Reunion at Forty-eight--section 10 By Ezra Randle
Nine Months Later
Ben began to surface from the depths of a potent sleep following a night with Maureen. She had risen early for work, but he had taken the day off. He thought of her naked body next to him in bed then quickly slipped back under again. The elusive dream that had been haunting him a dozen times over the past year seduced him again.
He had just turned fourteen, and his father encouraged him to attend a football camp in Mankato, Minnesota. He matured early physically reaching 6'1" inches by early eighth grade, and this combined with his body's natural tendency to be thick muscled even when he was young. His size convinced his junior high coaches and his father, a defensive lineman in high school and college, that he had a bright future in the football trenches. The irony surfaced just a few years later when it became obvious he was not destined to become much taller and, thus, any extra body mass easily turned into fat, not muscle. No one else from his school attended the camp nor was he particularly interested in going by himself, but he followed orders, as he had a tendency to do at that stage in his life. He ended up rooming with a kid a year older who was from a wheat farm in North Dakota. They bunked together in a college dormitory cubicle for most of a week, and an easy friendship arose between them. Ben felt like he was cut adrift, in this case, feeling both abandoned by his overly zealous father but wide open to new possibilities as well. As usually happened, the possibilities won out. He hadn't traveled much before this, which made the adventure even more alluring, and he was eager to make connections. As a result, he and the boy bonded as outsiders, two loners amid the two hundred or so teens who seemed to arrive in clusters already linked as football buddies. It took many attempts to revive this memory before the boy's name came back to him. Randy Johansen. They passed the time in their warm room ventilated by one window and a box fan. They talked about anything that crossed their minds which turned out to be mostly their hometowns, friends, and, of course, football. There was a unique sense of joy in this encounter that swept him away and that resulted in him enjoying the private moments in the dorm much more than the regimented football routines. Much of his slowly returning memory of those evenings with Randy was captured by their boyish giggling. They laughed about everything that had taken place during the day, and this silliness kept them awake far into the night. He was too young to have contemplated if the two of them had the makings of long term friends or if they truly had that much in common. But as teenagers he felt as liberated emotionally as he had ever experienced.
As the memories washed over him, he remembered the looseness in the way Randy carried himself. He was totally at ease with the physical changes of puberty that Ben was still adjusting to. He could recall Randy standing naked in their small room when undressing or drying off after a shower, talking to him, unconcerned that this nonchalant exhibition was something Ben had never witnessed before--or rarely since. While he was by nature and upbringing much more secretive about his own nudity, he was drawn to this freedom, almost magnetized by being alone with a boy his age who seemed oblivious to embarrassment. Randy was about his size, in both weight and height. He was a bit more advanced in terms of body hair. His belly was coated with dark hair and his pubic bush was quite thick, running into dense hair on his upper thighs. In contrast, Ben was just two years into his development, and the thick body hair that developed in later high school and college was still a couple of years from manifesting itself. He liked playing with his brown pubic hair at that age, and found it especially arousing to saturate the area with his seminal juices when he masturbated. Both he and Randy had light facial growth, though neither of them shaved the week they were together.
It was easy for him to follow Randy's lead in sleeping without any clothing as a sensible strategy for getting through the muggy nights, a practice that was initially overwhelming sexually, but that now effortlessly defined his sleep ritual. One night he heard Randy playing with himself. He looked over in the darkness and could see Randy on top of his bedding. He seemed to be rubbing and pinching with his nipples with one hand and stroking himself with his other. Ben immediately became erect and pulled his sheet off. He wanted Randy to see him like this and made a few groaning noises. "You do this often, Ben?"
"Whenever I can. I haven't this week yet."
"Me either. But I've got to tonight. Or I'll go crazy," Randy said.
"I know how that feels."
"Want to see mine?" Randy asked nonchalantly.
"Yeah," Ben said, naively assenting to something he had never done in his life. Astonished, in fact, that he had eagerly agreed to something that was so foreign to his experiences.
Randy turned the desk light on and approached him. He was uncircumcised like Ben was with a long foreskin he had to peel back to reveal his glans. "I saw you were uncut when you were drying off. Are there many like us in your hometown?" Ben asked.
"Just a few. I've probably got the longest skin. Yours is shorter."
"When did you start jacking off?"
"Sixth grade. Before I had much hair. My two older brothers kind of taught me."
"I was a little later. Seventh grade. When my cream came for the first time, I thought I'd discovered a secret treasure."
Randy laughed. "Yeah. Sure feels good, doesn't it. Sometimes I shoot right away. But I discovered if I hold my foreskin tight over my tip I can hold back. You're pretty thick, Ben. Like me."
They continued to stroke until Randy said, "Want to touch mine? I'd really like to touch yours."
They sat on the edge of Ben's bed and held each other's cock. "You do this with your brothers?" Ben asked.
"Yeah, sometimes in the barn we have competitions. See who can shoot the furthest."
"Do you ever win?" Ben said.
"A couple of times."
"Are your brothers uncut like you?" Ben said.
"Yeah. Dad, too. Dad's cock is massive. Bigger than mine or my brothers'. Saw him hard once. I came into the bathroom after his shower."
Ben laughed. "What did he say?"
"He wasn't mad. Said I should knock next time."
"What did he do about his hardon?" Ben asked.
"He didn't try to cover up. Just let me watch him," Randy said.
Ben giggled. "Geez. He didn't care?"
"He was open that way. Didn't really bother him if we saw him naked. I don't have any sisters, so it's just Mom. She's seen it plenty."
"Did he stroke it or anything?"
"No. Just started shaving, like that big stick wasn't there. I was plenty amazed. Gradually, it got soft, but not until he was wiping off the shaving cream residue from his neck."
"I would have liked to have seen that. Did you tell your brothers?"
