Hi. Many, many things have happened to me the last few months. They have affected me, and my story. Here's the latest, many months in the making.
Part 40
It was a rainy, cold October Saturday in my hometown in rural Iowa. I had left my rain jacket back at college, but I stayed warm because I had laundered my cum out of Jay's practice jersey and was wearing it over a long-sleeve t-shirt similar to the one Terry had worn at Bible study a few days earlier.
I was home to see Kirk, my best buddy from high school, whose mom had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. As I piloted my Toyota Tercel toward Kirk's familiar family farmhouse, I tried to estimate how many times one of our parents had driven one of us up and down that gravel driveway with the intention of helping us foster a friendship. Certainly it had to have been a hundred times. Maybe more. Kirk's family was salt of the earth. Each and every one of them. His dad, like my dad, had died too young. Now his mom was dying, and for obvious reasons Kirk was hurting and had made it clear that I was the friend he wanted -- needed -- to see.
So much had happened in just the couple months since I had last seen him, during the trip when I had touched a naked male penis for the first time -- that of an 18-year-old hockey player in a northern Minnesota sauna no less.
Kirk knew nothing of the details. Should I tell him? Not this trip.
A lot had happened with Kirk too, some of it still not discussed between us. There was the issue of Jessica, my ex from high school whom Kirk had been dating.
Should I bring it up? Not this trip.
I, like Kirk, had experienced the loss of a parent at a too-early age. So even at 19 I had the vocabulary to speak to someone for whom death was fresh. "I am so sorry." That's all you really need to say. But as I walked toward the familiar side door of Kirk's farmhouse, I realized I had no idea what to say when the person who answers the door was perhaps a couple months away from dying.
"Oh, hi, uh, Mrs. --"
"Stu, it's great to see you."
Kirk's mom most certainly was thinner than the last time I had seen her. Her eyes seemed deep-set in darkness. Her smile forced.
"Yeah, wow, it's, um, great to see you."
Kirk's mom folded half of her pained smile into a wrinkled nose and blinked twice in a way that said, no, Stu, it's not great for you, or for me, to see me in this situation. My bottom lip quivered. I did not want Kirk's mom to see the face of a 19-year-old not strong enough to keep from crying, so I buried it in her shoulder and was mature enough to realize the irony of a terminally ill middle-aged person comforting a perfectly healthy young one.
When I pulled myself from Kirk's mom's shoulder, I came to realize all that needed to be said as she petted my hair. "I am so sorry."
Then we both heard Kirk's bari-tenor voice. I stepped back, wiped my nose on my wrist, and crossed to meet my buddy, my best buddy, dressed in his trademark tight jeans and, on this day, a tucked-in checkered flannel shirt.
"Hey, Kirk, man ..."
Kirk's dirty blond hair was wet but had the center part that he wore all through high school. His blue eyes sparkled in his trademark glass-half-full way. I took Kirk's right hand in mine, ignoring for now that it was the hand that he probably masturbated with.
"Stu, thanks for coming."
Kirk put his left hand on my back and drew my body into his. He smelled of Dial soap and Speed Stick, as if fresh from the junior high shower.
"Anytime. You know I'd be here."
I moved my right hand to his back and initiated a hug. Then my eyes met his blue ones. No words were uttered, but the thousand things that were said by the eye contact were outnumbered only by the things that would be left unsaid an hour or so later.
And then, it was just Kirk and me, the two of us in the farmhouse's familiar basement. I was flooded with a feeling that despite my various awakenings, nothing really had changed. The same old Foosball table was in the corner, by a shelf filled with board games ranging from Chutes & Ladders to Risk. I figured that the games hadn't been touch in years, and certainly not since I had lost my virginity to Rebecca and had experienced gay sex with Rudolf, Jay, and Jay's brother.
In a flash my mind went back to when Kirk and I were fourteen, the night we played Truth or Dare with a foreign exchange student from Spain. We had started out in the basement but then moved to the barn's hayloft where eventually, of course, all three of us ended up entirely naked. It had been dark, except for a bare lightbulb in the corner, which gave me just enough light to see the shadow of Kirk's perky penis that had seemed to stick out more than lay flat for as long as I had known him. The Spanish boy, by contrast, had a long uncut one that pointed down. While Kirk's dick had been the subject of my lust for years, on that night I could not stop looking at the exchange student's foreskin, and his black bushy pubes.
