Backstory

In high school, John and I were two of the guys who hung out in my friend Gary’s basement and smoked dope.  On weekends, we varied the scene by first smoking dope in Gary’s basement and then going to one of the high school parties someone was always having.  When we got to those parties we didn’t mingle or pick up girls.  We didn’t know how.  Instead, we lingered on the fringes and listened to music and giggled like stoners do.

When we weren’t smoking dope or going to parties (which used to be the case more often back in 9th or 10th grade but was becoming more rare as time went by) we did guy stuff, like playing Dungeons & Dragons or playing cards or doing crazy things in Gary’s back yard.  But we also flirted (badly) with Gary’s sister, who was about 10 years older and, looking back on it, infinitely patient with us.  And we looked at “men’s” magazines – Playboy and Hustler and sleazier mags like Swank.

But I wasn’t your typical stoner.  I was also a “brain” who got (nearly) straight A’s all through high school.  And as my high school years passed, I found myself becoming less interested in hanging out in Gary’s basement and more interested in spending as much time as I could with the person who up to that time was the most fantastic wonderful person I had ever met in my entire life:  a girl whose name is Emily.

Now Emily is truly an amazing person.  I spent hours talking with her on the phone and doing all sorts of activities with her (just not the “activities” that my fevered, teen-aged brain was most interested in).  I was closer to her than to anyone else at the time.

The important part of my backstory starts in the spring of our senior year, soon after we all turned 18 (Emily’s birthday was in March, John’s and mine were in April).  That’s when Emily broke up with her long-term boyfriend, who happened to be one of the most alpha males in school (football team, valedictorian, etc.).  To flatter myself, I’ll tell you that he thought she did so because of me.  Maybe she did, but after ending things with him, she didn’t start anything with me.  Instead she decided to have a fling with John.

I’ll save you the gory details of angst this caused for me.  Suffice it to say that I was beside myself with jealousy.  It was more than jealousy, actually, it was out and out anger.  I was angry at her, but even more so at him.

And I had plenty of opportunity to wallow in my jealousy and anger.  Maybe she was trying to assuage my feelings, maybe she was just being honest, maybe she just liked talking about herself, but the fact was that Emily and I talked at length about why she was with John and not with me.  And in those conversations she made clear to me that her attraction to him was purely physical.  She told me how she really didn’t like his personality, she told me about all the things he did that were immature and annoying; she told me how she just wanted a fling before leaving high school.

Smart girl, I must admit, but still I was angry and jealous and resentful of her for having this fling with him, not me.

I remember asking Emily numerous times why she went out with John and not me, and the answer that sticks in my mind is “I think he’s just cute as a guy.”

I’d often heard girls talk about guys being “cute,” and I was curious what they meant, exactly.  Of course, I was really curious why they, and Emily in particular, didn’t think that about me (that is, I assumed they didn’t), and the things Emily told me about John gave me no hope that any girl would ever say I was cute.

She liked his face.  I remember her musing about his nose, which I thought was too prominent but she thought was “classic, in a Greek or Italian way.”  She would never say that about my nose, which was too pointy and upturned.

She also liked his big, brown eyes.  They were sort of almond-shaped – the kind that I thought made him look half asleep, but she thought were seductive.  I knew that my eyes, by contrast, were too small and too close together.

The one thing I would have to agree on with Emily was that John’s most attractive feature was his hair.  He had a wonderful head of brown, curly hair.  Long.  If he pulled it out straight it came down to the end of his nose.  I’ve always liked long hair – on women especially, but on men too.

Even so, there was not much else about John that I would have agreed on with Emily – at least, not at that time.  For instance, I remember her talking about his long eyelashes.  At this point, I decided not to ask what she liked about him anymore, because if she was going to be judging guys based on things like eyelashes, I knew I would never have a chance!

Another area where I couldn’t compete with John was in terms of his body.  Although I had gotten in pretty good shape, I was still somewhat scrawny.  John, on the other hand, was on the swim team and he also swam in the rec leagues during the summer, so he had very round, well developed muscles.  He wasn’t “ripped.”  Instead, he had nicely curved pecs, wide, rounded shoulders and developed biceps.  Overall, he was an inch or two taller than me and weighed maybe 10 pounds more.  My body was slim and angular - he was one of those guys with “muscles on the outside,” if you know what I mean.  Rounded, developed muscles all over his body.

Emily really liked his body.  Especially his butt.  True, I got the same reaction, when I was in high school.  When I wore tight jeans – as was the fashion for guys and girls then (who’s criticizing 80s fashion?!) – Emily and the other girls who were my friends would playfully tease me and pinch my ass.  But (pun intended!) with Emily and John it seemed to go to a whole other level.  She would often find a reason to mention to me how much she liked John’s butt.  The tight jeans he wore put his rounded, muscular ass on display, and Emily reminded me that she noticed!

Overall, it was obvious that the reason she was going out with him was because of his looks and his body.  So again, even though she and I remained very close friends, I knew I didn’t have much of a chance with her.  None, really.

So although I knew that she really liked me on an intellectual, platonic level, I had to deal with the jealousy and frustration of her going out with John.  God I wanted to be him.  In every possible way, but especially because he had Emily.  I put up with it because I could see that he truly was only a fling for her, and so long as I could continue to spend time with her as her best friend, I felt I had more than enough to keep me satisfied.

* * *

As would inevitably be the case as graduation approached, everything started to intensify at the end of the school year.  Just as an example, I remember that at the senior awards dinner Emily was flirting with John by playing with a pin he had received for being on the swim team.  A few days later we were talking about him (like I said, we talked a lot about him) and she remarked, again, on how developed his body is, and to illustrate her point she mentioned that at the dinner she could barely pull the pin away from his pecs – his shirt was that tight!

Ok, so that seems to be a somewhat mundane, if slightly flirty, remark, but it has always stuck with me.  Mainly because of the way she told me, I guess.  She got that kind of dreamy, far off expression girls can get when they talk about a guy.  But also because of what I thought about the overall situation.  We were at a school awards dinner; I mean, how lame and non-sexual is that?  Granted, we were teenagers, but even at this event he had this effect on her!  I guess I was just a little stunned at the seductive power he had over her.

Soon after that dinner, there came a moment when I realized that something had changed, and for some incomprehensible reason, I had begun to look at John in a way that was different from how I had ever looked at any other guy.  Maybe I had heard Emily talk so much about how “cute” John was, and how much she liked his body, that I started to see him through her eyes.  Maybe it was just the effect of my raging hormones and my frustration at not being able to be with Emily physically, in the same way that we were close emotionally.  Maybe (and maybe this is going a little too deep!) I was so intensely jealous of him that I somehow began to believe that he was superior to me, and it was only right for me to acknowledge that fact.  But for whatever reason there did occur this moment when I started to agree with Emily that John was a very attractive guy – and I especially agreed with her that he had a great body.

The moment that I clearly remember first thinking along these lines was at a backyard barbecue party celebrating our impending graduation.  There were probably 50 kids there.  Some were playing volleyball, including John.  He took off his shirt, and I will never be able to wipe from my mind how stunned I was to see just how perfectly developed his body had become.  I couldn’t keep my eyes off him – his pecs, his six-pack abs, his slim hips – and most of all I noticed how tight his jeans were and how they revealed every curve of his absolutely perfect ass.  His face, his hair.  Just abso-fucking-lutely amazing.