"Dad told me not to. You're actually the first person I've told about it. Did you ever see your dad?" Randy said.
"A few times naked. Never hard. So, I don't know how big he gets when he's stiff. I have a cousin who stays over in the summer for a few weeks. He likes to show me his, but no hanky panky like we're doing."
Randy laid back on Ben's bed. "I'm going to shoot soon. I'll keep it on my chest and belly."
When it came, he shot it over his head. They both laughed, even though some of it had landed on Ben's pillow. "You're next," Randy said. "Aim for my belly. It's already a mess."
Ben over shot Randy's hairy belly and landed most of it on the cement block wall just beyond the bed. They both laughed hysterically. Ben grabbed his shower towel, wiped the cum off the wall and himself, then threw the towel onto Randy's belly. Randy returned to his bed, and they slept through breakfast the next morning.
On the last night of the camp, after all the awards were given out and final ice cream sundaes consumed, the two of them sneaked off after curfew to the shores of a spring-fed lake just a block from the campus. The contagion of rebelliousness spread among many of the other boys who were already splashing about when they arrived--he found out the next day that this ritual on the last night was a well-documented but unacknowledged tradition. He and Randy, without any debate, stripped naked as had most of the other boys and swam out to the diving platform that rested in twelve feet of water. He was a strong swimmer and Randy seemed at ease in the water as well, so this moment seemed like the logical extension of the weeklong playground mentality. At some point, amid all the frolicking in the darkness, he and Randy bumped into each other some distance away from the diving platform. The memories of what happened next were the last to come back. Randy had shouted out something. He couldn't remember the words, except that they were exuberant expressions of the delightful time they shared as roommates. He was sure he replied enthusiastically. And then, out of the darkness, he felt Randy's arms around him and his lips on his. He kissed him back several times, and they touched each other below the water. Other swimmers approached them and Ben was frozen in fear. He slipped out of Randy's grasp, slid into the deeper water, and swam frantically like he was competing in a freestyle dash. He didn't stop until he was far out into the lake fifty meters from anyone else. He thought he heard Randy calling him, but in retrospect, was certain he wouldn't have. But he knew he couldn't return to shore until Randy and most of the others returned to the dormitories. As he continued to tread water, alternating with an easy crawl that he had picked up naturally competing on local swim teams, he was perplexed but also fully aware that, on some level, he had enjoyed the embrace and could still feel the arousal. He stayed in the deep water for another half hour, occasionally feeling his genitals to make sure the chilly water was having its appropriate effect. When he returned to the beach most of the swimmers were gone. He dressed and sat there for another hour alternately confused and satisfied realizing that the adventure of the week had come to a crashing conclusion. He now wanted it to end so he could return to his more predictable friends back home, still intrigued by the mystery of what happened in the water. He did not sneak back into the dorm room until all but the rowdiest kids had fallen off into sleep, and did so very quietly tiptoeing around the percussion of Randy's snoring. He slipped under the sheets, this time wearing his shorts. He wondered if Randy might have told the counselors about his disappearance in the lake, but then realized that he must not have if he had been able to reenter the dormitory like this without creating a stir.
The next morning, Randy was up and gone before he roused, and he never heard from him again. Within weeks of his return to Eau Claire, he entered into his first physical romance with a girl--Justine Torrence.
Ben enjoyed the dream every time it magically appeared. He often kissed Randy multiple times when images of them in the lake water came to him. In one rendition of the dream, he got into bed with Randy in the dorm room. They kissed and touched each other all over, including their asses. Randy probed his hole with his cock, and he did the same to Randy. He usually woke up hard when Randy visited him like this, often on the brink of cumming.
This time, he woke up in a grog and forced himself to get up and shower. The hot water lessoned his confusion. The dream had been so vibrant he was certain most of the events in the dream had just happened in reality. Perhaps there was even more to it, and he had repressed all of those other details and more. He dried off taking more time than he had to. He watched himself in the mirror, touching himself all over his genitals and ass, bewildered as he often was by his conflicted sexual impulses.
As he pulled a pair of underwear from his dresser, he glimpsed into the mirror again and sensed another reflection behind his. He thought it likely his imagination was bringing Ellie back as it sometimes did, even though he had tried to move all representations of her from this bedroom to the study downstairs. He almost expected her smiling face to slide onto the glass, but when he saw Dan's face, then his naked body, he was forced to sit. For one of the many times over the past few months, he reflected back to their meetings in the various motel rooms. Dan's image excited and saddened him at the same time. He watched as Dan sat on a chair in one of the motel rooms, peering deep into Ben's sensibilities. He seemed to say, "I've missed you, Ben."
Ben heard himself respond, "Yes, I left you behind, didn't I?"
"You needed to find yourself. Hope you've done that," Dan said in a calm voice.
"Maureen is good for me. I've regained part of what I am. Sorry to exclude you from my life, but I have to."
"Do we mean anything to each other anymore?"
Ben started crying which startled him. It took him a minute to respond. "I wish you were my friend, Danny. Apart from the sex. I don't know how we can find that. I don't know if I can be your lover again."
"That's OK. You're surviving. That's all I need to know," Dan said.
"Maureen and I are going to get married. Sometime in the next year," Ben said.
Dan chuckled. "Congratulations. I could be your best man."
Ben laughed amid his tears. "That would be a bit too much. Even for us."
"Agreed."
"I'd like to see you again. Just to talk. Would you be willing?" Ben said softly.
"Certainly."
"Dan, are you OK with us not being lovers?"
"I've been working on it. I had to because I was heartbroken when you stopped contacting me. But it's better now. I've adjusted. I want only good things for you."
His image vanished after those words. Ben was left sitting on the toilet seat holding the pair of briefs Dan had left in the shower a few years ago.