I was trying to remember the Spanish word for cock when my daydream was interrupted by Kirk turning on the TV for some background noise. As I looked at my best friend's basically nonexistent butt in his characteristically tight farmer jeans, I took a seat and wondered silently whether Kirk and Jessica had had sex on the very couch where I was sitting. The thought left me half jealous and half hard.
Kirk put his right arm on the back of the couch, sat on one shin, and gave me a nice view of his crotch. After all these months, his penis was still there. Looked pretty much the same, even though I was yearning to confirm whether it had endured thrusts of violence into Jessica's arousing frame. My ex-girlfriend's frame.
Shit.
"You cold, Stu?"
"No, why?"
"You just have two shirts on. What is that, a baseball jersey?" Kirk said the words "baseball jersy" as if it were dress. "Never seen you in one of those before."
I declared that my wardrobe was a "new look, I guess," and then steered the conversation to where it needed to be. I said all the right things -- that I "couldn't believe this" and that it "wasn't fair," and Kirk of course agreed and volunteered that it had caused plenty of friction.
"Friction? What do you mean?"
"Well, I have some news, Stu. Jessica and I. We broke up."
My eyes drifted back to Kirk's crotch, relieved that maybe it wouldn't be thrusting into Jessica's anytime soon, but wondering silently how many times Kirk had blown his seed into my ex, seed I wanted to see and feel, and an ex who remained one of my jackoff fantasies.
"Wow, Kirk, I'm sorry to hear that."
"Are you?"
"Sure."
"Really?"
"OK, no."
"I didn't think so. Stu, look, before we talk about about my mom, let me just say, I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For dating your ex-girlfriend."
"It's OK."
"It's been bugging me, for a while."
"Why?"
"Well, it was more than dating."
Here comes the coming clean about cumming, I thought.
"What do you mean?"
"She's pretty hot, Stu. You know that. Things got pretty, you know, pretty physical, pretty fast. Looking back on it, too fast."
I was angry, jealous, relieved, and turned on all at once. So naturally I quickly glanced at Kirk's crotch and then made light of the situation.
"Can there be a too fast?"
Kirk did not see it as a joke.
"Yeah, I think there can be. Wow, Stu, she was into me. My body." I felt a tingle in my groin upon hearing Kirk say the word "body."
"I mean, Stuie, she's hot. I liked her body, but, wow ..."
I broke him off with a whisper. I had to know, terminally ill mom upstairs or not.
"You had sex?"
"Yep. Right where you're sitting. One of the times, at least. Well, maybe three."
I glimpsed at Kirk's crotch to see if he was as turned on as I was. I thought I saw a bit of a stir, but couldn't be sure.
"Jessica said you and she didn't?"
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't have sex? You and Jessica. That's what she said. Is that true, or was she lying about that too?"
"No, that's true."
"She said that was the case, but I was wondering, judging by how she came on to me, and how much she lies."
"Lies?"
Kirk ignored my question and proceeded to tell me what I wanted to hear but yet didn't.
"Don't tell anybody, but it happened for the first time at the end of our driveway, in her car, actually."
"It?"
"Sex. We screwed there, in the car, at the end of the driveway."
"No shit? Your driveway?"
"Yeah. It was pretty hot. Then we had a couple quickies here, in the basement. And I started thinking with the wrong head, Stu, and drove down to see her at her college a lot."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And that's where we REALLY did it. Like, in bed, which was a lot better. Experimented a lot."
I got hot in one way and bothered in numerous ways at the thought of my ex-girlfriend experimenting with the first male body I had ever really lusted after -- a long and lean body not as muscled and baseball-playerish as Jay's, but one that I had watched grow from a pubescent adolescent in the junior high locker room to an 18-year-old man who looked delicious when naked during our still-puzzling-to-this-day shower in his
Freshmen dorm a year earlier. Throughout the years, Kirk's penis had stayed pretty much the same. A little smaller than Jay's, a tad thinner, and whiter too, but it looked large and sort of vulnerable on Kirk's skinny seventh-grade frame. But by the time we were seniors, Kirk's pubes had seemed to give shelter to his perky penis and his balls had begun sagging in a way that suggested he was most definitely a man.
