This story is the property of the author, and may not be reproduced in any form without his permission.
All participants are 18 or older, and no suggestion of underage sexual activity is intended.
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Josh and Me
So my buddy Josh and I were just messing around in my room, he came home from school with me to study together, and it was hot in my room so I took off my shirt and then he took his off and then I was still hot so I took off my levis and so I was sitting there wearing just my Calvin Kleins and then he got up and took off his pants too and I grinned at him and he sat down beside me again.
After we studied for a while more I looked at Josh and he was looking at me and he said "Dude, your pecs are like totally awesome," and he reached out and put his hand on my chest and felt my pecs. I just let him, it felt good the way he did it. He rubbed my chest slowly and sort of felt my nipples - I have big nipples for a guy and sometimes other guys kid me about them but the way Josh rubbed them I could tell he liked them and then he felt my abs too and I got this strange feeling and looked at him and he took his hand away and we went back to studying.
A few minutes later I looked at Josh and he was acting like he was reading his book but I could tell he wasn't, I've known Josh all my life and I can tell when he's faking it, so he was faking it and I looked down for some reason, and he had a total boner, his cock was sticking up out of the waistband of his shorts.
"You pervert," I said, "feeling me up gave you a boner!" And I reached out and touched it. Josh didn't move he just sat there and let me touch his hard cock. I slid my hand inside his shorts and wrapped my fingers around his dick, he has a big one and my fingers almost didn't close around it and I stroked it slowly a couple of times. I'd never touched Josh that way before, we'd jerked off a couple of times together, looked at each other while we did it, but we'd never touched each other's boners. I looked up and Josh was looking at me sort of like he was drunk and then I felt his hand on mine, pushing it down harder, like he wanted me to keep up what I was doing. I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips and he just accepted that at first, but then he started kissing me back.
That's when my mom called out from downstairs and we broke apart and got our clothes on and Josh grabbed his books and ran out of my room. I jumped up and followed him but by the time I got downstairs he was outside and my mom was calling me from the kitchen. I ran out the front door and looked at Josh running away down the street. My mom came out and put her arm around my shoulders and asked "Will my big boy help me unload the groceries?", and I said "Sure Mom," and went back inside to help her.
Next day at school Josh avoided me. We had only one class together and he cut it and he didn't meet me at lunch like he always does, so I knew he was freaked about what had happened. Hell, I was freaked too, but I wanted to see him and talk about it, tell him I hadn't turned queer or something. By the end of the day I was going nuts, I had all these fantasies that Josh was never going to speak to me again or that he would tell everyone I was a queer and I'd be totally outcast by all my friends.
After school we had wrestling practice, Josh and I are both on the squad and I was sure he wouldn't cut that and I saw him in the locker room but he still avoided me, and I was starting to get totally pissed off at him. Then the Coach paired him and me together to practice and he wouldn't talk and he wrestled like a demon and that got me really mad at him so I gave it all back to him. I'm bigger than Josh, and stronger, and usually I take it easy on him, but he was so totally asking for it so I took him down five out of five and the last one I pinned him and held him down and put my mouth to his ear and growled "It happened Josh, and if you're too gutless to talk about it then so be it, but I'm going to be waiting for you outside afterwards and if you care about our friendship you better be there!"
Fortunately Josh came to his senses enough to meet me after practice and we walked home together. He lives only a block from me, so we can walk most of the way together. He didn't say anything, and I figured I shouldn't say anything either. He was obviously having a much harder time with this than I was. Hell, I knew I was no fag, and we were best friends, so it didn't mean anything, what we'd done. I wasn't sure why I'd kissed him that way, it had just felt like the thing to do. And groping his hardon, well that had just been sort of an impulse, he'd been rubbing my pecs and it had felt good so feeling his cock had been, well, sort of a way to return the favor.
Then just as we got to the point where we would have to split up if he wasn't coming to my place and I wasn't going to his, Josh stopped and turned to me and said, "I'm gay, Todd. And I'm in love with you. I've always been in love with you. I touched you that way yesterday because I just couldn't pretend any more. I want you so bad." Then he just stood there looking at me.
I didn't know what to say. My buddy Josh gay? I'd had no clue. He couldn't be. Just because he'd touched my chest? That didn't mean anything. Hell, I'd touched his cock, and that didn't mean anything. He must be putting me on. I reached out and grabbed him, wrapped my arm around his neck and got him in a headlock.
"Sure you are," I said as I held him. "I guess that means I'm a faggot too, huh? We're both a couple of queers."
Josh broke away from me and stepped back, looking at me. I was laughing and grinning. It had to be some sort of goof Josh was pulling, we both kidded each other all the time, did outrageous things to see who could fool the other for longest. But Josh didn't look like he was goofing.
"I'm serious, dude, I'm gay." He was looking right at me. "I've known for a long time, but I didn't have the guts to say it. I can't lie any more."
I just stood there looking at Josh. I don't know what my face looked like, but Josh looked at me for a few seconds and then turned and walked away. I could have followed him, but I didn't.
That night Josh called me twice, but I told my mom to say I was busy.
