JASON'S JOURNEY
This is a story about the growing up and coming of age of a typical Ohio boy by the name of Jason as told to me through the exchange of a series of Email. It is a true story detailing true events with only the names, including Jason's, having been changed to protect the travellers we meet along the way. We begin, as all good stories do, at the beginning, in 1985, in Jason's sixth year of life, a time of play, innocence and feeling good. Comments about the story can be sent to the author, J.O. Dickingson at authorsix@hotmail.com and those who wish to correspond directly with Jason may do so at journeyofjason@yahoo.com The lyrics to "Read Me A Story" is the copyright of the Children's Television Workshop and Jim Henson Productions, Inc.
CHAPTER ONE: PLAYING WITH LEGO, BIG BIRD, AND LITTLE BONERS
Over the hill and through the woods, it's off to Grandma's house we go. Well, actually, there aren't really any thick, dark woods, no wolves that I'm aware of, I'm looking out the side window of our Cordova as Mom drives, and I don't have a red cloak and I'm not carrying a basket of goodies. Grandma lives in the next town, fifteen minutes up the highway, ten on a good day if there isn't much traffic, much too far for a six-year-old to walk. But, other than that, it is the same. I mean, I love my Grandma as much as Little Red, and look forward to going to visit her, as I suspect most six-year-old boys do. She and Grandpa live in a five-room house, six if you count the bathroom, with a big open basement out in the country just a mile off the highway on a dirt road, like I suppose a lot of grandmas and grandpas do in the Midwest, with a small five-tree fruit orchard, two rows of current bushes, and a huge garden in the front and a hill in the back covered with trees through which winds a path to a pasture owned by one of my uncles. It is a great place for playing games and Grandma is a lot of fun too. Even though she's old, she sure doesn't act as old as my friends' grandmas.
Lately I've had another good reason to enjoy visiting Grandma's. That is my stepcousin, Brandon. Brandon and his mom moved in with Grandma and Grandpa a little while ago on account of my uncle being away. I heard my mom and dad talking about it. My uncle is in jail. Anyway, Brandon is two years older than I. Being out in the country and new besides, he doesn't have many friends who can come play with him so it's Mom's idea that it would be good if we go out every night so I can play with him for a while. Besides, I can tell she likes to visit with her mom. I don't mind. Brandon is a lot of fun, and he has lots of neat stuff.
Well, on this particular evening, when we arrive at Grandma's, Mom heads off to the kitchen to visit and I head to Brandon's bedroom to play. Actually he and his mom share the bedroom. I'm lucky. I got my own room all to myself. I don't know if I'd like to have to sleep with my mom. Anyway, he takes out his Lego set and we sit on the bed, on account of the room is too small to have a table or to play on the floor, and start to build a house on this building pad with a built-in swimming pool. There's an instruction book of course but we've done that and we just use our imaginations, each of us working at one end of the pad and working toward the middle. Brandon has lots of Lego pieces and we spend a long time creating a monster house with all kinds of nooks and eaves and stuff. When we're done, we make some Lego people and begin to play. Suddenly Brandon gets to his knees.
"Watch this," he says, and to my surprise he pushes down his pants and underwear. His dick is hard and sticking straight out. Being naked isn't a big thing in my house. I and my older brother, who's sixteen, and even my mom and dad, often come out of the shower and go to our bedrooms without a towel or anything. It's the first time I ever seen anyone else with their pants down though, and the first time I've seen a guy with his penis sticking up like that, and I'm kind of surprised. He takes one of the little Lego people and perches it on his penis and sort of jerks his penis so the person jumps off it and into the swimming pool, using his penis like a diving board. Well I've never seen anyone play with their penis like that and I can't believe what he is doing. I giggle and he does it again a few times, making me giggle all the more.
"Why don't you do it?"
Well, even though I'm only six, I like to fit in with others, and I figure why not. So I get to my knees too and push down my pants and underwear and pick up one of the Lego people and make it jump off my hard penis. Brandon giggles and so I do it again, and for the next couple minutes every Lego person we can find gets to try out our new diving boards.
"You like it when your penis gets hard like that?" Brandon is looking at my diving board.
"Yeah, I guess," I reply. I'd never really thought much about it. Like I've never thought about why it happens or anything and just sort of think it is funny when it does. I look at his, since he is looking at mine. We're both the same except his is a bit longer.