And, from the looks of his crotch there on the couch, his manhood was multiplying. Mine sure was, and as I remember was perhaps three-quarters hard.
"Stu, are you listening?"
"Yeah, sorry. You said, um, you were, ah, experimenting ..."
"Yeah, you know, BJs, me doing the same to her."
"Wow ..."
"At the same time."
"Sixty-nine?"
"That's it!"
I moved Jay's practice jersey away from my crotch and looked toward the TV. And sure enough, a second later I could feel my best friend's eyes on my bulging crotch.
Fucking shit!
Out of the corner of my eye I could see my buddy adjust himself in his tight jeans.
Jesus Christ!
But when I looked back toward Kirk, my eyes had to go not to his erection, but to his eyes. My best friend's eyes.
"Yeah. Anyway. Sort of liked that better, to be honest."
"What?"
"Blowjobs. You know."
"Better than what?"
"Sex."
"Well, that's sex, isn't it?"
"Well, OK. Screwing."
I didn't ask which he liked better -- giving or receiving the oral -- and it would be three long years until I got the answer. But what I did do was get enough courage to look back at Kirk's crotch. In less exciting times, Kirk's perky penis usually sort of snaked down the left side of his leg. On that evening, in Kirk's basement, the left side of my best friend's leg was lonely and a mound unmistakably had developed on the left side of his zipper. I could not help but look, and Kirk could not help but move his pant leg down a little to let his erection point directly toward his navel.
My best friend, it seemed, was fully hard. And was sitting perhaps a foot from me.
"Stu, I guess I learned a lot."
"What did you learn?"
"That sex is powerful, and exciting, but once you do it, it sort of takes the edge off, you know?"
"I know."
Actually, I knew no such thing. Sex had lost no edge for me. Just the opposite. Particularly in Kirk's basement, with him hard, and on the couch where he had screwed my ex.
"You do know?" Kirk raised his eyebrows. "Like, personally?"
"I've had some experience recently too."
I could not quite place Kirk's reaction. It seemed to be a mixture of disappointment and interest, but I couldn't be sure. But there was little question that he, too, had been looking at my crotch.
"At college. College has a way of doing that too you."
"Who was she?"
There was a she, by the name of Rebecca. But of course there also was a he, and a very hot one at that. His name was Jay, and it was his practice jersey that I was wearing while hearing my best friend tell about screwing my ex.
I tugged at Jay's jersey as I explained that I had lost my virginity to another RA, who was 22, who also had been pretty aggressive, and how "that was a mistake, too, looking back on it."
"Are you sorry you lost it -- you know, your virginity -- to her?"
"How'd you know I was a virgin?"
"Well, I was, before Jessica. I figured you were. We're best friends, for crying out loud."
That was true, we were best friends. But Kirk had no clue about Jay and me. I did not like that I was keeping it a secret, but I didn't know how to tell Kirk. And then there had been the Bible study, and the homosexuality discussion four evenings previous.
"Well, yeah. Her name was Rebecca. Just don't call her Becky, or she'll blow."
"What's wrong with that?" Kirk chuckled. "Nothing better than a blow."
"Not that kind of blow, doofus. Blow her top."
"I know. I'm just kiddin' ya."
"I'm sorry she was the first. I wish it would've been somebody else."
"Like Jessica?"
I shrugged.
"C'mon, Stu. Come clean. We're buds."
"Yeah. Her. Or somebody like her, I guess."
"Any other ladies, Romeo?"
Again I could answer truthfully, and again I did. No, there was no one else.
"So nobody else? At all? At college?"
I scrunched my lips together, raised my eyebrows, and prepared to tell Kirk a secret that would've changed our friendship, and maybe our lives, forever. But then -- crrrreeeek -- the stairs. Kirk's mom appeared with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses.
Kirk put a pillow on his crotch and I pulled Jay's practice jersey over mine as Kirk's mom asked whether we had had "enough time." Kirk said we had, and the three of us proceeded to talk for an hour. It was one of the most vivid, memorable experiences of my life. Kirk's mom was just coming to grips with the fact that she was dying, and since she had lost a husband as well she was remarkably forthcoming about the feelings of anger, including toward God, that she felt.
