More After School with Alex

Chapter 20: More: After School with Alex

Author's notes: If you are joining us late, this is the true story of my growing up in the northeastern US suburbs during the 1970s and early 1980s. I "knew" inside I was different from the time I was five, but repressed it mightily. I first realized that I might be gay in high school, but the thought was so painful to absorb that I didn't actually accept the fact until I was in my early thirties, married and with two sons.

This story is a follow-up to Chapter 7: "After School with Alex". In that earlier tale of mutual exploration, Alex and I were 14-year-old ninth graders. This story takes place three years later when we had become seniors in High School. Erotic but full of conflict, it tells the story of two boys still confused and ill at ease with their sexual orientation, while rapidly approaching adulthood.

Our High School put on an annual musical theater production that was quite a spectacle. It had a big impact on the kids, who were for the first time in their lives in roles of responsibility for all sorts of things—lights, sound, scenery, costumes, and music. The actors on the stage got a small taste of celebrity, wearing makeup and performing under the bright lights, pressured to remember their lines and the words to all the songs, along with all their dance steps. I was a member of the orchestra, enjoying the party environment and the chance to participate, but was glad to make my contribution hidden in the dark orchestra pit, safely out of the spotlight.

My friend Alex was one of the actors on stage. You'll recall my ninth grade experimentation with Alex, described in detail in the story linked above. Then 14, Alex was a wonder to me, a giant of a boy well over six feet tall and developed already like a man, while I was still small and child-like in stature. I was fascinated by the great differences in our size and physical development; it was so hard to believe that we were the same age.

Alex had seduced me then, inviting me to his house after school and convincing me to masturbate with him. I had been very surprised by the suddenness of his proposal, but being a pretty randy little guy I was eager to play along. Once we were both unclothed, I was stunned at the size of his equipment, then even more surprised when he was very aggressive about the specific things he wanted to do with me, some of them I can't write about here without having my words strictly edited. I was a little taken back by his forwardness, and was uncomfortable with the somewhat rough way he wanted to get down to business, man-handling my smaller body that autumn afternoon in his bedroom. I learned that afternoon that Alex had been initiated into sex by his much older brother whom he adored, and that Alex had gathered a great deal of experience at his brother's hands. Alex seemed to like the fact that his older brother doted on him so much, craving their illicit sexual contact with such anticipation that he told me that his penis would stiffen just to hear his brother coming down the hall to his bedroom at night, because he knew that sexual bliss was close at hand.

Alex's experiences with sex were therefore far more advanced than mine by the age of 14; he explained the things he did with his brother in a matter of fact way that were both erotic and a little frightening to me at the same time. As far as I was concerned he qualified as an expert, and it was clear that he wanted to jump quickly over the baby steps that I would have welcomed as part of my seduction that afternoon: maybe sharing adult magazines while laying beside each other on the bed or on the floor watching TV, casual contact between our bodies that would have grown more intimate as the minutes passed, maybe culminating in feeling each other quietly through our trousers, making each other aroused before we unzipped, before I felt the wonderful sensation of a strange hand touching my secret places for the very first time in the privacy of an empty house.

He obviously didn't consider such foreplay important or necessary. After he asked me right-out to masturbate with him, we went upstairs and quickly undressed, then began to feel me all over without a second's delay, and just a moment later I felt his hot, wet mouth all over me as well.

Normally I was the initiator, but Alex had taken charge of this event, and I didn't like it so much. I had asked him to stop, and told him I would masturbate myself, lying beside him, but that would be the extent of our contact for that day. Alex looked disappointed, frustrated and even a little angry, but he had complied, eyes glued manically to my progress as I jerked my small cock and he jerked his giant one.

More than three years had passed since then, and both of us now nearly eighteen, I wasn't so fascinated by Alex's size anymore. I had grown to nearly six feet myself, and while Alex was still bigger, I now regarded him instead as somewhat overweight and certainly out of shape for his size. His role in the school play was a comedic one, and he played a buffoon whose shtick included him constantly eating something different in every scene. Spicing up his role, Alex sometimes came on stage carrying unusual things to eat, such as cat food or dog biscuits, always getting a laugh from fellow cast members and a scolding by the show's adult directors who didn't want to see juvenile humor added to the show that wasn't already included in the script.

Much of my life revolved around baseball and outdoor activities, and I had little in common with Alex. But he was funny and enjoyable to be around, and during that spring's musical I spent a lot of time around him.

Alex came to me during a break in practice one afternoon and whispered to me that he was taking care of a neighbor's home while they were on vacation. But he said it as if he was telling me a dirty secret, and I couldn't figure out why this news was so supposed to be so exciting to me. "Yeah?" I said. "So?"