"It get hard very often?"
"Once in a while," I reply with a shrug. I never thought much about it until that moment. It has been just something that happens, and then goes away.
"When it gets like that it's called a boner."
"Yeah?"
We grin at each other, kneeling there before the swimming pool with our boner diving boards. It is my first shared piece of secret knowledge and I feel proud. Even at the age of six I know there are certain things that boys share with each other that are not to be mentioned to grownups.
That weekend I bring my talking Big Bird with me to Grandma's, the one where the eyes and mouth move. Brandon has his Cabbage Patch Kid, which we got for him one Christmas and that he takes everywhere with him. We go to Grandma's library where we sometimes go to play or to read. It is a small, comfy room, with the walls a light yellow and the carpet this bright orange and this big window where the sun shines through. Grandma and Mom call it the library on account of the big brown bookcase along one of the walls. It has four sections, and the middle two have kid's books, coloring books, and puzzles and stuff on the lower shelves. Anyway, we play for a while, making pretend, me being Big Bird and Brandon being the Cabbage Patch Kid.
"Hey, watch this," he says with a smile. Pushing down his pants and underwear, he takes his penis and puts it in Big Bird's mouth as Big Bird is talking. Well, it's funny and hardly the sort of thing you'd ever see Big Bird doing on Sesame Street and we laugh hysterically like it is the funniest thing in the world, which I guess when you are six and eight it is. Well, I try it next, and it feels sort of funny with Big Bird's mouth moving about my penis and we laugh some more.
"Wanna try my penis in your mouth?"
"No way!"
"Com'on, just try it."
"Forget it!" I reply, wrinkling up my nose.
"Com'on. Big Bird tried it."
"You're goofy."
Brandon laughs and so do I. "Wanna go down the basement and play GI Joes?"
"Sure!"
So we pull up our pants and head down to the basement. It is a huge open basement with the usual clutter of stuff that older people have in their basement, and maybe some stuff that isn't. Like there are six big looms where Grandma and Grandpa make rugs, a potter's wheel and a kiln, a couple freezers, a favorite place for Brandon and me to sit on and play, and a washer and dryer. And there's this miniature pool table that I love to play with when I visit. That afternoon though it is Brandon's GI Joe collection. It is huge. So we play war, sometimes together against the enemy, Brandon being in charge being the older and it is his set, sometimes playing against each other, dying and coming back to life and playing all over again, fluid and imaginative like kids can play.
Like all games we get tired after awhile and after we take a break over ginger snaps and a Pepsi we go back to the library to read. Instead of going to the middle section, or to the Time Life books that we sometimes look at for the neat pictures, Brandon starts to search through the books on the higher shelf, saying that he found one there that had some neat pictures of naked people. Well, when you are six the idea of a book with pictures of naked people is rather intriguing. He finally finds a couple and takes them down. They are some of Grandma's medical books from when she was a nurse. We begin looking at them and whenever one of us finds a picture, we hold it up for the other to look at. It is something I know we should not be doing, which makes it exciting and all the more fun. After a bit, Brandon puts his book down.
"You got a boner?"
"Yeah," I reply. I do. I never noticed it happening. I seldom do notice.
"So do I. You sure you don't want to be Big Bird and put my boner in your mouth?"
"No way."
"Com'on. Just try."
"That's gross."
"Big Bird didn't think so."
"Then go find him," I say with a smile.
"Just give it a try. To see how it feels."
"Un-unh."
"Com'on, I dare you."
I shake my head, but not right away. It is a dare after all. Brandon notices my hesitancy.
"I hear it feels good."
"You're kidding."
"No. I did. I hear it feels really good," he says, emphasizing really.
"It sounds yucky," I reply honestly though the promise of feeling good interests me.
"Just give it a try is all." Brandon can see I'm weakening. "Double dare you." I just wrinkle my nose and shake my head. "I'll do yours if you do mine."
I think about it. That's different. Brandon is two years older than I and though I heard my Mom tell my Dad that he's immature, I figure he's plenty smart. They also think he's an alien. Well, not really. Brandon has this sort of balloon-shaped head that looks sort of too big, because he's on the skinny side, though not as skinny as I, and because he wears his blond hair buzzed close to his head which accents its shape. I'm blond too, but Mom keeps my hair longer, curled over my ears and just over my collar. Anyway, my mom and dad and my aunts and uncles joke that Brandon looks like those aliens you see pictures of that go around capturing people and taking them to their spaceships. This alien doesn't want to capture me, but what he is telling me is intriguing. "You do me first."