Her tears did not flow. The same could not be said for Kirk. At one point, when I brought up the subject about how "unfair" it was for Kirk to lose both parents at such an early age, he aimed his familiar and typically happy-go-lucky blue eyes into mine, let them redden, and allowed himself to cry as if he was a 5-year-old who had just fallen off his bike and yearned for Mommy to kiss his skinned knee.
Kirk's mom put her hand over her mouth and sniffed in a sob. Her boy's reaction was even beyond what a mother could comfort. So it was I who scooted over a foot and touched my best friend on the basement couch where he had screwed my ex-girlfriend. It was Kirk who reached out to me. His mom left the room as Kirk somehow got his face under Jay's jersey and onto my long-sleeve t-shirt. with each of his sobs, my chest was jostled and made warm with Kirk's breaths, and after about ten seconds I could feel the dirty blond's body fluids soak onto my skin as we both heard the familiar creek of the family's stairs. As Kirk's mom left the basement to go to the kitchen, her son and I sat in an embrace for perhaps thirty seconds, my hands on his skinny back, sometimes rubbing his his head or his bare neck.
"It's OK, Kirk. It's OK."
And then, with a full-throated sob, Kirk pushed his body into mine and pretty much forced me to recline back on the couch. He pulled his feet from the floor, wrapped his arms around my back, and sobbed into my neck. As I petted the back of my best friend's hair, I felt his crotch push into my thigh. Kirk was taller, so his privates landed perhaps three inches below mine, on my left thigh. There was no question that there was a mound there. Kirk pressed his penis into my muscle, as he had done into my hand in the high school cafeteria years earlier. This time, though, the sexually experienced 19-year-old moved his penis away and then pressed it into me again, grinding gently, thrusting a little. As if fucking. Me. Or at least my thigh.
I pressed my concealed hard-on into the midpoint of Kirk's chest as I let my right hand touch my best friend's left buttock. He shuddered and sighed as he buried his nose deeper into my collarbone and then moved one of his hands to the middle of my chest. The tall, lanky blond pressed hard as he went lower and lower, toward the point to where we both knew he was going. I let Kirk know it was OK by moving my hand from his buttock and more into his crotch, and I held my breath as I used my middle finger to lightly press against the area where I thought the backside of my buddy's testicles might be.
I felt a warm rush of blood to my brain at the moment that Kirk's hand found the top of my erection, pressing through my jeans. He used his thumb and firs two fingers to take stock, to assess the size and shape to the best of his ability through the blue denim. Had he had his hand on my naked penis, and had he looked down as he pressed, he would've seen precum ooze out of my pee slit and onto his hand. As it was, my fluid was being soaked up by my boxers.
And then -- fuck! -- the creaking stairs. Christ! Kirk lifted himself from me and stole a glance at my eyes before surveying his own crotch and scrambling for the pillow that would serve as his proverbial closet. I had my closet. Jay's practice jersey.
"Kirk?"
"Yeah, mom?"
"Your brother needs some help in the barn, with one of the cows."
"OK. In just a minute."
"He says it's pretty important. I think she's giving birth, the pregnant one."
"Oh, wow. Yeah, OK, he'll need me."
Kirk turned back to me.
"Stu, um. I don't know --"
"Kirk. Shh."
"If you wanna stay, this'll take an hour or so. We can, I can --"
My eyes floated away from Kirk and toward something I had never seen before on his basement wall.
A cross.
The sight left me deflated, in more ways than one.
* * *
I don't really remember how I got out of Kirk's basement and into my Toyota Tercel. What I do remember is starting the car, opening my jeans, and masturbating as I drove down my best friend's long driveway, the end of which, I knew, was the place where Kirk had blown his cum into my ex-girlfriend for the first time. I massaged the slit of my penis and felt the precum ooze and at that point wanted more than anything in the world for Kirk to be feeling me, but in a place where a cross was not hanging on the wall.
And then, at the end of the driveway, I saw some headlights came on. Shit! I stopped my manual stimulation and put the manual transmission in neutral so I could zip up and finished just as the Tercel was about to run off the road.
When I got to the end of the driveway and in a place where my Tercel's headlights could illuminate the body of the other vehicle, I recognized it immediately.
I could not believe it.
It was Jessica's.
I was horny.
And minutes later, I was to discover that she was, too.