"Well," started Alex, looking around to make sure no one was in earshot, "They have BOOKS."

"What kind of books?" I asked, imagining cookbooks or phonebooks something.

"You know.... BOOKS. Books with sex in them. Lots of them."

I was suddenly interested in this secret library Alex had discovered. "Oh yeah? Tell me more", I said, my eyes growing involuntarily wider in anticipation.

"Well, they are really liberal people and they come from Europe", he explained "And they have lots of books with wild pictures in them of stuff that I've never seen before. They don't even try to hide them. I found them right on the shelf."

Wow, I thought to myself, my crotch stirring in anticipation. I was one horny teenager, and if I may set the stage, please remember that this was happening in the late 1970's, BEFORE the Internet, BEFORE cable television and before almost anything titillating was available for children's (or horny teenagers') eyes to see. My mother had discovered my lone well dog-eared Penthouse magazine when snooping in my closet two years before, and it had been taken away from me and a strong lecture delivered. Where today a boy can simply type the words "cum shot" or "tits" into Google and INSTANTLY receive dozens of unbelievable pictures to browse and masturbate to, all totally free for the looking, boys in the 1970's either had to know a friend with a "stash" of his dad's magazines, or be satisfied reading National Geographic and looking at the pictures there.

"So... do you wanna go with me to see?" asked Alex, mischief sparkling in his eyes.

He didn't need to ask twice. "When?" I asked.

"It has to be tomorrow. They come back the next day." He answered.

I was waiting for Alex, heart pounding as soon as school ended the next day. Together we walked to his house on that same route through the neighborhood we had followed three years before. When we reached the house, Alex fumbled for the key in the lock. The door creaked open, and together we entered the neighbors' strange house. It smelled like foreign cooking spices and odd cologne, and I felt a shiver to know I was someplace I shouldn't be—clearly someplace that my parents wouldn't approve of. But I didn't care. I was so horny about what I might see that I couldn't see straight as I stumbled up the stairs after Alex.

Entering the master bedroom Alex went straight for the bookshelf, and pulled out three or four hardcovered books and laid them on the bed. One was "The Joy of Sex" which I had thumbed through several times with great guilt while standing in the big bookstore at the mall; afraid to read too closely for fear someone would see me. The others looked like picture filled reference books that promised to display the techniques of lovemaking. My cock throbbed to rapt attention as I looked at the precious treasures that lay before us. Alex sat on the bed and beckoned me to join him, and I immediately did.

Looking through one of the books I was intrigued to find that it was filled with pictures of a blond Norwegian or Dutch looking family. The book was written in an odd foreign language that I didn't recognize. There were many pictures of the whole family nude, including those of naked parents playing with their nude children. My heart nearly stopped when I turned the page and saw a picture of a row of boys of various ages standing naked, arms around each others' shoulders. The picture was designed to show the different stages of puberty, and it was accompanied by close-ups of several of the boys' smiling faces and of their bare sex organs. Examining these pictures I almost forgot to breathe... they were so forbidden and exciting to me. I wondered where these boys lived that they were so willing to be photographed unclothed like this, and marveled at how broadly they smiled with sincere happy grins even though they stood completely nude for the photographer to capture. I was surprised that these boys would all be so willingly nude standing so close to each other, that their parents would have unashamedly permitted them to be photographed this way, and I wished that I had friends that would be so open about their bodies as they to be so casually naked with me. I especially liked the black and white photos of a boy about my age, with soft brown hair falling over one eye, freckles on his nose, and lean teenage muscles showing on his abdomen. He had sprouted pubic hair, but not too much, just like me, but the rest of his body was still smooth and white. He was still clearly an adolescent just as I was. In the next photos he stood with his naked father, and the resemblance was obvious between them, except the father was a bigger, hairy bear of a man and they smiled as they engaged in horseplay and enjoyed their nakedness together. In one photo I especially liked, the boy made a muscle while his dad felt it. They stood closely beside each other, bodies touching, penises side by side, one finely aged, one just coming into bloom. I yearned for them both.

"Look at this one", urged Alex, and he thrust in front of me a book written in English open to a chapter boldly titled "Homosexuality". Still hardly breathing and heart pounding, I took the book from him, immediately transfixed on the photo on the opening page. It was of two boys, my age or a little older, standing holding each other. The one facing the camera clearly had an erection as the other boy's arms tenderly wrapped around his back and they posed blissfully with eyes half closed, cheek-to-cheek.

