Borrowed Time by Traumarei
Part 8. Easing into the Future
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Also, not a lot of sex this chapter. Please note that this is the final episode of the story, at least as currently planned.
Jerry had never been so anxious to go away on vacation as he was the summer after his freshman year. Fortunately, they had a long trip planned for that summer.
About a week after school let out, Jerry and his folks drove out to California together. Jerry wound up spending about a month out there with his cousins. Then his dad flew out again and they drove back together. Jerry, who now had his learner's permit, got to drive part of the way.
It was on that trip that Jerry finally decided to come out to his dad.
While visiting his cousins, Jerry spent a lot of time walking and bicycling at the local university, and swimming in the pool. Every now and then, he'd see a poster for the Gay-Straight Alliance, or even a couple of guys--once, a couple of girls--walking and holding hands. It was very strange. He guessed it was true, what they said about California college towns being so liberal.
One time he was with his cousin--David, who was a year and a half older than him--when they saw a couple of guys kissing. Jerry couldn't keep his eyes off them. David noticed. He asked him about it, after they'd walked a little way further.
"You have a problem with gays?"
Jerry stuttered his answer. "N-no. Just, uh, you don't see a lot of guys kissing each other, back where I come from."
David laughed. "Yeah, I guess you're right." He paused. "You know Troy? Red-headed guy who's on the swim team with me?"
"The one you said has been friends with you since fourth grade?"
"Yeah. He's, well, he's gay. If you do have a problem with that, don't give him any shit, okay?"
Jerry shook his head. If only you knew, he thought to himself. "Uh, no. I mean, I won't give him any shit. It's fine with me."
"Make sure it stays that way."
David could mop the floor with him. Even if Jerry had a problem, he wouldn't have dared say anything about it. "Um, yeah."
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Thinking about it afterward, Jerry decided that he really needed to tell his folks about being gay. He was sure they'd take it okay. Better for them to know about it now than find out about it some other way. He shuddered to think what it would have been like if his folks had walked in on him and Karl going at it during their sleepover.
They were driving through the Nevada desert when he got up the nerve to say something.
"Um, Dad?"
He thought his dad had been napping, but he answered right back. "Yes, Jerry?"
"You, uh, remember all that stuff with Karl and his folks at the end of the school year?"
"You mean about them accusing you of being a sex pervert for messing around with other boys? Yes, I remember," his father said drily.
"Well, uh, I didn't tell you, um, quite everything about that." Despite himself, Jerry's voice squeaked and his hands started to shake.
"Eyes on the road!" his dad shouted.
"Right," he said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bird fluttering up from a fence post. He flinched, and nearly swerved into the next lane. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.
"Right," said his dad. "Let's not talk about this anymore right now. Eyes on the road. You can do this. You're a good driver, for a 15-year-old who just got his permit two months ago." Jerry scowled but didn't take his eyes off the road. "Right. I shouldn't have said that. Just be patient. Next exit, let's pull off and have a shake or something, okay?"
So they pulled off. Jerry ordered a shake and fries and two hamburger from the fast food place they found. His dad, shaking his head, ordered only a small shake. "Someday you'll care about cholesterol, too," he said.
Once they were sitting at the booth, Jerry looked at his dad, feeling nervous again. His dad shook his head. "How do we do this?" he asked. "We can't talk here." He gestured around, at the mostly-empty diner. "Too many cactus listening.
"We still have miles to go before evening. Not having a deathwish, I suppose that means I'd better drive."
"Real funny, Dad."
"Right. Get one of those burgers down that gullet, so you don't have more food in your hands than you can juggle, and I'll finish this, and then let's hit the road."
Jerry was tempted to drag out eating his hamburger, but he was really hungry. So he took care of it in about five bites, drained the shake, stuffed about half the fries into his mouth, then used the restroom. They were out in the car again in ten minutes.
"So. This big news?"
Jerry had been about to start his second burger, but decided he wasn't hungry right then. Slowly, he folded it up in the foil and put it back in the sack with the rest of the fries.
"Well?"
It was worse, not having the steering wheel and the road in front of him to focus on. Finally he blurted it out. "I'm gay, Dad."
"I guessed."
Jerry felt a short, sharp shock inside himself. He found himself thinking, Then why the fuck didn't you say something about it? Even while the thought went through his mind, he knew it wasn't fair.
His dad continued. "Back after that call from Karl's dad, you said you didn't think any of your friends were gay. You didn't say anything about not being gay yourself. That was kind of a big clue right there.
"Even before that, we were pretty certain though. All those gay Internet sites. And it's pretty obvious when you see a guy you think is hot. Even your sister noticed once, the way you were staring at one of the basketball players in the food court."
"Oh, shit."
"Language." His dad was laughing at him, though. Asshole.
Then he thought about what else his dad had said. "Internet sites? Wh-what do you mean--"
"Idiot child. Did you think the kid minder was the only way we knew what you were doing on the Web? Every site anyone looks at on our home network is registered on the household modem. Which keeps a log your mother and I look at every so often.
Jerry thought about what that meant. "Fuck!"
His dad glanced briefly at him. "I have to say, looking at some of those sites with your mom provided some of the most embarrassing moments I've ever had, in 18 years of marriage."
Jerry rested his head on the dashboard. Oh, shit. It was all too much. To his horror, he could feel his chest tightening and tears starting to collect in his eyes. Shit, I'm breaking down, he thought. Just what I fucking need.
