Foolish Fire (5 page)

“What’s this?”

Curiously I touched it, thinking it was a drop of urine, but when I withdrew my finger it clung and stretched out, following my movements like an elastic goo. I’d never noticed it before on my own.

“Stop it,” he said breathlessly.

“Why?”

“You know.”

I flushed. Then, to get over the awkward pause by turning it into a joke, I grasped his shaft and began pumping.

“Is this how you do it?”

My heart was pounding so hard I could barely hear my own voice. The feel of Bobby’s hardness in my palm was a curious, reversed sensation; the familiar jogging grip in my hand, but with no corresponding visceral response of my own. It was a telescoped, remote excitement, knowing only with my mind what my touches were doing to him.

“Don’t.”

His face looked flushed and troubled. He shut his eyes and his breathing became disturbed.

I stopped but kept my hand where it was.

“I said cut it out.”

I felt his hand push mine firmly away.

“Then touch me again,” I commanded in a strange, broken voice.

His startled look showed that he immediately understood the urgency of my request.

Seeing him hesitate, I urged, “Come on.” Taking his hand I placed it on my penis, felt it shy back. Then I closed my eyes as I felt the fingers delicately place themselves into position.

The movement was almost imperceptible at first.

“Like this?”

I nodded. “Harder.”

My command was obeyed. To my delight I felt him stroke me briskly with the same motions of the wrist, the identical encirclement of the fingers, the exact rhythm I myself employed. The same information had mysteriously been transmitted to each of us through nature’s magical network…without the aid of human communication.

A clump of resistance seemed to melt away as my pleasurable sensations grew. I became a fawning slave to his stroking hand. All the muscles in my body went limp and slack, but like distant peaks being tinted by the dawning sun, separately grew tense.

My resistance broke down; I gave voice to my desire, begging softly: “Take me all the way.”

I felt the hand stop.

“Don’t stop!” I almost barked, and felt the jog again, the good feel of the jog, and I didn’t resist, I couldn’t resist, I let go.

“Oh.”

Arching my back, clenching my toes, I bucked my pelvis hard against his fist.

Soft warmth kissed my chin…my chest…my cheek….

I lay trembling, listening silently to the repercussions still echoing within my body. When I opened my eyes and turned to look at him, I saw the uneasy look on his face.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him, “don’t worry.”

“It’s not that….” He was gazing at my body as if seeing it for the first time, a little scared. The expression on his face was that of a boy ready to crumple into tears.

Suddenly he backed away and wordlessly, without looking at me, knelt on the floor and began stroking his penis furiously. He bit his lower lip with an intent look of concentration on his face. I took note of the subtle way he pumped his hips to accentuate the pleasure of his hand’s caresses. Quickly his face softened into a pouty moue. The racing speed of his hand became positively comical. He whimpered, grunted, bucked.

With tiny slapping sounds, a scattering of white islands materialized before him, dotting the floorboards, sprinkled out for quite a distance.

After a moment, he turned to look at me and our eyes met. We were both a little shame-faced, but rather than covering up the awkward moment with jokes, we remained silent. I jerked out some tissues from the box at my bedside and handed him the box. Wordlessly, almost grimly, we began cleaning up our messes.

Queerbait

I first heard the word at the start of eighth grade as I was taking my books out of my locker one day just before homeroom. A group of boys was nearby, huddled in quiet discussion, and I overheard it said in an undertone. For some reason I looked toward them, alarmed by the suggestive tone of the word.

Some of them looked quickly away before moving off, and I was disturbed, suspecting they’d been whispering something about me. I caught up with one of them, a boy named Richard.

“Hey, Richie, what’s up?”

He didn’t answer me, but slunk away with a smirk on his face, casting knowing looks toward another boy.

I began to get scared. A feeling of dread sank through me, making my skin prickle. I grabbed him by the arm.

“I said: what’s up?”

He heard the desperation in my voice and shrugged off my hand. I felt the blood rush to my face.

“Listen, Richie, you better tell me what’s up or I’ll pound the crap out of you!”

He grinned at me, and the sight of his pointed cleft chin enraged me still further. “You were walking to school with Mark Warren this morning, weren’t you?” he said.

“Yeah, sure. So?”

“So Mark Warren is a faggot, that’s what.”

“A faggot? What’s a faggot?” I had a vision of a small, furry animal, something like a rabbit.

He looked amused at my ignorance. “A queer. A fairy. A homo.” He pantomimed grotesquely with a limp wrist. “He likes other boys.”

“What?”