Up till that moment I had never seen a picture of two guys together in a sexual situation. Seeing this one for the very first time caused a surge of adrenalin in my gut, the way one might normally experience excitement at the critical resolving scene in a drama or at a turning point in a sporting event. My heart hammered in my chest. "Ohhhh, wowwww", I intoned nearly breathlessly. I could not take my eyes away from that picture, without question depicting the most beautifully erotic scene I had ever seen in my life. It seemed inconceivable to me that the shockingly obscene word that screamed the title of the chapter was printed above an image of something to me that was so unbelievably, wordlessly beautiful. This was, in a nutshell, the pure definition of my life's conflict.

But Alex wanted to get down to business. "Come on Brad, open your pants up and let me do you," he begged in a desperate whisper. He fumbled at my belt and I pushed his hand away.

"Wait, Alex!" I want to look some more!" I begged, not anxious at all for this magic moment to end. I turned a few more pages in the chapter, marveling at the pictures I saw. Older teenaged boys lay naked next to each other in a clean but rumpled bed, smiling with serenely peaceful bliss. Bearded middle-aged men kissed, a sight that was shocking and somewhat frightening to me—but was still highly erotic. After looking at a few more of these images of males together, I flipped back to the first photo, the one of the two beautiful young men standing and holding each other and just gazed at it some more.

"Come on, you promised!" Alex whined pathetically, tugging at my buttoned trousers.

I hadn't promised anything that I remembered, but Alex had obviously taken my acceptance of his invitation that day as an implied promise to jerk off with him. "Ooooh please! Let me do you Brad!" Alex pleaded. He sound and looked like a baby who had just been told he couldn't go out to play. "Cummm-onnnn!"

I stopped resisting and allowed him to unbuckle my belt, watching like a bemused but somehow detached observer. Roughly pulling my blue jeans down to my knees he simultaneously exposed himself and began to masturbate with his other hand. I lay back with my head propped up on the pillows and returned my gaze to the book that stood on my chest. I just couldn't take my eyes away from that magical picture, the one that for the first time for me crystallized the image of two males enjoying sex together, experiencing each other's bodies without shame, illustrating that it just might be OK for two boys to be in love with each other.

Alex wanted me to put the book down and fully participate with him. Whining again that he really wanted to have sex with me like I had promised I would (!!!) he roughly handled my genitals with his face just a fraction of an inch away from them.

I was pissed. I was annoyed because Alex seemed to care only about himself, and he was practically mauling me in his lust-filled desire. I moved the book from my chest and watched him with bemusement. His eyes were closed and he grunted. It was all so hard to comprehend.... The wonderful, beautifully magic picture of the ideal, surreally frozen love scene in the book I held, allowed me to imagine the tender, forbidden true love these two boys my age felt for each other, and were not afraid to experience—that juxtaposed with the live image I watched of lust-crazed Alex laying twisted awkwardly beside me, thrashing and thrusting like a crazy person, oblivious to my emotions while desperately grunting, jacking and mauling my erect cock, while he frenetically jerked his own with a giant paw.

"Hey, STOP, Alex—Hey! How about you just do you, and I'll do me?" I suggested none too kindly. "I'd really prefer that."

Alex paused and looked up at me in disbelief at my request, like I had just asked him to agree to cut his hand off. "What?" he asked in shocked surprise. "What fun is that?" and he immediately returned to his task.

"No, I mean it," I said sternly, "It's either that or nothing. I'll go home."

Realizing I was serious Alex rolled off me and lying beside me he disappointedly watched from close range as I took over and rubbed my own dick. I would have rather simply quit and left, but I felt I owed Alex this much, since, after all, he had brought me here to see the stash. Rubbing his cock violently Alex groaned and gasped and then gritting his teeth and holding his breath, he released a torrent of thick soapy cum all over his ample belly. I also let mine fly a moment later, though I needed to close my eyes and concentrate very hard to make it happen.

We shared few words as we cleaned up and left the house, and Alex and I were very chilly to each other for the rest of the year as I vividly recall, barely speaking to each other anymore in school. I realize now that we were both so conflicted about our unfathomably defective sexual orientations and our misguidedly powerful animal needs to have sexual contact with other guys, that we were expressing our confusion by feelings silently, covert anger towards each other.

I heard that the neighbors caught Alex the very next time they were away. Apparently he had been surprised when they came home unexpectedly early, and he was in their bedroom again looking at their collection. He thought he had covered up his deeds, making a plausible excuse as he hurriedly left, but they soon found the books that he had quickly hidden under the bed, and had reported their deep disappointment to his parents at Alex's lack of judgment and his invasion of their privacy. I recall feeling deep conflict upon hearing this news, both gladly thinking that it served Alex right to be caught at his game, but also feeling a great sense of fear that someday all of us who hide would be caught as well.

I wondered when, not if, that net would fall on me.