There wasn’t a coherent thought in my brain - I just wanted him.  On that hot summer afternoon I thought he was the sexiest, most desirable person I had ever known.  I have to wonder now if anyone noticed me staring.

I remember leaving the party soon after that so I could get home quickly.  Once there, I went straight to my room and went at myself with more than the usual gusto.  And John was all that I thought about.

We still had a few days left at school, and I remember noticing more than once how good John’s butt looked in the old and faded pair of jeans that were his favorite.  And I also remember one time sitting in class and trying to sneak a peek at his crotch, to assess the size of his … bulge.  It was as if something had switched in my mind and I now permitted myself to look at him in a new way for the first time.  But thinking back on all this, I wonder if that really was the case.  That is, I wonder if I had been looking at him in that way before, but had just not yet admitted to myself that I did.

At the time, whatever feelings I had for John didn’t go any further.  I wasn’t really attracted to him in any meaningful sense of the word.  I didn’t have a “crush” on him; I didn’t want to get to know him better, or go out with him.  And I have no specific memories from this time of his personality being attractive to me.  Instead, I remember lots of mental images of his body.  It was just pure physical lust - a desire to be with him in a physical way.

Anyway, soon after graduation there was another event that added fuel to the fire of my intense feelings of both attraction toward, and jealousy of, John.  My parents would be away for an evening, so I planned a party for all my friends (and whoever else might show up).  Of course, John and Emily were invited, and I realized that they would be there together.  I could have called the party off, I guess, but I went ahead with it.

It turned out to be a fantastic party; the best I’ve ever thrown.  It was as good as it could have been short of the cops being called, I should say, and I remember being amazed at how many “friends” I had never known.  But in the midst of trying to keep my house together, I couldn’t help but keep a close watch on John and Emily out of the corner of my eye, and I therefore noticed immediately when they disappeared into the living room, where the lights were low and a psychedelic Pink Floyd album was wafting from the stereo speakers.  When I casually strolled through the room a few moments later, there they were, stretched out on the couch, their limbs entangled, their lips locked, blissfully unaware of my presence.

Later that night, after everyone was gone and all evidence of the party was safely in the trash, I returned to the living room and looked at the couch.  Alone in that darkened room, I realized that the intense jealousy I felt toward John – the anger that he, and not me, was with Emily – was masking another jealousy that was perhaps more intense.  That was, of course, the jealousy I felt toward Emily – that it was she, and not me, who was with John.  And as I stood there that evening, another thought started to creep into my mind, although I fiercely resisted it and didn’t want to admit it to myself.  It was this:  since jealousy is, of course, the feeling that you want to be another person, did this mean that I wanted, in some way, to be Emily?

As I continued gazing at the couch, I remembered how I had earlier seen Emily and John there together.  Yet when I looked again this time, I saw myself there.  And I saw that I hadn’t taken John’s place, but rather, I had replaced Emily.  I could also hear Emily’s descriptions of John running through my head, but this time my own voice had replaced hers.  And as I lay on that couch with John, my body entangled with his, all of Emily’s descriptions of John proved true – true beyond my wildest imagination.

After that party, John and I did hang out a few more times in Gary’s basement, but it felt weird.  On what turned out to be the last evening my friends and I all spent there, I remember beginning to realize more and more how seriously horny I got when I smoked dope.  And so I remember sitting there in a group of a half dozen guys, the heavy metal blaring, finding myself just staring at John, filled with an almost uncontrollable physical desire to get it on with him right there.  The next day, a friend told me that John had asked if I was mad at him (at John, that is).  I was puzzled by this, so my friend explained that John had said it was because I was staring at him so intently the night before; I was looking right in his eyes like I was mad at him.

I made a mental note not to stare.

So while our time as a group at Gary’s had come to an end, we were still all friends – just in a more individual way, as we each made our preparations for the upcoming transition in our lives.  John and I still got together and talked often.  I don’t remember the details of what we talked about but I’m sure we were both excited, but also apprehensive, about going off to college.

The long and the short of it was that although my feelings of attraction toward John were very intense, they also meandered a bit over those few weeks, and there’s no specific cause I can point to or way I can really explain it.  I think it was a combination of him being attractive in the first place, my horniness increased by the drugs and alcohol we consumed together, the quasi-sexual situations we were put into as teenagers, and the reactions that Emily had to him and shared with me.

Unfortunately, I never resolved the feelings I felt towards John in a healthy way.  Looking back on it now, I chalk it up to being only 18 and being emotionally undeveloped.  I certainly didn’t understand my feelings the way I do now.  Of course I was unable, at that age, to handle the conflict between the physical attraction I felt toward him and the absence of any romantic feelings.  Toss the intense jealousy I felt into the mix, and it was bound to end up an awkward mess.

* * *

It’s important to understand that up until this point, I had not made any overt expression of the attraction I felt towards John.  I say “overt” because I have no idea what sort of subliminal cues I was giving out.  Of course, there was that time he thought I was “angry” at him, and I’ve always wondered what he really meant by that, and whether he noticed I was aroused and not angry.  But aside from that one time, John had never given any signal that he noticed anything unusual about the way I was acting toward him.

That’s why, when something – I’m not sure what it was, exactly – did happen between us, it was a complete surprise to me and I didn’t know how to respond.  There were three of these “somethings.”  Each of them happened quickly, and had an air of being rushed and rather clumsy.  Granted, I say they were “clumsy,” but that didn’t make them any less intense.  In fact, maybe the clumsiness and unexpectedness increased the intensity.  Maybe the awkwardness of those “somethings” is part of the reason I’ve never been able to get them out of my mind, and maybe it’s why they still get me all hot and bothered whenever I think about them.

The first happened rather early that summer.  Neither of us had permanent jobs (he was mowing lawns from time to time), so we had plenty of time to kill.  His house was only a five minute bike ride away, so I would ride over a few times a week just to hang out.

Even though I remember feeling very grown up and mature as my “last” summer started, I also remember a desire for one more summer as a kid.  I think John felt the same way, and one day he suggested that we play a board game – World in Flames.  I say this as if the game was kid stuff, but it’s actually a super-complicated war game, with a hex-based map of Europe and little cardboard chits representing your units, and you play out the entire war with one person playing as the Axis and the other as the Allies.  It would take several hours over multiple sessions.

I brought the game over to his place, so that we could set everything up in a camping trailer that was kept in his driveway.  It could get kind of hot in that trailer on a summer afternoon, but it was one place where we could leave the game out for days on end.

John was the only one of my friends who would do something like this with me, and I still have very happy memories of the hours we spent playing that game.  It was a relief not to think about the responsibilities looming that fall, and just have fun.  Also, I found myself enjoying the time alone with John in a way I’d never experienced before.  I guess I could see that he was growing up, becoming more mature, while still being a lot of fun.  I liked the way he let himself get enthusiastic about the game.  Even though there was still a part of myself that thought he was very sexy, those thoughts just faded away and it was like a special time we had together, as friends.