It was Friday when Josh told me he was gay. All weekend I thought about calling him, we usually hung out together on Saturday night, but I didn't know what to say to him. I knew I was no queer. How could Josh be one?
Monday Josh wasn't at school, and I was sort of relieved. I was getting pissed off he'd even told me. It was bad enough that he said he was gay, but then to say he loved me, that was really dumb. What was I supposed to do with that?
When I got home from school, I walked in our front door and my mom was sitting there with Josh's mom. My mom had her arm around Mrs. Taylor's shoulders, and I couldn't figure out what was going on but then my mom looked up and saw me and said "Oh Todd, I'm glad you're home, dear, come over and sit down." She patted the couch next to her.
That seemed weird, but I set my books down on the coffee table and sat in a chair by the couch. That's when I realized Mrs. Taylor was crying. She had her head down and a handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
"When did you last see Josh, dear?" I heard my mom ask the question, but it took me a moment to process it. This was too weird, what was going on?
"Last Friday," I said.
"Was he OK? Did he say anything about being upset or something? Was there something wrong?"
I was still looking back and forth from my mom to Mrs. Taylor, just answering automatically I guess.
"Sure, he was fine. What's going on?" I remembered watching Josh walk away from me after he said he was gay.
My mom looked at Mrs. Taylor as though she was going to ask her a question, but Mrs. Taylor was still crying, and my mom looked at me again.
"Josh is in the hospital, dear. He took some pills."
Shit! Just like old Josh, I thought. What a wuss! One beer and he was out cold, and when we took some ecstasy at a rave one time he got sick and spent the whole time in the parking lot puking his guts out. I was sort of pissed off to hear he'd gone to a party without me, but then I remembered he was mad at me. OK, maybe I was mad at him.
Then it hit me this wasn't about some stupid party.
"What kind of pills?" I was feeling sort of scared.
My mom looked at Mrs. Taylor again, but still no help from that quarter.
"Some things from their medicine cabinet," she said, and Mrs. Taylor started sobbing much louder.
"No way!" I jumped up and shouted. My mom got that look she gets when my dad gets mad, like she's afraid if she says anything she'll make him go berserk or something. He never goes berserk, I don't know why she's like that. "No WAY!" I was shouting and bouncing around the room. I wanted to get away from this, I wanted to wake up and find out it was a dream. My mom stood up and reached towards me, trying to calm me down. I pushed her away and ran up the stairs to my room.
"Todd! Todd, come back down here! We have to talk!" My mom was calling out after me in a voice that seemed much too soft, much too gentle. I ran to my room and slammed the door and stood there pounding my fists on my legs, shouting it over and over again, "No way! No way!" It was the only way I could keep from thinking about what she said. If I shouted long and loud enough it wouldn't be true.
I got tired eventually, and stood there shaking. I was crying, and I couldn't figure out when that started. I never cry. I heard knocking on my door, and then my mom opened it and walked in.
"He's going to be OK, honey. He's fine." I felt her hands on my shoulders. "Alice saw him at the hospital today and he asked about you. He can't have any visitors for a week, but he wants to see you. You can go Saturday." I just stood there, panting. I felt like I'd been drowning or something, I couldn't catch my breath and everything was blurred and painful.
"You want to see Josh, don't you honey? He's your best friend." I still couldn't say anything.
"Did something happen, Toddie?" I hated it when she used that little boy nickname, I'd made everybody start calling me Todd a year earlier. "You wouldn't talk to Josh when he called."
I started crying again. This time I felt like my stomach was being ripped out, it hurt so bad. My mom put her arms around me and held me and I cried for a long time.
The next day at school everybody treated me like my parents had just died or something. All the girls wanted to pat me on the shoulder and say dumb things about what a nice boy Josh was and all the guys avoided me and when they had to talk to me sounded like they were embarrassed. Finally I hooked up with Toby, he's my next best friend after Josh and he gave me this funny look like I'd grown a second head or something.
"Not you too," I said. "What's wrong with everybody?"
"Is it true?" he asked. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into a corner. We were in the hall outside the lunchroom and other kids were brushing past us, some looking at us and then quickly looking away.
"Is what true?" I pushed his arm off my shoulder and stepped back. Toby could be a real dickhead sometimes, but he was funny, and he and Josh and me had had some good times together. We'd all known each other forever.
"They say Josh tried to kill himself because he's queer." Toby was talking in this low conspiratorial voice, but it sounded like he had shouted that.
"What! Who the fuck said that! Josh is no fag!"
Toby was looking funny at me.
"They say he put the make on you and you beat the shit out of him so he went home and drank all the booze in their house and then took all the pills in the medicine cabinet and his folks found him in the bathroom and if they hadn't got him to the hospital when they did he'd've been dead."
"Fuck them!" I stepped back away from Toby. "Fuck you! Fuck everybody, Josh is no fag!" I was losing it again and had to get out of there. I ran down the hallway and out the door of the school onto the front lawn. There were kids all over the place, sitting and standing around and talking and eating and all and some looked at me. I stood there feeling like I had to get away, I couldn't stand to be around anyone. I started running.