"Uh unh. It was my idea. You have to do me first."
"If it was your idea then you should do me first."
"Un unh, I started so you do me first."
I pause again and Brandon knows he has me. He goes to the door and locks it and then coming back over he pushes down his pants and underwear and lies down on the floor. I kneel down beside him and bend over, my head at his crotch. Now that my face is so close and I'm staring at his stiff boner I'm not so sure again.
"I dunno."
"Com'on, I'll do yours. Just put it in your mouth and suck it."
"Suck it?"
"Yeah. You're suppose to suck on it, and move your mouth up and down it."
I look at his penis again. He hadn't said anything about sucking or moving my mouth. That's different.
"Com'on, Jason. Before someone comes wondering what we're doing in here."
That is convincing enough. I open my mouth wide and bend lower and close my lips about the base of his stiff dick, taking him in my mouth. The taste of his penis and the feel of it, hard and hot and throbbing and silky smooth are totally new and totally unexpected. Actually I didn't know what to expect except I figured it would be yucky. It is like your first taste of chocolate, or your first strawberry, or whatever. Something you've never had before and don't know if you're going to like it and that turns out to be unbelievably wonderful. My mouth fills with spit and I swallow it without thinking about if that's good or bad. I've never tasted anything like the taste of his dick and I instantly love it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear Brandon saying to suck. Not really knowing what I'm doing, I suck, and bob my head up and down. I do it for several minutes, and all I'm thinking is how great it is and how I'm glad I did it. Then, sitting up, I tell Brandon it is my turn.
So, I push down my pants and underwear and lie down on the floor and Brandon kneels beside me like I'd knelt beside him, and I watch as he opens his mouth and lowers his head and takes me in his mouth. He is right. It does feel good. He sucks on my stiff little dick and I feel his mouth tugging on it, I'm thinking like when you suck up a noodle off your plate. His mouth is hot and moist and I feel his spit flowing over my little boner. He begins to bob his head up and down, and like me, it is his first time and he doesn't really know what else to do or how fast to go or anything. It doesn't matter. It feels great, especially when his lips slip over the head of my dick.
After a few minutes he sits up and looks down at me and we both smile. We don't say anything. We don't have to. Pulling up our pants, we head outside to play. We chase each other around the five fruit trees, playing tag, and then walk up the lane, playing follow the leader, hopping on one foot, walking backwards, doing somersaults on the grass, just being boys.
One day a few months later Brandon and I are playing in the library, him with his Cabbage Patch Kid and me this time with my talking Alf. We both love the TV show and I act goofy like Alf does and Brandon laughs. After a bit we grow tired of that and look through Grandma's nursing books. We'd pretty much searched through them all for the good pictures and Brandon begins to look through some of her other books, reading me the "good" parts. There is one called the Kama Sutra that has some fancy pictures but I still like the pictures in Grandma's nursing books the best.
"You know how a man and woman have sex."
"Yeah," I reply as if it is old and weary news. Brandon had explained the basics of that to me the second time we'd looked through Grandma's nursing books.
"You know how guys have sex with each other?" I shake my head. "One guy sticks his dick up the other guy's butthole." I laugh. It is a joke. It has to be. "Honest."
"No way."
"It's true."
"How can a guy do that?"
"They just can," he said with a shrug.
"Why?"
"They just do. That's how guys do it."
"That's gross."
"I'd like to try it with you." He says it, just like that, open and honest, like good buddies do with each other.
I think about what he said. "You want to put your dick up my butthole."
"I'd like to try it."
"I dunno," I say hesitantly, thinking about what would have happened if I hadn't gone ahead with the putting his penis in my mouth idea. "You sure guys do that?"
"Sure. And they put their fingers up each other's butts too."
"Their fingers?" I snort. Now I know he's pulling my leg.
"Yeah," he says, looking at me so serious I know he's telling the truth. "Not all of them, like at once, just one."
"Which one?" I ask. I don't know why, as if that made a difference. Brandon shrugs.
