” I continued. “Tryin’ to figure out a tree house for us. And he just said ‘hi’ and I looked down. And there he was. Just like that!
“Then he met Granmum and she liked him. He helped me with the laundry and everything. You know, lunch and all.”
While this had been going on, I’d been idly stroking his pubic hair but this now became a distraction with the realization that I blurted out: “And he’s got more hair down here than me or you.”
“You saw him naked?” Johnny’s eyebrows shot up, hazel eyes gleaming.
“Well, yeah. We went over to his house and he said we should go swimmin’. I said I couldn’t cuz I only had my cut offs on and ya know how they are when they’re wet. And he said that his Dad said that boys should swim naked unless there are girls there.”
“So did yuh?”
“Well yeah. What else? We went swimmin’, like I said, naked. And we were lying on these recliner chairs and he started putting suntan lotion on my butt cuz he didn’t want me to get sunburned. And I thought that was awful nice of him. And then I got a boner and he had one too, so we went into the dressing room and did it.” I was breathless.
We were quiet, looking and lightly stroking each other.
“What’s he look like?” This all seemed to be going pretty good: we were naked, holding each other, Johnny wasn’t mad and seemed really interested.
“Well, he spends lotsa time naked by his pool. So he’s all tanned here.” I traced Johnny’s tan lines and ran my hand all over that great area between his tan lines. “And I think that we should get tanned here too. And his hair is black and his eyes are blue.” I was on a roll, “And he wants to come over after lunch and meet you!” Triumphant! It was all out.
“Ya told him about me?”
Oops. It wasn't all out after all.
“Well I couldn’t not tell him. You’re my best friend. And I love you and everything. I mean, come on, I was thinking about you when first I met him. So, you know. It wouldn’t be fair not to tell him.”
“Did yuh tell him that we did it?”
I looked down and I think I must’ve blushed and then I looked up into his smiling eyes and felt lots better.
“Well yeah. What else?”
“What did yuh tell him?”
“Well I told him about that fuckin’ asshole at miniature golf and how we got boners and all, and then I told him about playing ‘Indian’ and all that stuff.”
“Okay. So what did he say about all that?”
“I think he liked it cuz then we did it.”
“Did what? Play Indian?”
“Christ Jesus! It! You know! He gave me a blow job and then I gave him one, too.”
Johnny had a little smile and he looked off into space. He didn't have that kinda dreamy look that Gary got. It was more like he was thinking serious stuff.
“Dave-Ee John-Nee,” Grandma called from the back door. She didn’t wait for an answer. “You boys come in for lunch.” The screen door banged shut.
“Comin’,” I called.
Johnny came back from that serious place and wondered, “I wonder if three can do it?” We pulled on our cut offs and started for lunch. “You know, at the same time.”
I’d reclaimed my t-shirt from the arbor and Johnny had his so we dressed for lunch on the way. There was no point in pushing things with Granmum’s notions. She’d fixed us bacon and egg sandwiches with cheese; they were on toasted white bread that she had baked with mayonnaise and lettuce; we also had potato chips and pickles with ice cold milk. There were fresh oatmeal cookies for dessert.
Grandma drank tea from a delicate, blue patterned cup and saucer. Not so long ago, when I’d addressed some questions about the Boston Tea Party to my grandfather, he’d told me that the Dutch had actually invented tea, but then the “underhand” English had stolen it as well as New Amsterdam. To Pobbin’s way of thinking, the word ‘English’ actually meant ‘Enemy’. But despite all these old maneuverings, tea was somehow good. I think Granmum would have enjoyed tea even if the treacherous English had invented it. She was always cool and elegant. During lunch she told us that she would be shopping during the afternoon. Since grocery shopping had occurred yesterday after church, I knew that this would be shopping for clothes, or sundries, or maybe a white sale. Boring. So I did not volunteer to help, but Johnny did.