I let go of him and watched as he scurried away to join his friends with a backward look of derision. The feeling of dread had now lodged firmly in the pit of my stomach. I was familiar with the term “homo” which had always been applied to those effeminate sissies whom I’d despised since I was little, but I couldn’t understand how it could be used to describe Mark, an attractive boy (easily one of the handsomest boys in school) with whom I’d lately tried to become friends. And certainly it couldn’t be applied to
me
just because I’d walked with him to school.

I decided to ask Jack about it. Jack was sure to know; he always had all the answers.

I waited for him in the hallway after first period. This year we had different classes for English, science, and algebra; we shared PE, social studies, and French. He waved his hand when he saw me standing by his locker.

“Hey, Guy, what’s up?”

“Jack, listen. Do you know Mark Warren?”

“Yeah, I know who he is. What about him?”

“They say he’s a faggot. Is it true?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Why do they call him that?”

He looked at me as if he thought I were testing him, and I felt ashamed at how innocent I must have seemed to him. “Because he likes boys.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

He shot me a look of contempt, exasperated that he had to explain something so simple. “Don’t you know anything? That means he likes to do it with other guys.”

“Do what? What do you mean?”

“Stuff like BJs.”

“BJs? What are they?”

“Don’t you even know what a BJ is? It stands for ‘blow job,’ and it means sucking a guy’s dick.”

A jolt went through me. “That’s disgusting!” I whispered feebly, my throat dry, my voice almost a croak. “That’s the sickest thing I ever heard of.”

He smiled at my reaction, then turned confidential. “They caught him one time getting a hard-on in the PE showers.”

“No!”

“It’s true. Bill Jenkins and a couple of other guys beat the shit out of him for it.”

“Just for getting a hard-on? But Jack…does that make him a faggot? I mean, it might have been a mistake. It could happen to anyone by accident, couldn’t it?”

“Not to him.”

“How can you say that for sure?” I was almost begging. “Besides, it might be a lie that he got a hard-on. ’Cause I don’t think Mark Warren would do…what you just said.”

Jack had his hands thrust deep inside his jacket pockets. As he contemplated my bewilderment, a mysterious grin lit up his face. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot worse things than blow jobs.”

“A lot worse—?”

“Wanna know what else they do that’s even more disgusting?”

“What?”

He looked around to see that we weren’t being overheard before whispering: “They like to take it up the ass.”

“What does that mean, ‘take it up the ass’?”

“Well, Guy-baby, it means getting fucked in the butt.”

I felt the blood drain rapidly from my face. “Those faggots!” A black cloud of terror swelled up in my chest, almost choking my breath and making me feel weak and faint. I didn’t notice that Jack had circled around behind me until I felt two hands firmly planted on either side of my hips.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

“Can’t you tell? This is how they do it.”

“Do what?”

I twisted around to try to see over my shoulder, but knew immediately from the soft bumps against my butt what Jack was doing. “Cut it out, Jack!” A feeling of panic came over me.

“Don’t you like it, Guy-baby?”

“Don’t call me Guy-baby!”

Why was he doing this to me? I tried to fight him off. “Please, Jack, don’t! It’s not funny!”

Like a strange, demented demon, he would not be budged; a look of savage fury glinted in his eyes.

“Stop it!” I screamed.

I felt him let go, then watched him skip away down the hall. “See you later, Guy!” he called from the other end as if nothing had happened.

My knees were trembling and my forehead damp with sweat as I watched him disappear around the corner.

All that morning I couldn’t concentrate in my classes. Instead, I looked forward impatiently to lunch period, when I would be able to go to the school library and confirm what I’d heard.

After hurriedly bolting down my lunch, I rushed to the library.

Miss Thompson, the librarian, smiled at me from behind the check-out counter.

“Hello, Guy.”

“Hi, Miss Thompson.”

I went straight to the stacks to find the book I’d so often pored over in secret:
What Every Boy Should Know
, a slim green volume shelved next to its companion volume in red,
What Every Girl Should Know
. I looked up “homosexuality” in the index and turned to the page indicated. It was in the chapter dealing with hygiene, and there was a disappointing half-page devoted to the topic:

“Homosexuality” is the term given to an aberration in which a man’s normal feelings for a female are misdirected and re-channeled toward another male. In adolescence, when young people’s bodies are changing, and there is much curiosity, it is normal for friends of the same sex to indulge in mutual explorations. In fact, it is quite common for a boy to develop romantic attachments to another of the same sex. Such attachments may often be quite intense, and even lead to consummation. There is no need to be alarmed in such a case. Most boys soon grow out of this phase and learn to direct their feelings toward girls.