"You don't have to put yours up mine if you don't want to." I hesitate and again Brandon knows he has me. He tells me to pull my pants down and to turn around, and though I'm not so sure about this, I'm curious and so I do as he says. He stands behind me and I feel his hands on my butt and I'm feeling sort of strange, and then I feel something pushing against my hole. At first I think it is his penis and I sort of try to relax so it doesn't hurt.
Then I realize it is his finger he's trying to stick up my butthole. He's concentrating really hard on what he is doing and so am I and I feel his finger slowly going in and I concentrate harder. It feels weird and funny and good, all at the same time. It's weird because it is totally new and strange and it's funny because I can feel the tip of his finger inside me but in a way I can't, not like the part stretching my butthole open, and good because, well, because it is. He just sticks it in a little way and then pulls it out, and then he tries a different finger. Again I feel all weird as I feel it going in me, but I like it.
"Can I try my dick now?"
"Yeah, I guess." I figure why not? His finger is not that bad.
He has me bend over the table beside the door and he stands behind me. I can feel him lining his penis up, slipping it along my butt crack to my hole, and then he pushes forward. Instead of going in it slides up my crack. He tries a second time, and then a third. I figure his story about how guys have sex is wrong. It feels funny, him poking me from behind with his boner, and we both concentrate on trying to do it, neither of us of course knowing anything at that time about lube nor how to do it. Finally he gets it in me, but of course he's not very big and we know nothing about position so it's not really in that far. It feels weird. Not painful nor good, just weird. He begins to slide it in and out and I feel him grip my hips for balance and I hear him breathing and feel his breath on the back of my head. He's about an inch taller than I. After a bit I tell him I want to try doing him.
Brandon readily agrees and so we switch places. I look down at his butthole and I'm surprised what it looks like. I've never actually seen anyone's butthole before, just their butt, and I don't know what I thought it would look like, but I know it's not what I thought. Anyway, I begin like he did, starting with my pointer finger, because it was the natural one being the pointer I guess, and I slowly push it up his butt. I'm surprise how hot and moist his butthole is and I think maybe I'm putting my finger up his shit and that's gross and exciting too in a six-year-old mind's way of thinking. But when I pull my finger back out I see it's sort of wet a bit but I can't see any shit. I try my middle finger and then my pointer finger again, just feeling inside him like he'd done me. Then I try to stick my penis in, but like his it just slides up or slides down, or bends. We try a few times but I can't do it and we finally give up.
A couple days later we try it again and I manage to do it, but it's nothing really spectacular. It is sort of difficult when your dick is only two inches long. Anyway, I decide I much prefer to suck his dick. In fact it gets so that each time we play together we end up doing it, and I get so I'm sucking dick pretty well for a six-year-old kid, and I sort of become addicted to the taste his dick leaves in my mouth. And so we pass the days, playing with our cars and trucks and his GI Joes in the basement, playing exploring and space wars in the trees behind Grandma's house, walking up to my uncle's pasture, trying to beat each other at Plinko and Snakes and Ladders, the typical kid stuff, and between our games we begin to explore more of each other's bodies. We make up games, like playing doctor or being captive, to have a reason for doing it.
We begin putting things up each other's butts, pens and pencils, the handle of Grandma's feather duster, a carrot from her garden, pretty much anything we can find. It is exciting and fun, and doing something that is forbidden and private is cool. I stick a stubby pencil up his butt until just the lead point is sticking out and I giggle as I watch him "poop" it back out. Then Brandon does the same to me and it feels funny but good too. One day while picking peas in the garden Brandon points to a zucchini and suggests we try it and we both giggle at the idea of something that huge sticking out our butts, but for a moment our boyish minds envision what it might be like. The bed he and his mother sleep in is the old metal frame type with these gold metal balls that screw in the corner posts. We drop our pants and sit on them, or we unscrew them and put them on the floor and sit on them, silly kid stuff. They are too big to actually stick up our butts or we would likely have tried it.
It is during one of those silly times when we're hunting around his bedroom for something new to try that Brandon tells me that when couples have sex sometimes they lick each other's butthole, both men and women, and men and men. Well, I tell him no way, and that that is totally gross. He insists that it is the truth, and tells me to do it to him. Well, I wrinkle up my nose and tell him there is no way I'm ever going to do that! Brandon knows me too well to just leave it at that, and after a bit more coaxing I give in to his persuasion, and my curiosity, as if there was any doubt I would! I give him a few licks, running my tongue up his crack as he pulls his cheeks apart and over his butthole. It is not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it is sort of exciting, doing something so private and taboo. I kiss it, and then we switch. I lay on the bed with my pants down and he gets behind me and I spread my cheeks.
