Chapter One

It’s 2004 now, but I’m thinking back to fondly remember a recurring dream I had for a couple of years. It’s the one with my best friend Tyler and me making out in his bedroom when we were fourteen or fifteen. In the dream, we’d been swimming in my backyard pool, which is next to his backyard.  

When I was swimming in those days, I always wore one of my brother’s hand-me-down speedo swimsuits, and I wore one in the dream. Christain is five years older than me. Speedos were ‘in’ way back then and might still be in. Whatever, boardie swimsuits are what we wear now. Tyler and I started out wrestling, but that was only to get us touching, then making out lying on one another, our hard dicks touching through our swimsuits. We’d kiss and grind our crotches together, and it was a hot dream.

We have our young climaxes, two or three of them sometimes. It’s messy, but the dream makes it possible for me to fulfill the strong wish that we’d have done that in real life, and it gives me a chance to see Tyler again. Not only see him but pretend to be kissing and so forth. Even though it sometimes caused me to pee on the bed or have a messy orgasm, the dream was worth the trouble.  

My big brother and I shared a bedroom, and he would get out of his bed to help me change my sheets. We’d never say anything. So, yeah, I’ve always looked up to Christian and idolized him. He’s never disappointed me in anything, and he never criticizes me.

Anyway, I haven’t had the dream for over two years now, and in real life, Tyler and I have never kissed, even though we both knew from about the time we were twelve years old that I was sexually attracted to him. We never used those exact words, though. As for the wrestling part of the dream, we rarely wrestled because Tyler knew from experience that I’d get a boner, and he was embarrassed for me. No, Tyler was not inclined toward any form of gay activity, although he would tolerate an occasional hug and quick kiss on the cheek from me as long as I didn’t overdo it.  We stayed tight best friends right up till the day he died.  

I didn’t realize until a couple of years later how special his behavior toward me was. He did it for me because he loved me, too, but not in the same way I loved him. I realized some years later my kissing and hugging him probably felt to him the way I felt when a girl did the same things to me. It was repugnant, but Tyler never let on that it was a big turn-off, and he also didn’t encourage me to do a lot of it either.

We often passed as brothers because we were pretty much the same small size and had the same general features and coloring. Nothing special. Brown hair and eyes, nice teeth, and smiles… haha. I always felt we were both kind of cute guys, but I’m gay, so…

I felt responsible for Tyler’s death. Completely at first, and then later, I saw it differently, but I was definitely partially at fault. That summer, there was some sort of mosquito infestation that was causing the water in swimming pools to be unhealthy; early one morning, my Dad drained our pool. The bad water was to be replaced with fresh water so that the chlorine and other water treatments could start fresh. Mom was doing volunteer work at our church that morning so before going to work, my Dad gave me the job to stretch the pool cover over the pool. If he hadn’t been really late for work, he would have done it himself.  

I had every intention of covering the empty pool as soon as I finished my computer game, but I forgot and started a new game. We didn’t have central air conditioning.  We had a noisy window air conditioning unit for my bedroom, and all of a sudden, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I’d heard a dull thud.  It scared me, but my bedroom was in the front of the house with the loud air conditioner running, so I couldn’t have heard a dull thud from the back of the house; could I?  

A freezing chill had passed right through my body, causing me to shake all over. It made me jump up, knocking my keyboard off my desk. I ignored the dangling keyboard, I ran down the stairs saying, “NO NO NO NO NO!” and out through the kitchen to the backyard and over to the pool.

I knew he’d be in the deep end. That end is closest to his yard. A large circle of blood was around Tyler’s head as he lay motionless ten feet down on the damp bottom of the swimming pool.  He always dived into the pool, and I always did a cannonball. I looked down for just a second and then walked back into the kitchen and dialed 911.  I said, “The swimming pool.” The lady kept asking what my emergency was, but I’d started puking and couldn’t answer her.  