I was playing as the Axis, and John was the Allies.  For those of you who are a little rusty on your World War II history, you should know that for the Axis – for me – the game is a race against time.  I start the game in 1939 with the superior force and have lots of easy success in the beginning, but once the U.S.  enters the war at the end of 1941, my fate is more or less sealed.  When the U.S.  – John, in this case – brings its overwhelming industrial might and hundreds of thousands of fit and capable soldiers to the table, I can try to postpone the inevitable but there is little I can do to resist.  I know that at some point I will end up surrounded in Berlin, where the only honorable choice is surrender.  For me, as the Axis, the “victory conditions” depend on marshaling my gradually weakening defenses to continue the game as long as I can until it reaches its unavoidable conclusion.  For John, as the Allies, victory depends on the reverse:  forcing me to capitulate as quickly as possible.

I think you get the picture.

In our game, John had benefitted from some lucky throws of the dice, a few astute tactical moves, and perhaps some defensive blunders on my part.  Even though I had marched triumphally into Paris in 1940, as expected, John had succeeded in advancing D-Day to the fall of 1943, so that by the spring of 1944 his forces had penetrated deeply into Germany from all sides – west, south and east.  It seemed obvious what would happen next but John and I were having too much fun to end the game so quickly, so John started to ease up on me.  He held his forces back, giving me extra time to rearrange my defenses.  We soon acknowledged what was going on and started laughing about how he had me in a position where, whenever he so chose, he could take full control.  Of Berlin, that is.  And since I had opted to allow Hitler’s assassination in early 1944, my level-headed generals would peacefully surrender.  John knew that I wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

We continued like that for a while, as the warm afternoon progressed slowly toward a quiet summer evening, just playfully allowing our forces to circle one another, until at some point I think we had lost interest in the game and were just sitting and talking – laughing and joking about everything that had happened around graduation a few weeks earlier.  John was in a good mood, and it was one of the few times I remember really getting the chance to talk with him.  He was usually pretty reserved, and of course everything that happened with Emily put a wedge between us.  By that time, however, she had moved on, although of course John never talked to me about that.

Anyway, we were just talking when all of a sudden he says, “Hey, check it out.  Remember my cousin that just went in to the Army?  Look what he gave me before he left.”  He reached into a cabinet and pulled out the latest issue of Playboy magazine.  Although I had looked at Playboy with John at Gary’s before, I had never looked at anything like that with John at his house, so I was a little surprised by this.

I don’t remember us saying much to each other.  He just laid it on the table, on top of the game board, and we both just stood there, looking at the pictorials and the centerfold.

After just a few minutes, I saw out of the corner of my eye that his hand had wandered over toward his crotch and every once in a while he’d sort of rub the bulge that had grown there.  I couldn’t tell if he was even conscious of what he was doing and I don’t think he realized that I had noticed.

(I need to digress here and say that all the other times that John, my other friends and I looked at men’s magazines together, there wasn’t any activity like that.  It wasn’t even sexual, really.  We just looked at them for a while and usually went on to something else.  Also, although there was often some wrestling and horseplay like guys will do, I don’t remember anything remotely sexual about anything between us.  That’s why what John was doing this time was a complete shock to me and I didn’t know how to react to it.)

After a minute or two of his left hand wandering back and forth between his crotch and his hip, I saw that it had settled to stay on his crotch while his right hand turned the pages of the magazine.  My attention similarly wandered between the girls in the photos and his left hand, but eventually I focused only on the way he was lightly squeezing and rubbing his cock, the outline of which was now obvious through his tight jeans.

We had reached the main pictorial in that issue:  a spread on the Girls of the Big Ten.  Maybe this caught our attention because we were thinking of heading off to college that fall.  John slowed down and it seemed he was paying closer attention to each photo.  I remember being curious about why in particular these girls had caught his eye.

It was when we turned to a picture of a girl made up to look sort of “bookish” that something happened.  I still remember the picture well.  She was a brunette, standing between two stacks in a library, some books scattered around.  (Maybe she is the source of my librarian fetish!)  She wore glasses and her hair was up, but sexily tousled.  With one hand, she pulled up her sweater to reveal large, gorgeous breasts and a taut young co-ed’s tummy.  With the other, she pulled down the waistband of her very short plaid skirt to give a nice view of her hip bone and a hint of what was between her legs.

“I could really see you with a girl like that.”

I don’t know where those words came from.

In fact, I wasn’t sure I had actually spoken them aloud until I heard him say, “Huh?”

For a second, I was completely panicked.  I had no idea what to say or do next.  So I took the simple route of just saying the same thing again.

“I mean, it’s like I could picture you with a girl like that.”

This time, however, I dared to take a quick peek over at his face to see his reaction.  I remember how surprised I was that he didn’t seem angry or even bothered by what I said.  Instead, he had only this weird sort of curious look on his face, blended with the arousal that had not dissipated.

“Really?”  he said, and I remember (although maybe this is an embellishment) that his voice was tinged with pride.  I also noticed that his hand had stayed on his crotch, although it wasn’t moving.

I figured that he wanted me to explain what I just said, so I tried to be as nonchalant as possible.

“Yeah.  I mean, I imagine that when you’re in college you’ll end up with a girl like that.”

That had the one benefit of being true, although John may not have suspected what I meant when I said I “imagined” that.  In fact, I had had extremely vivid fantasies involving John and girls like that.  But I was smart enough (I guess) not to tell him about them.

“That’s what you think about when you see these pictures?  You think about me?” he asked.

He still didn’t sound mad, but I instinctively started to back-pedal.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but at that time I was completely ashamed of how much I thought about him.

“No, not about you,” I answered, trying my best not to sound like a faggot (so I thought at the time).  “I mean I think about the girl.  I sort of imagine her life, what she does … I make up a story about her.”

“Wow,” he said.  “I just look at the girl and think how much I wanna fuck her.”

That sure caught my attention.  It wasn’t the image of him fucking her (I had had that image in my mind for weeks by now), it was the way he said it.  So direct, so forceful.

I liked it.

Trying to recover, I tried to think of something I could say that would get him to continue talking like that.

“That’s right, fucking,” I said.  I liked that word now.  “I like to imagine her in action.”

That was it.  I had stumbled on the magic words.  His hand started moving.  Slowly, but there he was, stroking himself through his tight jeans … right next to me.

I remember wondering what I should do, and I couldn’t come up with any answer.  I knew I shouldn’t say anything about what he was doing, or act like I even noticed, but I didn’t know if he expected me to join in.  I tried to keep looking at the magazine but it became impossible for me not to shift my eyes over toward his hand.  I tried to do so discretely and I remember being very worried that he would notice that I was watching him.

“What sort of action?”  he said, while he kept his eyes on the girl in the picture and his hand on his cock.

I didn’t expect him to ask me that, and my mind scrambled for an instant, thinking about how he expected me to respond.  I figured that since we had just been talking about what I think about when I look at pictures in Playboy, that’s what I should tell him – what I think about.  So, I made up some story on the spot.  Nothing even comparable to what I fantasized about at the time, but it was the best I could do with him being right there and me not wanting to get too graphic (that is, not wanting to tell him how explicit my fantasies about him could be).

“Like she’s waiting to meet you in the library … but she gets impatient.”  I think my story was about her touching herself and then he comes along.

“And you’re fucking her,” I remember saying (that word, again).  “Fucking her hard, pumping into her.”

I was only a minute or two into my story, when he just gave a little grunt and I looked up at his face.  He had sort of a glassy look in his eye.  I don’t think he had actually come, but I could tell he was close.  I assumed he would want to be alone.