I was crying again, but as long as I kept running it wasn't so bad. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you're naked but everybody else has clothes on and you don't know what to do so you act like it's OK and maybe no one will notice.
I wound up at the mall, and went into the arcade and played some video games. It helped that I had to focus on the screen and the game and the points. After a while I felt OK enough to leave. I walked home.
My mom was waiting in the living room with this guy in a police uniform. She jumped up and ran to me and grabbed me and hugged me so hard I was afraid she was going to crush me. She was crying.
"Todd! Where were you? We were so worried. We thought..."
Then she was crying too hard to talk any more.
My dad came in from the kitchen, he was holding his cell phone and talking.
"It's OK, he's here, I'll call you later." Once he ended the call his face turned bright red and he started yelling at me.
"Where the HELL have you been! Do you have any IDEA how worried your mother has been? What were you THINKING? Answer me!"
I pushed my mom away and ran to my room and slammed the door. The whole world had gone crazy.
Saturday my mom drove me to the hospital to see Josh. We had talked on the phone a couple of times, but we didn't talk about anything. I had asked him if he was OK and he said "Sure, I'm fine, don't be a jerk." I asked if he wanted me to bring him anything and he asked for a game CD so I took him one of mine I know he likes, X-files.
At the hospital it was weird getting in to see Josh. He was in the psych ward, and to get in I had to go through all these doors that they buzzed me through. It reminded me of that scene in T2, where Sarah Connor is in that prison. But once I was inside it was more like just a regular hospital, and that was bad enough. I'd visited my grandma in the hospital when she was sick before she died, and it freaked me out.
Josh was waiting for me and he grinned and took me to his room. There were two beds and two chairs. He sat on one of the beds. I handed him the game CD. He looked at it and his face lit up. "Awesome! Thanks, man, this place is so boring. Half the people here are totally out of it! This one guy? He says he's president of Z-soft and he's just a vegetable half the time and I thought he was a total loser but then this woman who looks like a cross between Jennifer Aniston and Sigourney Weaver came to visit him and she was all over him and I think he really is some big shot!"
Josh was bouncing around on the bed the way he does when he's excited and he looked and sounded just like himself. He kept grinning at me and I grinned back. We were cool.
We talked for awhile and then he looked down at the floor and asked the question I'd been dreading.
"So, like, does everyone at school know?"
I nodded. He didn't say anything. I knew he thought I had told everyone.
"I swear I didn't say a word, man! The first day Toby came up to me and he was all 'Is it true Josh is a queer' and we were right there in the hall and everyone could hear and I wanted to annihilate him! But I think they knew. They were saying I beat you up and you drank all your dad's booze and took all your mom's pills. I swear I didn't say a word!"
Josh laughed.
"Dude! Chill!" He sounded like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgmont High, that's one of our favorite movies, we both know like every word and sit and watch it and do all the lines, and Josh really cracks me up when he does that Valley Boy shit.
We sat and looked at the floor for a while. The tiles made sort of an interesting pattern, I felt like it should mean something. Finally it was my turn, I had to know.
"So like, did you?"
"Drink all my dad's booze and take all my mom's pills?"
"Yeah."
"Come on man, you know what a wuss I am. The doctor said I hardly took enough to give most people a happy buzz."
"Sounds like a cool doctor."
"Yeah, he is."
A nurse came in and told me I had to go, visiting hours were almost over. I stood up.
Josh stood too, looking at me. "So," he said, "you OK, man?"
That threw me, him asking if I was OK.
"Sure, why not? You?"
"Chillin, dude!" he grinned and made some stupid rapper gesture.
We stood there for a minute. I turned to walk out.
Josh said "Hey Todd?"
"Yeah?"
"Can we forget about what I said?"
"Sure." I looked up at Josh. He was crying. I left.
Josh stayed in the hospital for a month. I visited him a couple of times and took him some more games and he told me stories about the crazies and I told him stories about school. It was almost like nothing had happened, and we were still friends. But by the time he got out school was almost over and his dad had made some deal with the principal where Josh would work with a tutor and finish the year that way and his parents took him and his sister on a trip, they had been planning to drive across the country and decided to leave early. They were gone a month, and when they got back I saw Josh a few times but he was always busy. He said his folks had decided to send him to a private school next year. He stopped calling me and I stopped calling him.
I ran into Josh at the mall a couple of years later. I was with my girlfriend and he was just standing there in front of a store. We started talking and I felt this sudden happiness, like I'd just found something precious that I had lost and thought I'd never have back again. But then this guy came up and put his arm around Josh and grinned at me, and Josh said Call me, and I said Sure, and Josh and his boyfriend walked away. My girlfriend asked who he was and I said "Just a guy I used to know".
THE END
Note: I posted the first part of this in the High School section at nifty, with the title I Feel Josh's Boner, because I thought it was going to be just another horny romp, but it turned serious, so I asked nifty to delete the original and post this instead. My apologies to those of you whom I misled, I can't always make my characters go where I want them to, sometimes they have minds of their own :-) Derek