My Mom always said that I have a weak stomach. The 911 lady could see who we were on their caller ID, and she sent a fire truck, a police car, and an ambulance. None of them were any help. The police/fire station is about four blocks from our house, so they arrived in a minute, but metaphorically speaking, I’d already left. I was lying in my own vomit on the kitchen floor in a catatonic state.

I stared into space and wouldn’t or couldn’t move a muscle in my body. Tyler and I did everything together at fifteen years old, and we did the very last thing we’d ever do together; we rode to the hospital in the same ambulance, side by side.  

I’m glad I don’t remember anything about that. I missed the funeral, preferring my catatonic state. Reality would have to wait. They have clever psychiatric care, medication, and grief counseling, so I slowly came out of my catatonic state and began to move my body, drink liquids, and eventually eat solid foods again. It took two weeks or so, and I think that even though the professional care was excellent, it was actually my brother Christian who was mostly responsible for me returning to this world.

My brother’s love has always been a big part of my life, and it is even more important to me now. My parents are very loving, and I love them back, but I love my brother more than I can say. I came out of that hiding place in my head because of the many times Christian asked me to and the tears he shed. Over the next couple of weeks, I slowly recuperated a little here and a little there, and I eventually began going through the motions of living a fractured life. I wasn’t talking.

I had psychiatric appointments twice a week, but since I was unable to talk it was slow going.  I’d nod ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and I’d write stuff on a tablet, but I wouldn’t speak. When they asked me why I wasn’t talking I wrote, “I don’t know.”

My parents filled in the pool with dirt, not water. They put grass sod over it, and nobody went in the backyard except for Christian cutting the grass. Tyler’s parents hired a lawyer and sued my parents. Our insurance company settled the suit out of court. Then Tyler’s parents moved away. My family tried to bring me fully back to the real world, but I resisted. Christian was back in college, and even though I still wasn’t talking, three weeks into the school year, my parents, after many consultations with school officials, tried having me begin the ninth grade.  

During lunch on the very first day, one of the kids muttered something about how clueless Tyler was to dive into an empty pool, and I attacked him. My arms windmilling an avalanche of blows on him.  I didn’t utter a sound. I was suspended from school for a week, mostly because I wouldn’t stop punching and kicking even when teachers were pulling me off him.

I returned to school after serving my suspension, but a week later, the same scenario occurred with approximately the same results, except it was a role reversal, and I was the one beaten up, but I still wouldn’t stop swinging my fists. He broke my front tooth off and gave me two black eyes, but I kept swinging. I felt I deserved that beating and many more, too.  

My parents pulled me out of school and increased my psychiatric care. Nothing worked, and then Christian, home for winter break, got in a fight with someone who called me a danger to the community. Our house was put up for sale, and two months later, we moved a hundred miles away. My Dad couldn’t get as good a job as he’d had in our old town, so my Mother had to go to work, too.

Now maybe you can see how one mistake can mushroom into affecting many lives.  The one mistake was not a small one, I’ll grant you that. If I’d done what I should have, the pool cover would have prevented Tyler from diving and so forth. I knew I’d been responsible, but still, I was surprised at how many people I hurt or destroyed by my irresponsible neglect.  It was a very big thing. I wasn’t mute for nothing.

Be that as it may, nobody in my family ever complained that I was a burden to them, that I was unreasonable, that I wasn’t trying, or anything else negative. Every day, they told me they loved me, and every day, they asked what they could do to help me, but I couldn’t think of what more they could do. I still couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.

I wasn’t going to school so I’d be in our house alone until all day. Even though I had the largest guilt complex in recorded history, I still managed to jerk off regularly and often. I always thought of Tyler while doing it. I still couldn’t cry, but I could self-loathe quite well. I hated myself, and I hated what I’d done to ruin so many people’s happiness, including my own.  So, the brief relief from my torment lasted only as long as it took to shoot my load. Then it was back to work, hating myself and daydreaming.

The daydreams were about us, Tyler and me. We were always together, and almost every weekend, we had a sleepover, taking turns at each other’s house. Tyler was an only child and his parents treated me like they treated Tyler, as if I were their son too. Then,  I never saw them after Tyler’s death. Their hearts turned to stone, and they hated everyone, but I don’t blame them. They just sued us and hated us and then left. None of the million things that we’d shared together carried over. I was a cancer to them.  