“Yeah,” I said.  “So that’s sort of what I think about when I look at these girls.”

“Huh,” he said, noncommittally, “wow.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was thinking about the girls, the fantasy I had just shared with him, or something else.

I don’t think we said much more.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  After all, he didn’t have much of a way with words.  I just made some excuse and not more than 2 minutes later I was getting back on my bike to head home.

Riding home, I thought of nothing other than what I knew John was doing right at that moment, and straddling my bicycle seat did nothing to alleviate my desire to do exactly the same thing.

At home, I went straight to my room, stripped out of my clothes and pulled out a few of the Playboy magazines I had stashed in my closet.  As I stroked myself to the first of several orgasms, I gazed at the familiar girls in the magazines and thought about the fantasies I had come up with to explain what each of them was thinking at the moment the photographer had captured her image.  But soon enough, I was thinking more about which one of my fantasies John would have liked the most.  I began to replay what had just happened between us; and by the second time I came, I had pushed aside the magazines and lay back with my eyes closed.

It was significant that I had done that, because of the “rules” that I had about masturbating.  I’ve since heard this is common among teenagers (girls too).  When I first started, I had in my head all sorts of rules about when and how I could masturbate.  Like, I could only do it while I was looking at a picture of a girl.  I remember how excited I was when, for the first time, I masturbated with my eyes closed, with only the images in my own head to arouse me.  I felt so nasty.

This time, the feeling of transgression that was such a thrill for me was magnified as I started working toward my third orgasm, because my thoughts were so directly linked to what John and I had just done.  Sure, I had fantasized about him while I masturbated numerous times before, but they were always indistinct images of him like he was at that volleyball game – his shirt off and the sweat making his pecs and abs glisten in the sun.  But this time, those images faded away, and I didn’t try to get them back, because they were replaced by the memories of what I had just seen.  I was watching closely as his hand moved back and forth along his cock, its throbbing clearly evident through his tight jeans.  Just as his fingers reached up to lower his zipper and release it, I came for the third time.

After this, I remember my feelings of urgency start to dissipate, but I was by no means ready to stop.  Unexpectedly, the next image in my mind was not of what happened after he unzipped his jeans, but rather of a while before that, when we were laughing and joking after our game.  I thought about how happy he had looked then, and maybe I was seeing him through Emily’s eyes, or maybe I was thinking again about why she had chosen him over me.

“I think he’s just cute as a guy.”

She was right.  Why was I trying to deny it?  And as I lay back in my bed that day, my eyes closed, stroking myself slowly now, not urgently like before, John and I weren’t laughing or joking anymore, because we had found something much better to do with each other, and I did surrender to him – so when I came the fourth time, I was bent over the table and the chits from the game were flying in every direction because John was doing to me exactly what the Allies had done to the Germans.

It was so rough and hard and exciting and sexy and I wanted it so bad.

Over the next few days, I continued to think constantly about watching John touch himself as I told him that story, but I didn’t know what to make of it or even if it meant anything at all.  The excitement seemed to wear off as I realized that, after all, I’d been looking at Playboys and touching myself for years, so there was really nothing unusual about John doing so too.  Maybe he just couldn’t help himself that day.  And although I liked the idea of sharing my fantasy with him, I was too young and unsure of myself to even contemplate that he would be interested in hearing another one of my stories.  I was sure that the Playboy magazine he had would do more to get him off than anything I could do.

Looking back on it, however, I realize that my focus on watching John touch himself was a way to avoid thinking about something that had a far more powerful effect on me, but was also very disturbing.  That is, I remember trying to put the latter part of my masturbatory fantasy completely out of my mind.  I tried not to think about laughing and joking with him, or about kissing him, and I tried especially hard not to think about him taking me from behind.  But the more I tried to stop thinking about that, the more I knew it was really what I most wanted to think about – it was what truly excited me about John.  And that was very disturbing for me.

Most of all, it was disturbing because this was the first time I had fantasized about having sex with John (or any guy), and even worse than the worry that I might be gay – which at that time was the worst possibility I could imagine – was the worry that I had fantasized about being so submissive to him.  And of course, what really worried me was that I liked it so much.  So much so, in fact, that I began to fear that I had given John some signal of what I wanted him to do to me.

I started going back over what we had been doing before John brought out the Playboy, and I began to worry that I had been too obvious about allowing John to win our game.  I reproached myself about how happy I had been to see his face light up each time he had won a roll of the dice or conquered another piece of my territory.  I realized that seeing his reaction was the only thing I really liked about the game (the rest of which became boring for me) and I wondered if that possibility – seeing him win, seeing him defeat me – was the only reason I had agreed to play in the first place.

I hated all these feelings, though, not because they were bad, but because they were so good.  The feelings of vulnerability to him – of inferiority to him – became so intensely pleasurable for me that I began to think about another realm where he had proven his superiority to me.  He had also conquered Emily, of course.  He had seduced her in a way that I never could have.

And that fascinated me.  I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but looking back I realize I was fascinated by the process of seduction, and in particular by how John had seduced Emily.  And I realize that I wanted John to seduce me too.  I had seen how much Emily liked it, and I wanted to experience the same thing.  I knew that I could never be as seductive as John (for all the reasons described above, he had a much greater power over women than I could ever have), so I fantasized about assuming the role that was available to me – the intensely pleasurable role of being the target of his seduction.

But at the same time I felt guilty, angry and resentful that John had inspired these desires in me.  The connection to our game, as you can tell from my description, was very vivid for me.  I started to feel that he had somehow corrupted our special time together, even though I also knew that was ridiculous.  And it bothered me that, even though I thought John was incredibly sexy, I didn’t have any of the affectionate feelings about him that I had about Emily and other girls.

I just didn’t know why I felt such an intense physical desire; I didn’t know whether I truly wanted him to seduce me, to take me, or if he had somehow tricked me into wanting that.  The same way he had tricked Emily.  I began thinking that he must have somehow dominated her thoughts in the same way he dominated mine, and forced her to surrender to him.  Even though thoughts of John dominating Emily were very exciting for me, it disturbed me that he seemed to have the power to seduce people while at the same time make them like it, make them want to be seduced, like I wanted to be so bad.

It was really weird.

But there were other things going on for me that summer, which distracted me from my thoughts about John.  We were each pretty busy with preparations for college.  I was taking my freshman English class at summer school to get a jump start on the first year.  I felt very mature as I drove to the Emory campus three days a week.  I really got into the class and I think it had a lot to do with my majoring in English and my love of writing.

Still, despite the distraction of the class, I must’ve continued to be nervous about seeing John again, because I didn’t call him or try to see him, even though the World in Flames game belonged to me and I would have to collect it from him at some point.

I’m pretty sure now that I was nervous about the associations that would trigger in my mind when I saw him and that game again, nervous about the signals I would give, and nervous about the feelings and desires I would be unable to hide.  I was sure that John would have been very angry if he knew what I was thinking about him.  Even though I had tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about him bending me over the game table, and I was worried that when I saw him again it would be obvious how much I wanted him to do that.

I have to wonder, too, if I was just waiting for John to call me.

He did, eventually, on a quiet weekday afternoon, and that led to the second “something” that happened that summer between me and John.

