This is fiction, (c) 2013 Casey Simons. ------- Remember the bad old days, back before you could get decent porn on the internet? I had just started college and moved out of home, and I ... um ... just happened to find myself in an adult store, looking at porn. I went into one of the coin-operated booths and started to watch. Back then, I just assumed I was straight; after all, I'd lost my virginity with a girl just a few months before, and we both had a lot of fun. As I clicked through the videos I paused on one of the gay channels more out of curiosity than anything else, but when I saw the two hot athletic guys enjoying a 69, my cock went as hard as an iron bar, my breath caught, and I felt hot all over. Obviously, I kept watching. The blond slid his fingers, and then his cock into his partner's asshole, and I was amazed to see the immediate hunger and pleasure on the redhead's face. If I'd started stroking myself I probably would have come in my pants, so I just stared, fixated. Then I heard a sound beside me and noticed there was a hole into the next booth, and a guy watching me. Even if he'd been as hot as the porn stars, the setting was pretty gross, so I left straight away, slamming the booth door. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie and my reaction to it. Being gay and an athlete isn't all that fun even now, and back then it was worse. I was getting tired of the way the other jocks talked about pretty much anyone different, but I wasn't going to change society myself and I didn't want to become a target. There was certainly no way I was going to let my roommate or anyone else suspect anything, but I couldn't deny how the scene had made me feel. The next time I went to the porn store I planned to buy a DVD that I could play on my laptop computer (we did have laptops; it wasn't the Stone Age). The gay section was behind another curtain, so there was a bit of privacy, and I'd found a promising disc with a soccer-team theme, with solo, couple, and locker-room orgy scenes. I was browsing the rest of the collection when someone said "Hi. You're in my bio class. Steve, right? I'm Jae". I blushed bright red (ok, I blush easy. I'm also pale and freckled, and my hair is blond when it's not green from pool chlorine). There was no way to hide, so I took a deep breath, turned to face him, and tried to smile. "Hi, Jae" I knew Jae (or 'Jay', as I then thought of him) from lab, a friendly but reserved guy who I'd worked with one week when our usual lab partners were both sick. Like me, he did a lot of cycling, but unlike me he didn't go in much for other sports. I also knew he got picked on by some the jocks for being small, polite, and foreign-looking. I was pretty sure their 'fag' tag for him wasn't based on any actual information, but they seemed to have got it right by accident. Jae said "When I saw you I panicked a bit and I was going to just sneak out, but then I thought we might both want someone we could talk to openly about this kind of thing". I mumbled something incoherent in reply. "I'm going to buy this now and head across the road to the diner to get some coffee. If you want to talk, come over when you're done, otherwise I'll just assume you want your privacy and pretend this never happened." He left, and I relaxed and tried to breathe deeply. I'd never heard Jae passing on gossip that could hurt someone, and he seemed to be a private kind of guy, so I could probably trust him not to say anything -- especially as he couldn't say how he saw me without admitting he was there too. So, I could trust him to keep quiet if I did nothing, but did I want to take the risk of talking to him? And was that all he wanted? I wasn't looking for a boyfriend, and Jae would't be the type of guy I'd go for anyway. In the end, I paid for the DVD and wheeled my bike over to the diner. Carrying the saddlebag with the incriminating object safely stowed (no way was I leaving it outside on my bike) I pushed open the door and walked in, trying to look as if I had nothing much on my mind. I saw Jae sitting in a booth near the back, reading the paper, with a fancy espresso coffee on the table, and went over. He looked up from the sports news he was reading, with a welcoming grin. "Hi, Steve", he said quietly, "I'm really glad you came over". The waitress appeared and I ordered ordinary coffee and apple pie. When she was safely gone he said "I should say to begin with that I'm not looking for a boyfriend, and, to be honest, you're not really my type anyway, I'm more interested in someone my own size". I felt a mixture of relief and offence, then realised I was being silly -- he wasn't my type either, and I'd just paid good money for a movie of guys that looked much more like me than like Jae. "I'm looking for someone I can talk to that I can trust," he continued. "I've seen you with the other jocks, and you don't go after people for being different even when the rest of them do. I've never seen you deliberately hurt someone, and I thought it was worth the risk to try to get you as a friend."
I realised that I wanted the same thing. There were friends I could talk to about a lot of issues, but not about how I felt seeing two guys fucking. The waitress appeared with my order, and I took a gulp of coffee to give myself more time to think. "I'm flattered," I said. "I probably wouldn't have had the guts to do it myself, but I'm glad you did ask me." "Thanks," Jae said. "Today's been stressful enough already, so how about we just ride back to campus together?" We passed a garbage can on the street and Jae threw away the bag from the store, with the DVD cover, keeping only the disk itself. I hadn't thought about the risk of it being found until then, so I did the same with my purchase. We cycled back along the slower bike trail around the lake, commenting occasionally on harmless topics. That night my roommate was out with his girlfriend, so I played the first three tracks on the disk before I went to bed. My dream of meeting the hot soccer hunks ended not with discovery by a relative or schoolmate and a panicked awakening, but with dreaming of Jae spying on us and stroking himself as we fucked. Over the next few months Jae and I became firm friends. We regularly went on bike rides together -- over short distances I was much faster than him, but he had great stamina and for rides of 15 miles or so he could keep up with me. As spring approached we spent more time cycling together, and I don't think anyone suspected we might have another motive. In fact, although it was the theoretical point of our friendship, we hadn't actually talked about sex and being gay very often or very deeply. One day in late winter we rode out to the small woods at the state park, and stopped for a break. I got up the courage to ask Jae what it was really like with a guy. To my surprise he replied "I haven't really gone all the way. I had a few long make-out sessions with a another boy at summer camp, but we ended up going for a swim and jacking off in the lake. I had a blow job once from a guy at an adult cinema. That was amazing - I was hard as a rock and ready to come right away, but he slowly licked and sucked me so I felt like it took forever. And there was one time at a party that I sucked a guy off. That's all". "I don't have much experience either," I replied. "I've never been with a guy, and only a few times with a girl. I went to my senior prom with a close friend who wasn't a girlfriend, and we decided to have sex that night, just to see what it was like. It was really good for me, and I think for her too. We did it a couple more times before we both left town for college. Katie's got a boyfriend now, but I'm glad we decided to experiment just as friends, with no romance expected." "That sounds like a really good idea," Jae replied. "Yeah, it was her idea, but it worked out really well". I realised where this might be leading, and blushed bright red. Jae was looking down at his feet, not at me, and he also sounded unusually nervous when he said "Would you maybe like to experiment just as friends with a guy?". Immediately I answered "Hell yes!" Jae looked up with a shy smile. The problem now was finding a time and place where we could do it without risking being found out, though I would have loved to get naked right there, and the bulge in Jae's shorts suggested he felt the same way.