I understand why Tyler’s parents acted as they did, but I still miss them. I missed their cat, too. I missed Mrs. Harris’ brownies, their jacuzzi, all of that big part of my life, and I missed Tyler most of all. He was one half of me, and when he died, I was just a half-boy. Why can’t I cry? Nobody knew. After nine months of therapy, the various professional healthcare givers, nine months of positive reinforcement and love from my parents, and most importantly, nine months of encouragement and heart-to-heart telephone and in-person talks with Christian, I finally began to admit that I hadn’t killed Tyler.

The conversations with my brother were one-sided because I still wasn’t talking; I grunted yes or no, or I don’t know, but one-sided or not, they were responsible for maybe the biggest part of my recovery.  I finally agreed that I was part of the reason Tyler is dead, but not 100% of the reason. I could have prevented the accident by pulling the plastic cover over the empty pool. Yes, that’s very true, but I didn’t kill him.

I guess Tyler forgot we were draining the pool, even though this was discussed numerous times. Plus, anyone could see there was no water in the pool. Even from some distance away, it was obviously empty. The large pool hose that went to the main sewer drain was still sticking out at the corner of the empty pool. I was supposed to pull it out when I dragged the cover over the pool. Tyler had to be careless in many ways to allow this accident to happen. It was an oversight with totally unfair consequences, but I hadn’t killed him.

One time, talking with Christain on the phone, he said goodbye, and I said, “Tha… tha.. thank you for helping me, Christian. I love you.” After that, I began to talk more, and within a week, I talked as much as I ever talked.

The psychiatric people were still worried about the fact that I hadn’t cried yet; that I hadn’t dealt with my grief yet. On the other hand, they were encouraged when I began to get these little periods when I’d be furious at Tyler for his carelessness. He and I had done everything together, and it seemed that we’d even teamed up to help him have a fatal accident. Being angry at Tyler wasn’t something I felt very often, but this anger was seen as a step in the right direction.  

I begged to have the therapy sessions stopped before I started to repeat ninth grade. It felt odd being a year older than my classmates, and I didn’t want to be seeing a psychiatrist, too. Stuff like that has a way of getting out. I wanted to try and be as normal as possible, but it didn’t go well right from the first bell.

Maybe if the first day had gotten off on a better note, I wouldn’t have been labeled a geek or a fag right off the bat. I had no luck, though, as someone had found out I was a year older than everyone else and had moved here because of the death of a friend. I still looked very young. I was small, and I had that little bit of a baby face, so being older but looking smaller and younger was too weird for the kids to deal rationally with, so they labeled me all kinds of negative things. To make matters worse, my homeroom teacher insisted on telling everyone that I had an A+ average through eighth grade. That was another strike against me in the eyes of my classmates.

At first, I tried to dumb it down, but my vocabulary became one of my worst enemies. I’d hear, “What the fuck does that mean, smartass?” Just about anything I did or said was misconstrued, mostly on purpose, and taken the wrong way. When I tried to ingratiate myself with one of the Alpha-type guys, he said, “Don’t try your queer shit with me.” The ninth grade ended, and I survived. During the summer, Christian came home, and I was his shadow day and night. He didn’t baby me, but he did include me in everything he did. I got revitalized during the summer.  

In tenth grade, I joined the track team and did pretty well, but I still couldn’t break into a clique. Then, in eleventh grade, and each year, there was less name calling from the “in crowd” kids and more of just ignoring me. They wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t bother them. I took a deep breath and tried again to form several friendships with labeled losers like myself, but nothing was worth the effort. They weren’t any fun. Being alone was better than that.

My main past time, other than daydreaming about me and Tyler, was looking for cute boys to perve over. As far as I could tell, there weren’t any gay guys in my school except the obvious ones. The drag ‘drama queens ‘ and the “I’m here, I’m queer…deal with it” crowd. Way too confrontational for me. I wanted to find a gay guy who was a regular guy who just happened to be gay. I couldn’t find even one of that kind of gay guy the entire four years I looked for one in high school. Intellectually, I knew they were hidden from view, but I never uncovered one.