When he called, he just said that he had the game and he could either bring it over or I could come get it.  When he gave me that choice, the first thing I thought of was the stack of Playboys in my closet, and how much I would enjoy sharing them with him.  I probably hoped that he would be impressed by how many tempting young women I could offer to him, and that he would give in to any temptations he felt.  But much as I would have liked that, I knew there was no way I could actually have been so bold, so I decided to go over to his house, instead.  He said that any time would be fine, so I told him I’d be there in a few minutes.

Before hopping onto my bike to head over to his house, I stopped for a minute to consider what I was wearing and decided to change into my tightest, and therefore most favorite, pair of jeans.  I also changed into a smaller t-shirt.  I’ve always been self-conscious about being on the skinny side, and I thought that wearing a smaller shirt would at least give the impression that I was more muscular than I really was.

When John opened the door to his house a few minutes later, the simple white t-shirt he was wearing reminded me that he would never have such worries.  I knew he was swimming in the summer rec league and working out every day in the pool, and if anything he was even more toned – and his arms, chest and shoulders were more developed – than when I had seen him playing volleyball at that graduation party.

“C’mon in,” he said, turning to walk back into his house, as my eyes dropped to see he was wearing the same very tight pair of jeans that he’d had on the last time.  “So I’ve got the game,” he said, taking it from a shelf in his living room.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him.  I was both disappointed, and relieved, to see that he had already packed it up.  I realized that I’d been hoping to go back to the camper where we’d been playing, laughing and talking, and that the process of putting the game away would bring us back – well, bring us back to what we had shared there.  Still, I was relieved because, again, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to be in that camper again without doing something that would reveal to John what I had been thinking about him – that is, what I wanted him to do to me.

“Think you’d like to play again sometime?”  I remember just sort of hearing those words come out of my mouth before I knew what I was asking, and I was probably hoping that he understood that I meant World in Flames, and not any other “game” we could play.

“Don’t know,” he answered.  “It’s kind of a busy summer.”

“Yeah.”  I remember trying not to sound disappointed.

“So how’s that class going?”

I wouldn’t have expected that he’d bring that up, since we hadn’t talked about it much before, so I’m sure I didn’t know quite what to say.

“It’s cool.  We do these writing exercises and stuff,” I replied.

I was even more surprised when he said something like, “You’d be good at that.”  Guys don’t usually pay each other compliments, and even though I can’t now recall exactly what he said, I remember that it made me rather nervous.  Even more than being worried that he’d notice I was physically attracted to him, I was very self-conscious about (or was it denial of?) starting to feel any affection toward him.  I’m certain I didn’t know how to react to this and so I just stood there awkwardly in his living room.

“I mean, you were always a good writer,” he continued.  “Like that dungeon you made up last year.  That was cool.”

He was talking about something I had made up for Dungeons & Dragons the previous summer.  It was one of the last times that he and I had played with Gary and our other friends.  Usually, we used a store-bought adventure, but that time I had created one myself, and led my friends through it.  I still remember some of it now.  It was a pretty routine story about some necromancer who had a plan to reanimate some corpses and, well, do whatever it is you can do with a reanimated corpse army.  I didn’t have to worry about that because I was sure that John and my friends would be able to put a stop to his plan.

Anyway, I must have been flattered that he would even remember it.  With all the drama involving Emily during the intervening year, it was a reminder that he was still a good friend.  But I could have never predicted what his remembering my creative skills would inspire in him that afternoon.

“Hey, that reminds me of something.  Wait here,” he said, before quickly turning and walking out of the room.

I stood there for a moment, thinking he would come right back, but when he didn’t, I sat down on the couch to wait.

A few minutes later, he returned with something in his hands.  He seemed rather pleased with himself for remembering whatever it was that he had.

He sat down next to me, and when I looked over to see it was an issue of Penthouse Letters, I didn’t know what to say or do.

“My cousin gave me this, too,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I just sat there, tongue tied, unable to believe or understand what was happening.  I couldn’t believe he’d really want to do what I was dying for him to do – look at another of his cousin’s magazines with me.  In fact, his enthusiastic demeanor wasn’t at all what I would have expected if he wanted to “get it on,” as I would have said at the time.

“Take a look,” he said, handing me the magazine.

I started paging through it.  I had seen Penthouse Letters before, and enjoyed its stories, but I don’t remember looking at it with any of my friends and I didn’t know then whether or not I should let on that I was familiar with it.  I didn’t know where he was going with this.  I just continued looking through the magazine, saying something like “wow” if there was an especially sexy picture of some girl.

After a minute or two of this, he finally spoke up.  “It’s cool because it’s got letters that people send in.”

“Yeah,” I said, still wondering how I was supposed to react.  This was very weird.

“Letters about doing it.”

Really, I was barely listening to him.  My mind was working furiously and I was trying to maintain my composure.

“Cool,” I said.  I figured I should stop and look at some page of the magazine and act like I was reading it.  The printed words were just gibberish to me, however.

“I thought about you because it reminded me of that story you were telling the other day.”

Now that surely got my attention.  He was thinking about me?  Really?  He was still thinking about that story?

I guess he saw the expression on my face and misread it as confusion or maybe something worse.  He started to explain himself.  “You know, you were telling me how you make up stories about the girl you’re looking at.  I think a lot of these stories are made up like that.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”  Of course, I didn’t say that out loud.  I was still reeling with the idea of him thinking about me when he looked at this magazine.

About this time, I remember that my attention had been caught by a particular picture in the magazine, that I couldn’t help staring at, even though John was sitting right next to me.  It was a bit different from most of the other pictures because in addition to the girl in the foreground there was a man in the background.  The man was hunky and muscular and he had brown curly hair.  He was shirtless, wearing jeans, and he looked like he was doing yard work.

For my purposes, it was John.

The girl in the foreground was a nondescript blonde looking at the guy though a window from inside her house.  Clearly she was in rapture over this hunk outside her window.  Her shirt was open and she was touching her breasts, her mouth open and her eyes half closed.

But if John was annoyed that I would focus on this picture, he didn’t show it.  Instead, his reaction was quite the opposite.

“That’s a good one.  I bet you’ll like it.”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the story that accompanied the picture.

After this, I think there was just an awkward silence between us.  My impression is that neither of us knew what to say or do next, although looking back on it, I wonder whether John was struggling as hard as I was to repress what I really wanted to do.

But whatever he was thinking, his voice didn’t betray any inner turmoil.  Instead, he simply said, “You can have it.  I’ve already read all the letters.”

I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking at that moment, but I do remember a million thoughts running through my head and one of them was that I should thank him – I should thank him for giving me this gift – which instantly became quite special to me – and also for sharing the Playboy with me before.  And the best way for me to thank him would be to get on my knees on the floor in front of him … and then my mind reeled thinking of all the things I wanted to do for him and I wanted him to do to me and then I had to get out of there because he was going to realize what I was thinking and he was going to be mad.

So I muttered a simple, “Thanks,” and said something about needing to get home.  A few minutes later I was pedaling my bike back home, with the magazine John had given me and the World in Flames game both tucked safely in my backpack.

Straddling the bicycle seat in my tight jeans, I was consumed by the image of John’s toned, muscular body taking the place of the bicycle.  We each had our shirts off, but we were still wearing our super tight jeans.  As I straddled him, pressing my hips against his, I was reading the story that he had picked out for me.

I got home and practically ran to my room.  I pulled off my shirt but left on my tight jeans as I lay back on my bed.  I made no pretense of looking at the magazine or thinking of anything other than John as I rubbed my hand over my crotch, stroking my cock through my jeans.