“Thank you dear, but no. I’ll just be at the department store and I think you’d find it boring. You boys find something else to do.”
This worked for me as I was on pins and needles. Johnny would be meeting Gary in just a few minutes. Johnny had kept conversation alive during lunch: there were men fishing from the pier, young men with surfboards, and the general ambience that is the ‘beach’. We rinsed and stacked our dishes and with a glass of lemonade, repaired to the front porch to see what was to see.
Granmum appeared on the porch, suitably equipped for shopping: summer dress in a muted floral pattern, hat, gloves, and handbag. She looked at me expectantly.
“We’ll be here or down at Johnny's,” I proffered the required information. It’s amazing how much liberty you can achieve by merely letting authority think it knows where you are and what you are doing. She smiled and nodded, talc and lilac, and proceeded down to get in the taxi which had arrived at precisely the right time. Things like that always seemed to happen for Granmum.
We sipped our lemonade in companionable silence, hands on thighs—each other’s thighs. We messed around a little, tickling and that kind of stuff; but nothing any kind of serious. This gentle play would have been invisible from the street, not that there was all that much traffic on the street; but because of Granmum’s carefully tended lilac bushes that lined the front of the porch. They were large and came to about head high when you were sitting on the porch. They had already flowered and were a dense mass of dark green leaves.
“Dave..hey…David” a recognized voice hailed tentatively.
“Gary!” I jumped-up and waved him onto the porch. “Come on up.”
And there he was. Hair slightly awry, white t-shirt draped over his shoulder, razor creased dark green shorts, and barefoot. Johnny stood up and I said, “Gary van der Leyden, this is my great friend Johnny MacCrimmon. Johnny…Gary. I’ll get us lemonade.” I banged off through the screen door on a mission of hospitality. This took me a few minutes. I sliced a lemon so I could add a slice to each glass; I wrestled with the ice cube trays which always seemed reluctant to give up the ice; then I went carefully back to the front porch carefully holding the three glasses. When I arrived, they were both sitting on the rocker facing each other and Gary was talking about the Navy. I gave them each a lemonade. I considered sitting down between them, but decided instead to lean against the porch railing. The view was better from the rail, two handsome boys on a porch swing, ninety percent naked. They were a beautiful contrast: blond hair and hazel eyes chatting with black hair and blue eyes; smooth flesh and beautiful tans. I feasted on them silently, sipped my lemonade, and listened as Gary was now holding forth on swimming. Excellent, I thought.
“So what’re we gonna do.” Johnny wondered casually.
I had been poised to get something started somewhere else as there was no way of comfortably knowing when Granmum might get back.
“Well. I think we should go down to Johnny’s and play king.”
“King?” Gary wondered.
“Yeah. It’s kinda like Indian, you know, only different.” I looked at Johnny. “Since Gary’s never played any of our games before, I think he should be king, ‘n we can be the slaves.” Johnny grinned and nodded.
“Do we get naked?” Gary smiled.
I dashed back into the kitchen where I grabbed a paper sack, then I went to the arbor and picked several bunches of grapes for the king to enjoy. Back on the porch I closed the front door so that the neighbors would know that no one was home. It was never locked.
We started down the street to Johnny’s. There’s this one house, on the way, that was not well kept. It wasn’t a desert or anything, but it certainly wasn’t Dutch. From this yard I picked a bunch of the California poppies that grow wild everywhere. They would look nice in the king’s hair.
The game of King is passionate. It is intense. There’s a lot of caring involved which, like I said, intensifies the sex.
When we had finished, we just lay around, tired. Spent, you know? We relaxed for a while.
“Let’s go swimming,” Gary piped-up. So we spent a few minutes restoring the throne room to its humdrum reality and trooped off to Gary’s. Johnny met Miss Jean, and we spent the rest of the day skinny dipping, or laying in the sun. Mostly I dozed and let Johnny and Gary talk about all manner of things, so they could put the seal of friendship on the joy of sex.