My folks bought me an aluminum “Trek” road bike for my senior year.  It cost over six hundred dollars, and it was awesome. I was intent on staying in running shape, and bike riding was an excellent exercise for that. My parents were just glad I had an activity and a healthy one, too.  I spent time with Christian that summer, but not as much as I did in past years.  Now, I was taking long twenty-mile bike rides, and even longer sometimes.

I had a helmet and a small backpack for snacks, water, and lots of free time. Oh yes, and I listened to all types of music except rap, which was becoming more and more popular. I had a map of our town and a cell phone, but I still got lost. Bikes are not allowed on the highway, but this one rest stop I could get to on the bike was a good find.

Before, I’d had to pee behind a tree, but now there was a restroom for bike riders and motorists. I parked the bike and went into the public lavatory for a pee. I knew about perverts lurking in public lavatories, but I didn’t expect one to be in this restroom. They were lurking in other public restrooms until one day, standing at a urinal, a man came right out of a toilet stall and stood behind me.  He said, “Do you want to come in the stall for a second so I can show you something?”A person would need to be way stupid to say, ‘Yeah, let’s do that. My pee stream immediately dried up. I shudder, “Na, na, no, thanks.” Then I zipped up and went to wash my hands even though I still had to pee a lot more. He lingered and said, “No problem, kid; that’s fine. Sorry, I bothered you.”

Stuff like that. He said it all in a very polite, pleasant tone. I looked at him in the mirror and didn’t see a homeless derelict type of person. I saw a nice-looking, clean-cut guy, maybe a guy in his late twenties or so. I realized that even though I was panicked a little, I really did NOT want to go in the stall with him. He was too old, and I’d never thought about an older guy to do something sexy with.  I was eighteen at the time.      

That was it. I left and rode down the path and finished my pee the way I used to do it, against a tree. A squirrel came up behind me but was strangely quiet. It was probably too old for me, too. The next day I came back with a vague plan to see if maybe a kid around my age was hanging in the men’s room. I loitered for an hour, but only older motorists used the facilities.  Two of them gave me eye to eye looks with raised eyebrows in a questioning manner.  I looked away.  

Some of the cars stayed a long time in the parking spots, which screwed up plans of mine for hanging around, so I took off.  For a while, I maintained hope of connecting with a gay kid around my age, so the rest stop became a must-visit every day I rode the bike. I rode up one day and there was another bike locked in the small bike rack. Hot shit, another kid.

I had to calm myself before going inside. I wanted to be cool, like I knew the drill. I went in and saw legs in the first of two stalls. My heart was pounding as I started my pee. The door to the stall opened slowly and I heard footsteps coming up behind me. I was losing my nerve as the kid put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ll hold that for you while you finish,” and a hand came around and took my dick from my hand.  

That was the first time anybody but me had held this eighteen-year-old penis of mine, and I started to get hard.  Then I opened my eyes and looked at the hand. It was the hand of a middle-aged man with some gray hairs and bulging veins. Gasping and backing up into him, I said, “Na.. na… na… noooo!” and his hand pulled off my dick, causing my pee stream to swing across the urinal wall and then on the floor.  

He backed away, saying, “Okay, okay, my mistake. Take it easy.”  I looked around, and this guy was dressed in all the tight bike-riding gear, but he was at least fifty years old with a pot belly and gray hair. My face was angry, red, and scared. I was angry with myself, too. I ran out the door like some little kid, jumped on my bike, and rode away.  