"I have to lick that?" he asks, evidently having second thoughts now my butthole is staring him in the eyes.
"You sure do."
"You're right, it is gross."
"Not really," I reply. It isn't my favorite thing to do, but it wasn't that bad.
"I dunno."
"Com'on, I done you!" I reply indignantly in my six-year-old voice.
Well, Brandon hadn't made any promises to do it, but he is fair, and as I had pointed out I had done him. So he hesitantly leans forward as I pull apart my cheeks and he licks my crack and butthole a few times and then gives my butthole a kiss. It feels weird, and he only does it for a few seconds, but I love it and am sorry when he stops, but we're just playing around and I can't really tell him I want him to continue. I have a boner but I don't connect what I'm doing with getting hard. I have no idea at the time that what we are doing has a name, or even that others might have tried the same thing as Brandon and me. It is only that one time, doing it to try it, and Brandon never tries to do it to me again, nor I to him.
One day, about six months after we'd begun our sex play, we are playing in the woods behind the house and I have to go bad but I don't want to stop playing and go all the way back to the bathroom so I reach down and pinch myself between the legs like all boys do at that age. After a bit Brandon asks if I have to take a leak and I say I do, and he says he has to go also.
"There's nobody around," he says with a grin.
I grin back, knowing what he means. So we pull down our flies and take out our dicks and stand there side by side taking a leak. It is the first time I ever do that beside someone like that, and I can't help looking over at his dick, and the sight of his yellow stream pouring out of the tip of his dick gives me a funny feeling inside, an excited feeling that I can't explain but I know I like. What he and I are doing is private, one of the most private things a guy can do, and doing it together just seems sexy to me in my six-year-old mind. Brandon watches me too as I spray my pee at the base of the tree, and I feel excited that he's watching me doing it.
Another time we are sitting in his bed playing with our stuffed friends and Brandon stretches out his leg and his toe touches my crotch. Well, I stretch out on purpose so my toe is touching his. He pushes harder and I push harder. We look up and smile at each other and we're so used to each other by then we don't say a thing. We just sit there on the bed, our big toe against the other's tender ball sack, pushing harder and harder, trying to see who will give up first. We keep it up for a couple minutes and then just decide to quit.
We form our own little club, the Bloodsuckers Gang, and we make up cards for our club and rules and the whole bit and we run around the house and then outside when we get kicked out, pretending to be vampires chasing imaginary victims. Then we find some place, in the pasture, in our favorite place in the woods, or in Grandma's library, and we drop our pants and I suck Brandon's dick. Most days when we play I end up begging him to let me suck him or for him to suck me. I can't seem to get enough of it.
Summer goes by and fall comes around again. The leaves turn and the apples and pears fall from the trees out front, giving Brandon and me ammunition to throw at each other in our games. And so we spend the better part of a year just playing like all kids play and messing around in secret. We never really think of it as having sex. It is just exploring, satisfying our curiosity, enjoying the way it makes us feel and enjoying the thrill of knowing we are doing something that we should not be doing.
It is around the end of that first year that we hear our parents talking about this thing called AIDS. It is about sex and so they only talk about it when they think we are not listening, or they talk about it vaguely, thinking we are too young to know what they are talking about. They have no idea what the two of us have been doing for the past year. Besides, my older brother and his friends talk about sex a lot, especially about girls, and he and most of them have pretty vulgar mouths. It was listening to them that I first learned that guys who have sex with guys are called gays, and that guys having sex with guys wasn't exactly a good thing. Anyway we have no idea what AIDS is exactly, or how you catch it, just that it is something that guys who did stuff with each other get, and that it can kill you. That bothers Brandon a lot and it starts to get harder and harder to get him to do stuff with me, any sort of stuff, until one day he says he doesn't want to do it anymore because he doesn't want to get AIDS and our fun ends just as sudden as it started with Brandon's diving board idea. That is disappointing, but unbeknownst to me, my journey has just begun.
Read me a story
Read me a rhyme
Something that happened
Once upon a time
It can have monsters
Princesses too
Wonderful kingdoms
Make-believe or true
Read me a story
And when it's through
Here's what I promise to do
Read me a story
And when I can read
I'll read one to you.