I fantasized that after he gave me the magazine, I set it aside and instead told him my own story about the hunk in the picture.  About him, that is.  And he liked my story much better.  I knew that because of the way he ran his hands to the back of my head, pulling me down toward him until our lips met and we kissed.  Then his hands moved to my ass and he was grabbing and massaging my butt until he just gripped my jeans in his strong hands and ripped them right apart along the center seam, so my ass was now completely exposed to him.

I replayed this fantasy through three shuddering orgasms, and what I remember enjoying most was how powerful John was, how I knew that he could rip me apart just as easily as he ripped my jeans, and how futile it would be for me to try to resist him.

I think I spent the rest of that day in my room, reading every story in the Penthouse Letters, and coming a few more times when one or the other would particularly catch my attention.  Of course, I thought about reading each story for John.  As I remember my fantasies at the time, I think I was always the one reading (he didn’t read to me) and I didn’t fantasize about touching myself with him, or about him touching me.  Instead, my fantasy was that my reading the stories was something I was doing for him, to please him.  I’m not sure why I looked at it that way, but I remember vividly that I did.

Over about the next week, I looked carefully through all the stories, thinking especially about why he had picked out the particular one that he had said I would really like.  Of course, now I don’t really remember any of the stories (I kept the magazine for only about 10 years!) and my recollection of my thought process at the time is pretty fuzzy, but one thing I remember was that the story he mentioned was the only one in the magazine that featured a man being watched.  True, after about the first page it talked only about the woman pleasuring herself to a thunderous orgasm, but the premise of the story was that she was watching the guy working in his yard.

“Holy shit,” I thought, “John likes to be watched?”

I was thrilled to think that John might have some idea just how sexy he was, but like before, I couldn’t help being disturbed and nervous about this.  Even though John seemed sincere when he said I’d like the story, in my recollection his voice gradually took on a mocking tone, and I imagined that he had said I’d like it because he knew (and was disgusted by) how much I’d liked watching him touch himself that time before.

“I bet you’ll like this one, you little fruit,” he said with a sneer, unzipping his tight jeans and releasing his cock so he could stroke himself in front of me.

Of course, that was exactly what I wanted, and he was exactly right about me, so all I could say was, “Yes, John, I like it, I like watching you a lot,” which is what I said every one of the countless times I came when I replayed this scene in my head while masturbating.

After I finished, each of those times, I would ask myself, “Is that what I am?  A little fruit?  John’s little fruit?”  But I knew I wasn’t gay – I was sure of it – so I was confused by my feelings, and confused why John thought I would like this story.

I remember that another explanation occurred to me at the time, but it was so outlandish as to be impossible, and yet exciting at the same time.  It was this:  maybe John was thinking that I was the character doing the watching in the story – the hot, sexy woman.  Could it be that John wanted me to be that woman; the woman who is so captivated by this guy’s body.  By John’s body.  Did he want me to be the woman – the person – who masturbates while watching him, thinking about his incredibly hot body.  Did John want me to be exactly what I was?

Much as it thrilled me to contemplate that John would have such thoughts, and much as I enjoyed fantasizing about being exactly that, I was still an 18 year old guy who was very anxious about my own fantasies.  Did John think I was a girl?  Worse yet, did I want to be a girl – his girl?  Did he want to show me that he could have me just like he had Emily?  Did I want him to have me?  These thoughts terrified me as much as they excited me.

Over the next few weeks, I remember there were a few times that I built up my courage and thought about calling him and somehow trying to suggest that we get together again.  I imagined that I would be able to suggest that I could read one of the stories for him, but I knew that would never happen.  I also thought about asking him to help me do some work around my yard, but I thought that would be beyond weird.  The reality was that he never called me or mentioned that magazine to me again, and of course I didn’t bring it up.

Now on to the third, and strangest, interlude.  This one is also the most involved so I might have to skip past some of the details.

The last time I saw John that summer was when a group of frats and sororities had a mixer for all the incoming freshman in our area who were going to any of the state schools.  He was invited because he was going to Southern Poly, and he could bring a guest.  He invited me.  I remember being thrilled, and nervous, that he asked me to go with him, but I reminded myself that he really didn’t have any better choice, and he was probably very apprehensive about meeting the older kids.  I knew that when we were at the mixer, I would be the last thing on his mind.

In those days the attitude toward alcohol, beer especially, was way more liberal than it is now.  There were free-flowing kegs at the party, but John and I kept ourselves to just one beer, and were just kind of standing around not knowing what to do.  As the evening wore on, the party got a bit more lively, and looking back on it I can imagine that the older students were showing off a bit in front of the incoming freshman about how they could party.  I also noticed, to my amazement, how the girls were a lot more “forward” than I was used to.

At that age, being with girls in that situation would just confuse and overwhelm me.  I was definitely not popular with girls, at least not in that way.  I would just retreat into my shell.  My friends, John included, were pretty much the same.  Even though he had had the experience with Emily (who I think was his first girlfriend), he had the same awkward way around girls that I had.

But at that party, one girl in particular latched on to John.  She would be a junior in the upcoming year, and I could tell the beers she was drinking were having an effect.  She couldn’t stop talking about how cute John is, how sexy he is, how sexy his butt is, and how much he was going to drive the girls crazy with his tight jeans.  I have to say that I found myself getting very turned on by how she was coming on to him.  Or, should I say, I was becoming incredibly turned on because I was hearing out of her pretty mouth the same thoughts I had been thinking all summer.

At one point, she said, to no one in particular, “I just want to bite his butt, don’t you want to bite his butt?”

And I said, laughing, “Go ahead, John, let her bite your butt.  Let’s see her do it.”  But despite my willingness to joke about it, I definitely remember feeling uncomfortable because I was worried the others at the party would notice my real reaction.

To get to the point, when John and I were getting ready to leave, she asked whether he could give her a ride home.  “How obvious can this be?” I thought, not at all surprised that she would want to leave with John.  I was sure that he would drop me off at my house and then he would be free to do whatever he wanted with this girl.

So we arrived at my house and he stopped the car.  But I was in the back seat of a two-door car; I couldn’t get out unless one of them got up and opened the door for me.  She was drunk, but I was starting to think that maybe she wasn’t as drunk as she acted and that instead she had created an excuse for herself to do something “crazy” with John.

John, being an 18 year old guy, was I’m sure willing to do whatever she wanted, so neither of them made any move to let me out of the car.  Instead, they were joking around and I think he was sort of showing off for her.  I didn’t know whether to be mad or instead, to do what I really wanted to do and just sit back and enjoy watching him seduce her right there in front of me.  I remember wondering if he wanted me to leave or what, and then all of a sudden they just started making out right there in the front seat.

I was like, “Holy shit.”  But I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to react.  I didn’t even know if he realized I was there.  Maybe he just got really horny and wanted to start making out with her.

I was entranced.  Sitting there in the back seat, watching them intently, becoming very turned on, I had a very clear view of them.  John had leaned across the bucket seats and was pretty much on top of her.  After a few moments they kind of got their rhythm and settled down into kissing and running their hands over each other.  I’m pretty sure that one of her hands found his ass and stayed there.

After about five minutes, John jerked himself back into his seat.  This made me jump back into my own seat, worried for an instant that he remembered I was there and I made him angry.