There wasn’t anything wrong with that man except, in my eyes, he was too old to have sex with. I was disappointed at my prejudice, but I couldn’t make myself have a sexual experience with just anybody.  Why was I hanging out in a public toilet?  It seemed perverted and, I don’t know. unhealthy?I didn’t go back for a week, and when I did, it was more of the same. Going back to the toilet made me realize how much I wanted some bodily contact with a boy around my age. That is just how my subconscious mind had it set up. The need for some satisfying sexual experience becomes a stronger and stronger urge. Jerking off helped, but I was itching for a gay buddy, if just for a one-night stand. The rest stop did not seem to be the answer, though, and I was sexually unfulfilled

In the twelfth grade, I had the biggest crush on a boy. He reminded me somewhat of Tyler, except this boy was six feet tall. Never mind how tall he was, the crush got stronger and stronger the more I looked at him. His name was Robert and he was in my homeroom and three other classes, including gym class. Oh my god, all the crazy things I went through in gym class trying to see Robert naked. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.  He had brown hair that was cut in a crew cut. His face had a medium complexion, dark brown eyes, complementary ears, nose, mouth, and chin. Yeah, everything was pretty much perfect—great smile, just like Tyler’s.

Everything Robert did was so natural and cool. I got boners just watching him; hard, painful boners. For a while, I felt guilty, like I was cheating on Tyler, but even I realized how stupid that thought was. The fantasies I concocted for Robert and me got more elaborate as my crush on him intensified. It got scary for me to be so attached to a boy I’d never even spoken to. I had many daydreams of him during the day and while lying in bed before sleep.  One fantasy was to have Robert unexpectedly show up at my house, ringing my doorbell after school while I was home alone. I’d act surprised he even knew where I lived. He would be shy, and I’d try to put him at ease. “Robert!  How nice of you to visit.”

He’d say that he didn’t think I even knew his name.  He’d confess he had a huge crush on me. I’d be surprised, “A crush on me?” Then,  in the fantasy, he grabs my head with a hand on either side of my face, kisses me, and licks me all over and around my mouth. He’d start kissing with his tongue in my mouth while slowly rubbing his hand over my head and all through my hair. His hand down the back of my pants while grinding his crotch into mine. In a near frenzy, he’d blah. blah, blah.  

All that from me, who hasn’t experienced a real gay sex moment in his life. That didn’t matter when fantasy was involved with the aid of gay porn on the Internet.ess!

This continued all through the winter, and I finally decided to try to meet him. I found out where he lived and rode my bike over, hoping to see him and start some conversation. On my fourth try, I saw him walking a dog, so with my heart in my throat, I rode up and said, “Hey, hi! You’re in my biology class, aren’t you?”

Robert looked up and said, “Yeah, duh!  I’m your homeroom and three other classes.”  

My face got red and hot.  “Oh, yeah. That’s right, you are. Hi Robert.”  He asked what I was doing around here, and I explained my plan for training for the spring track team by doing long bike rides. I kept my reply short and to the point. I didn’t want to ramble on like I do sometimes. I didn’t want him to lose interest..

Nonetheless, he was losing interest, though, because it didn’t seem like Robert was paying any attention to me at all. He was staring at his German Shepard as it did a huge dump on someone’s lawn.  “Good boy, Rabbit,” he said and began walking away from the steaming pile of dog shit, totally ignoring it and me.  

I rode away feeling a bit like that turd the dog shit out.  The next day, Robert didn’t even say “Hi” when I saw him in homeroom. Well, one good thing came out of that encounter, and I didn’t even realize it until a couple of days later.  My crush on Robert was OVER!  I didn’t hate him or anything; I simply didn’t have a crush on him anymore.  I couldn’t imagine why I’d ever had one on him in the first place. Robert and I were through. I hope he doesn’t take it too hard.  Break-ups can be painful sometimes…

Christian had taught me to drive two summers ago, and I got to drive his hand-me-down car. Not as hot or as much fun as his hand-me-down speedos had been, but it was a ‘ride.’  A ten-year-old Toyota sedan. He’d bought it from our uncle some years ago.  

So I could get around and run the many errands that my parents came up with. I enjoyed it and loved the independence a car provided. It made me feel like I was no different than any other kid my age. Christian had graduated college the year I graduated eleventh grade. As I said earlier, I am a senior now.  I still had no friends, but I talked to a couple of kids who were on the track team and a couple in class from time to time. No one called me names anymore, but I was still an ‘outsider’ as far as anything vaguely resembling an ‘in crowd’ was concerned. I just wanted to graduate from High School and start fresh in college.