But when this feeling for other boys persists, it develops into a condition known as “homosexuality,” (from the Greek word,
homo
, meaning “same.”) In most cases, this condition weakens and disappears as one gets older, except in those rare cases in which it persists into adulthood. Because these adults retain their child-like behavior, never growing out of the adolescent stage, most psychologists consider homosexuality to be a form of mental illness. There are divergent opinions as to how prevalent this condition is in our society….

I replaced the book on the shelf feeling faint and sick, thinking of some of the things I’d done with Bobby last summer. Certainly they would have to qualify as “mutual explorations,” even though I’d thought of them primarily as extensions of my own self-pleasure.

Was it an accident that Mark Warren seemed drawn to me? But how was I to know about him? There had been no indication, no warning sign…. After a moment’s reflection, the horrible truth dawned on me. The way he carried his books (cradled on his forearms), the way he walked (with short, quick steps which made his bottom wiggle): these were unmistakable signs, and if only I’d been more observant, I’d have noticed them right away.

Now my classmates had lumped me together—albeit accidentally—with those pale sissies whom I despised perhaps more than any of them.

I kept thinking of the phrase “this condition disappears as one gets older.” That could only mean that it was, after all, a passing phase I was going through. Perhaps many other boys had also gone through it. One thing was for sure, though: it would never happen again. I thought of Jack’s face when he’d explained what a faggot was, and felt a choking, murderous anger well up in my breast.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Miss Thompson was smiling warmly as I walked past the check-out desk.

“Yes.”

*

Mark was waiting for me by my locker at the end of the day. I didn’t notice him at first because of the crowd of students milling in the hallway.

“Guy.”

When I turned to look, I saw him standing there with a hurt look on his face. “What do you want?” I said.

“Where have you been?”

“In my classes.” I had steered clear of him all day, pretending not to see him, avoiding the places where we usually met.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing’s the matter. Why do you ask?”

“It sort of seems like you’re trying to avoid me for some reason.”

“Why should I try to avoid you?”

“I don’t know. It just seems that way, that’s all.”

“I just want to be alone, okay? I want to be by myself.”

“How come?”

“Do I have to have a reason? I just want to, that’s all. Anyway, who says I have to have permission from you? Do I have to tell you everything?”

“Wait, Guy—”

“Let go of my elbow.”

He had grabbed me lightly as I turned to go, and for some reason that light touch felt like an unclean caress. When he saw the look on my face, he actually cringed.

“Let go, damn it!” I tugged myself loose and pushed my way through the crowd, fighting free of his imagined clasp. I could feel him staring after me. Suddenly I was running, baffled and angry.

At the steps of the main entrance I ran into Jack as he was strapping his book band around his textbooks. Though he didn’t notice me at first, something told me he’d just seen me talking with Mark.

“Jack, wait up.”

He began bounding down the steps, three at a time, his books slung over his shoulder.

I caught up with him and matched my steps to his. “Where you going?”

“To see Sheri.” This was his current girlfriend, Sheri Drennon. Since entering junior high school, Jack had already gone steady with half a dozen girls, a school record. (No one else even came close.) Sheri was a freckle-faced redhead who’d been in my class last year, a rather wild girl who was always in trouble with the teachers. In fact, she’d been sent home from school this morning for wearing a too-short skirt to homeroom.

To me she wasn’t very attractive and I was a little disappointed that Jack had chosen her from among all the other more attractive girls—it lowered him just the slightest bit in my estimation. Still, she was, as Jack whispered in my ear as we walked up her driveway, “stacked.”

She greeted us at the door chewing gum, and I was reminded of the time our teacher had caught her chewing gum in class and had made her put the wad on the end of her nose.

Nobody else was home so we went into the living room and chatted idly for a while. Jack and Sheri were seated close together on the sofa, and I couldn’t help noticing the proprietary way Jack put his arm around her. I envied the ease with which he did everything.

Soon he was nuzzling her cheek and sneaking light kisses until, with a sigh almost of resignation, Sheri finally returned a kiss. The silences in the conversation grew longer as their kisses became prolonged…while I sat before them, my rapt attention tinged with awkwardness.

Oblivious to my presence, they were hugging in the most intimate way and nibbling at each others’ mouths. Their kisses sounded viscid and liquid and quite erotic, and I was growing weak with longing. There was a keen smell of something in the close room. I saw Jack’s hand slide up and boldly fondle one of Sheri’s breasts. She made a half-hearted remonstration, pushing his hand away and glancing modestly toward me (I quickly put on an air of nonchalance.) But when she returned to her kissing I continued my absorbed study.

It seemed that my presence, far from dampening her ardor, only emboldened and inflamed her kisses to an alarming degree. A suggestive movement below caught my attention. It was Jack rocking himself furtively against her thigh. I felt light-headed, almost faint. Couldn’t she feel it?