But instead, in a single smooth motion, he reached down to his car seat and pulled the lever to let it recline all the way back.  With his other hand, he unzipped his tight jeans and there was his cock.  His very hard cock.

When he laid back on the seat, John’s head was no more than a foot away from me.  It would have been incredibly easy, I would have barely had to move my hand, to reach out and touch those curls, brush my hand against his cheek, or bring my fingers to his lips.  But of course, I didn’t do anything like that.  Instead, I sat there completely motionless, staring at his cock.  Not moving my eyes, barely blinking.  I honestly don’t know if he even looked at me.

Since I didn’t look at the girl, I can’t say what her reaction was, but it must have been positive.  She just shifted in her seat and reached out to start giving him a hand job, stroking her hand up and down on his cock.  Slowly at first, but then faster as his precum dripped out to lubricate him.

I never said anything, and neither did John.  I was afraid, frankly, to even look at his face, or to do anything that would remind him I was there.  I just wanted to watch.  If I could have disappeared, I would have.

At some point, I’m pretty sure that the girl bent over and licked his cock once or twice, but she didn’t actually suck on him.  John came soon afterwards, just minutes after she started.  He came hard and I had a good view of his hips pulsing up and down, and his shoulders sort of shuddered.  I remember glancing at his mouth, too, as he grunted; and I think I saw his tongue.  I felt like I could have watched him come a thousand times (and I would, in my countless replays of these events).

After John came, I remember the girl saying, “You liked that, huh?” as she smiled at him.  Then, she turned to look at me, and I have the clearest memory of her saying, simply, “It looks like you liked it as much as him.”

I was so stunned by this whole performance that I had no idea what to say to her.  In fact, I probably wasn’t even sure she had spoken to me.  I think I just mumbled something like, “I need to get out.”

John was in no condition to move, and in fact I couldn’t tell if he knew I was there.  So the girl shifted in her seat and then got up, out of the car, and reached in to move the seat forward for me.

I got out of the car, barely looking at her, and started walking down the street to my house.  I am pretty sure, however, that as I left I looked back through the car window and saw that she had mounted on top of him and was humping against his cock, with her pants still on.  I think she looked back at me and smiled.  That’s my last memory of the scene.

When I got home, I went straight to a window where I could see his car and started masturbating furiously, forcing myself to stay quiet in the darkened house.  His car stayed there about 15 minutes before leaving.  I couldn’t see anything of what they were doing in it, but I came three times, at least – the memory of John stretched out in front of me and her hand pumping away at his hard cock was more than enough for me.

* * *

In the light of morning the next day, I was angry about what had happened.  Sure, it was a turn on for me, but I was angry at John for doing that to me.  In my mind, he had done the whole thing to humiliate me, to show me again that he could have the girl and I couldn’t.  That I would have to sit there and watch him, just like I had watched him make out with Emily on the couch in my house.  Frankly, it never occurred to me that maybe he wanted to share this with me in a positive way.

There were even darker thoughts in the back of my mind.  I remember thinking again that John had done this to show me what I was, what I had become.  After telling me about the story he liked, about how he liked to be watched, along came the opportunity for him to give me a lesson – a lesson in what I should do, in what he wanted.

In what I wanted.  That was what really got me the most, the fear that this was what I wanted.  The fear that when I watched him make out with Emily, I wanted him, not her.  It was those thoughts that bothered me the most.

It was those thoughts that put me over the edge the next morning, when I lay in bed masturbating frantically as I replayed the scene in his car from the night before.

Even though my thoughts about John, and about that night, were very intense, I don’t remember talking much with him over the rest of the summer.  I’m sure that at some point we said goodbye before heading off to college, but I don’t remember any details.

Then there was just my one short visit with him that fall, after we had both started college.  And I never saw or heard from him again.

* * *

To be totally frank, I have to say that, as I look back on those three “somethings” that happened between me and John, I can’t make any assurances about whether my memories accurately reflect what really happened.  I can’t even say for sure how I remembered them at the time.  It was a long time ago – the summer of 1986, when we were both only 18.

But it’s not merely a matter of the time that had passed since I had last seen John.  In addition, my memories of that summer had gotten mixed up by everything that happened since then.

Just a few weeks after that “something” with John in his car, I had started college, and my life had changed completely.  Not only was living in the dorm an entirely new lifestyle for me, but my experiences with women changed too.

When I got to college, I realized that most girls in high school (I know there are exceptions, but this is true for most) are really attracted to only three types of guys - the “cute” boy-band type (which included John), the alpha-male quarterback type, or the bad-boy.  I was definitely not in any of those categories.  But college has an effect of widening one’s horizons in every possible way, and it was like the girls (and guys too, I’m sure) were liberated to see the merit in all sorts of people, including the shy, bookish, geeky category that included me.  Anyway, for whatever reason, I immediately had much better luck with women and I had my first real girlfriend within a few weeks of arriving on campus.  Needless to say, my thoughts of John faded very quickly.

* * *

As I was reminiscing about all this, I arrived at work and took my bike to the rack in the garage.  I smiled when it occurred to me that the time it took me to run through my memories of that summer coincided perfectly with my morning commute.

As I walked from the garage to the locker room at work, I thought that I couldn’t believe it had been 24 years since that summer, since I had last seen John.  Certainly, the man who greeted me as I turned the corner and looked in the large mirror in the locker room couldn’t be more than two decades out of high school, could he?

A lot of the women I meet wouldn’t say so.  I have a boyish face, which, combined with my slim body, I guess, leads them to be pleasantly surprised when I tell them my age.

It seems this would be a good time to describe myself, physically, if only to give you a break from my lengthy description of virtually every thought I had that day!  (Although maybe I should skip the description and just let you take another look at the self-portrait on the cover of this book.)

I’m not movie-star handsome, but I think I’ve finally achieved what I so wanted in high school.  That is, women consider me to be “cute,” in a nerdy way.  Probably my most striking features are my red hair (which, luckily for me, is still as soft and thick as it was in high school) and blue-grey eyes.  Women seem to notice both.

They also notice my butt.  My real motivation for biking to work is so that I can wear a tight pair of 505s and be complimented for doing so.  For me, time spent at the gym or on my bike doesn’t cause me to bulk up; I’ve always been the type who gets leaner as I exercise more.  I’m about 5’8” and 165 pounds, and although I’ve never had anything close to six-pack abs, I have a reasonably flat stomach (other than the little bit below my belly button that I’m always trying to work off, but not to the point of giving up a glass or two of wine every evening!) and nicely toned shoulders, arms and legs.

Let’s just say I’m comfortable with my own body, and maybe if I tell you what I did that morning in the locker room at work, you will understand just how comfortable!

Since no one else was around the locker room that morning (probably too hot outside for most people), I felt no inhibition about pulling off my shirt and taking a moment to look at myself in the mirror.  That day, I had chosen to wear a pair of light cotton shorts that are a little short and a little snug, and I turned in front of the mirror, admiring my body.  I’ve always thought that the reason I don’t feel like a complete narcissist doing this is that, like I said before, I don’t have a movie star-handsome face or body.  I feel like a sort of average-looking guy who’s done well to keep himself in good shape, even at the ripe old age of 42.  As a woman friend once said when I returned from a run, “You’re in pretty good shape for a guy who sits at a desk all day!”