I’d gotten an early acceptance to several Ivy League colleges, but I’d decided on the University Of Pennsylvania. They offered a hundred percent academic scholarship. A full boat, free ride through all four years. I still hadn’t received a grade below an A+ in twelve years of public school.  After my crush on Robert, I’d had a couple of other crushes on cute guys, but they were only useful in the short term for my own many jerk-off sessions.  By now, I’d accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to experience a gay sexual episode until college. In college, I was going to go for it. I was one randy boy!  

My feelings for Tyler were still felt, but after almost five years, those feelings lacked the sharp edges of my earlier years of mourning. I could feel very sad at times thinking about all the things that he and I would have done together if he had lived. Of course, that would never have included sex together. Ironically, I had more sex with Tyler through my dreams than I ever would have had if he had lived. What would we have been like? I wondered about that and knew my life would have been much happier with Tyler in it, but he was dead, and I felt I was moving on with life.

During the eleventh grade, I had grown to the maximum height I’d ever be. At five-foot-nine, it’s taller than I hoped for, considering I was pretty short until this last, unexpected, late growth spurt.  I was pleased with that, although I remained very thin. Still, I have a tight body from all the bike riding and track team activities. So, overall, I’m okay with my body… not bad at all.  

I was comfortable at school, even though I wouldn’t say I had any fun there. I just wanted to graduate and put this unfortunate High School experience behind me. On the sexual side, my latest infatuation was getting fucked up the ass by some cute guy my age. No one volunteered though.

I was nineteen with two months until I graduated from High School, and good riddance to it, too! There were two main items left to get through, and I’d be done with High School forever. I was valedictorian, so I had to give a speech at the graduation ceremonies. At first, I was going to take that opportunity to give a scathing account of uncontrolled bullies in our High Schools who were ruining the High School experience for those students not deemed worthy to be part of the in crowd. The teachers and the administrators, who did nothing about it, would get ridiculed, etc.

In the end, I wrote a speech of optimism about opportunities and challenges. Exceed your dreams and that kind of drivel. Maybe one, just one student will think, fuck, why was I so mean to that kid?  Just one…..The other thing is the Senior Class Trip. I wasn’t going to go, but it turned out to be three nights in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is where the University Of Pennsylvania is located. The college I’m going to is in the fall. I’d seen the campus during a two-hour tour, but I wanted to roam all around it on my own.  You know, while the students were still there and see what’s up. Maybe check out if there are any openly gay activities, or who knows what.  

I had a few fantasies of a Freshman noticing me and taking me to his dorm room and fucking me all night, or at least taking me out for coffee and talking to me. The one huge hangup was the buddy system for rooms. Buddies could stay together. Most rooms were for four, but a limited number were for two guys. I wanted to have a room for one, of course, but there were none of those.  

Guys like me, who didn’t have a particular person who we wanted to bunk with were listed on a sheet and assigned alphabetically as roommates. Then, these guys switched around with their assigned guys until I was the last one left.  Yep, 381 students were going, and I was that ‘1’ with no roommate.  My elation was short-lived, however, as I soon discovered I had to share a room with one of the chaperones.

A week before the trip, Mr. Degenerate called me over as I was walking in the hall. He told me I was the lucky guy, who got to share a room on the trip with him. He was trying to be funny, I guess.  He’s a first-year guidance counselor, one year out of college.  I’d talked to him a couple of times and he seemed nice. Very youthful-looking guy with a ready smile and something nice to say to everyone.  

I could have got a lot worse. He squeezed the back of my neck and said, “Don’t seem so thrilled Oliver!” He chuckled a little and said, in a conspiratorial voice, that he’d gotten us a room with a double bed AND a pull-out sofa.  So, we’d each have a bed. A weird thing to say.

One week to go until the High School Senior Trip, and then a little bit more High School before my real life finally begins.

To be continued…

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