Thinking of that compliment, I slipped off my shorts, and stopped again to look at the 2xist y-back thong I was wearing.  You may think it a little odd that I remember exactly which pair of underwear I was wearing, but on the other hand, you might be, like me, the type of person who chooses his or her underwear every day based on mood.

Ever since my junior year abroad in Europe, I’ve enjoyed wearing nice underwear.  And since I’ve stayed the same weight for years, I’ve amassed quite a collection.  I’ve never counted but I probably own about 30 pairs – boxer briefs, bikini briefs, and thongs.  In the heat of a Charlotte summer, a thong is the way to go beneath the dress slacks I wear at work.  Calvin Klein is the standby, of course, and more recently I’ve found much to my liking at H&M, as well as purchases online from Hom, Cin2, 2xist, RIPS and other brands.

Standing there in my thong, looking at myself in the mirror, my eyes were drawn to my hips, of course, and then I turned slightly to look over my shoulder at my ass.  I liked the way the two straps of the y-back sort of pressed against my flesh, indicating how firm it is.  I reached back and ran my hand down to just briefly grab my ass, before I slipped the thong off, tossed it into an open locker, and headed to the shower.

I wonder if you’ll be surprised that I masturbated in the locker room shower that morning.  I felt no hesitancy in doing so.  I had figured out that, because of the way the locker room was configured, I would hear the door open well before someone could walk around the corner and have any idea what I was doing.  And, believe me, I had enough experience masturbating to know that I could stop (or at least, stop making any sound) if absolutely necessary.

Given the memories that played through my mind as I rode my bike into work that morning, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that as I masturbated in the locker room shower that morning, spreading my legs open a bit and leaning forward to brace my arm against the glistening shower tile that offered a teasing reflection of my chest heaving as my breath came faster and I stroked myself harder, I thought about John.

* * *

Sitting at my desk just a few minutes later, my thoughts soon wandered back to John, and it occurred to me, with a little laugh to myself, that maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to choose a CK string bikini to wear that day.  Given that there wasn’t much going on at work, I would be vulnerable to almost any distraction, and the feel of the bikini around my hips, combined with the memories spurred by John’s phone call the day before, were more than enough to fit the bill.

I said that my memories of that summer had faded when I went to college, but I have to admit that my memories of John were never completely extinguished.  I’m not sure of the exact timing, but within a few years after finishing college and getting married, I became comfortable enough to let my mind wander back to that summer, and in particular to how attractive and, yes, sexy, he had been.  As my mind wandered, John returned to my masturbatory fantasies, and my memories of that summer lost all their negative connotations.  Instead, those events became suffused with a thrilling eroticism for me, as they became part of some far-off fantasy world of my imagination.

And, to make another little confession here, my memories of John from that summer are probably a large part of the reason that, even though I have never been attracted to any other guy in a sexual or romantic way, I’ve also never had any qualms about noticing that the young, very handsome, and (most important) very well-built men that are featured on the web sites where I buy my underwear can be very sexy.  And I’m not shy about telling you that, for me, those guys are always named John.

So now you can probably better understand why John’s call, on that lazy August afternoon in 2010, had such an effect on me.  As I sat at my desk the next day thinking about it, what stuck most in my mind was that even though our conversation could have been very uncomfortable for me, John was actually very pleasant, self-deprecating, perceptive and, for lack of a better word, charming.

No, there is no lack of a better word.  That’s the best word.  He was very charming.  He somehow deflected the fact that we hadn’t spoken in more than two decades.  And he somehow managed not to bring up our “history,” but at the same time in a way that didn’t seem like he was avoiding anything but simply as if those events hadn’t happened, or if they had happened, they didn’t matter.

But as pleasant as our conversation had been, I also had some unpleasant thoughts that Wednesday afternoon – unpleasant thoughts about the reality of seeing him again.  And to be honest, I felt just as much fear as anticipation.

I think I’ve already explained the anticipation.  Like I said, my memories of John had become quite erotic over the intervening 24 years.  And I realized as I sat daydreaming in my office that I was greatly intrigued by the idea of replaying those three “somethings” with John, now that we were mature adults, now that we could really enjoy them.

But, as a mature adult, I knew it wasn’t that simple, and I was actually mortified at the prospect of looking in the face of the person who had shared those “somethings” with me.  Sure, John had been charming on the phone and maybe he’s a very nice guy and maybe he’s as sexy as I remember him being in high school, but I thought that dinner with him was far more likely to be an uncomfortable evening where I’m reminded of a time when I wasn’t as fabulous as I am now.  And we wouldn’t have anything to talk about.

Worse yet, there were even darker thoughts in the back of my mind.  Was he planning to blackmail me somehow?  Or, even more horrifying in some ways, just sit there and mock me?

Those were the thoughts I couldn’t keep out of my head as I rode my bike back home that evening.  Of course, I realized they were ridiculous thoughts, but like I said, I felt as much fear as anticipation.

* * *

Those dark thoughts were chased away by the light of day the next morning, Thursday, when I was preoccupied with the logistics of preparing for drinks and dinner with John that night.

One thing I really don’t like is the feeling of going out in the evening in the same clothes I’ve been wearing all day.  I’m just particular about that, and all the more so on a hot, sticky August day.  So I thought about coming home to change after work, but nixed that idea as too chaotic and just – awkward.  I decided that I would drive in to work and bring a change of clothes with me.  I could shower at work, change, and then go to see John refreshed – and ready.  I packed up everything I would need, including my cologne, which I didn’t usually bring to work.

As for what to wear, the choice turned out to be easy.  Starting with the most important, my choice of underwear was a no brainer.  I’d wear my favorite – a hipster made by Hom in a silvery, lightweight microfiber.  It provides support, but I can barely feel it at all.  Also, I knew I would enjoy the feel of the slinky fabric around my hips.

For my shirt, I chose a coral-colored dress shirt that has inspired compliments from many people (women and even some men).  I guess they think it goes well with my red hair and light complexion.  As for my slacks, I wore my favorite pair of not-overtly-sexy dress slacks – a pair of flat front khakis that I say are not-overtly-sexy because they aren’t really tight, but they fit very well and I look good in them.  I put all these clothes on a hanger (tucking the hipster in the pants pocket) and went to work confident in my choice and sure that I would look good that evening.

By 6 pm the office was starting to empty out.  I was to meet John at 7 and the restaurant was barely a 10 minute walk away.  Once I was in the shower in the locker room at work, I remembered when I had last been there the day before, and the thoughts of John that had inspired me to pleasure myself.  I gave serious thought to doing so again, and the erection which grew as I looked forward to the evening certainly encouraged me, but ultimately I preferred to continue teasing myself to heighten my anticipation.  Plus, I was so excited about seeing John that I wanted to get ready as quickly as I could.

Still, I took my time getting dressed and once I was ready to go I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror, make sure everything was in place, and put a spritz of cologne on my chest.  I was so excited as I headed out through the lobby that I had to keep checking that I hadn’t forgotten anything.

It was a short walk from my office over to Tryon, where I’d be meeting John.  It’s a pleasant, lively street with lots of restaurants, and seeing the other people heading out to dinner only heightened my anticipation.

That was what I felt.  Any fear or trepidation from earlier had completely dissipated, and I looked forward to my dinner with John with an exciting sense of anticipation.