Despite his best intentions, a sob broke through.
"Jerry? Jerry!" Suddenly his dad's hand was on his shoulder. He glanced up; his dad was steering one-handed. "It's okay. You're fine. We're fine with it. Sorry for winding you up. It's just such a relief, you know, to finally get to talk about it."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"Well, hell, we've known this big thing about you for a year now, nearly. But all the books, they say to let your child come out to you in his own time. So we didn't say anything, even when that idiot thing came up with the Westergrens. And pretending we didn't know what was going on with Karl." His dad glanced at him again. "Was he your boyfriend?"
"No!"
"Have you had a boyfriend?"
"No!"
His dad paused. "You know, I think this is where I'm supposed to have the safe sex talk with you. God knows we'll all be happier if I can tell your mother I took care of it without her needing to get involved."
"You already told me about that! And it was covered in health class last year, and in grade seven, and in grade six!"
"Not gay sex, it wasn't."
"Yeah, Dad, it was. Even in that booklet you and Mom gave me."
"Then you can correct me if I get anything wrong."
The next half-hour or so made Jerry want to pour Drano in his ears. To his surprise, though, he actually did learn new things he hadn't known before. Partway through, he took out the now-cold hamburger and finished eating it. He was convinced that thinking about food was the only way he got through the conversation without his brain liquifying.
"And that's all I have to say about that," his dad finally concluded.
In the process, his dad also said the expected things about respecting his partner and about sex being more meaningful when it was a way of connecting to another person, not just having an orgasm. Jerry wasn't sure he agreed with that one entirely. Maybe it was true for older folks who weren't as pumped full of hormones as teenagers were. Then he thought about how he had felt when he realized that for the other guys it was just getting off, while he wanted something more than that. Okay, I guess it's about more than just sex for me too, he thought.
Fortunately, his dad didn't want to know any more than he already knew about what all had happened with Karl, or what Jerry and the guys used to get up to together. He did, however, caution Jerry again about not doing things with anyone who was as screwed up as Karl seemed to be, at least not while he was still in high school.
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Being out to his folks made less of a difference than Jerry would have thought.
Shortly after they got home, Jerry, his dad, and his mom met in the study, and went over the highlights of the discussion--without most of the embarrassing details, thank God. For a bit it seemed like his mother wanted to have the safe-sex talk again, and Jerry started to wonder if slitting his wrists was really just as bad an idea as everyone said it was. Fortunately, his dad was able to head things off. Seeing the look of relief on his mom's face afterwards, he realized that she probably wasn't any more anxious to have the conversation than he was. She'd been willing to do it, though, if she thought he needed it.
It made him feel kind of good afterwards, thinking that his folks cared about him that much. It was several days before he was able to think about it like that, though.
They kept things pretty quiet around the house. All of them agreed that his little sister was too young to know and keep a secret like that.
They also talked about whether they should get involved in PFLAG. His mom thought it would be a good idea. His immediate thought was, Shit no! He didn't want to do anything that would let anyone at all know he was gay who didn't already know. Finally, he agreed to think about it. He hoped the idea would die away on its own if he didn't say anything.
After a week or two, though, he realized that he did feel more relaxed. It took him a while to figure out just why. Eventually he decided it was because his folks knew about him being gay, and it didn't change what they thought about him. Knowing that made him feel less freaky about himself as well. If they thought he was still the same person, even though he was gay, then maybe he really was.
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Looking around to a school year with no sex, he thought things were going to be pretty dull. Still, after the close calls and social weirdness of the last year, he thought it was a good idea to lie low. It's not as if he had a lot of options he'd be giving up.
After a while, though, he found to his surprise that he was actually enjoying things more than he had the year before.
Part of it, he was sure, was simply being older and more used to things. Not being a freshmen anymore, he wasn't the low man on the social scale. Besides that, it seemed like all the different social groups were splitting off more from each other. Oddly enough, that seemed to make people more tolerant of each other. It's like they weren't competing for the same space anymore. The stoners went off and did their thing, the jocks did their thing, the geeks did their thing. Mostly they all left each other alone.
More than that, Jerry started to realize just how much tension he'd been under, trying to walk the tightrope of messing around with the guys without anyone figuring out he was gay. All of them, he decided, faced with the unfamiliar scariness of high school, had kind of clung together socially, even after it had become obvious that they were all going in different directions. Getting together to jack off had been a kind of escape. A fun escape, but one he didn't miss as much as he'd expected. Though orgasms with someone else really were better than using the self-service pump, as Weird Al put it.
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Jerry's freshman year, he'd gone out for band, playing the clarinet--continuing from eighth grade. He'd thought about dropping it, but finally shrugged his shoulders and decided to give it another year. To his surprise, now that he was out of freshman band, the whole thing was a lot more fun.
Jerry also started spending lunches hanging out with the chess club, where he found out that geek or not, he wasn't nearly as smart--or as socially backward--as some of the other kids in school.
And he started working as a photographer for the annual. Ever since sixth grade, when his folks had bought him his first cheap camera, he'd enjoyed photography. He decided it was time he did something more with it, besides just taking pictures for the annual Christmas letter and calendar his folks sent out to the rest of the family. An extra side benefit was the pictures he got to take every now and then that showed another boy's shirt pulled tight against his chest, or the intense look of focused concentration on the face of a chess player or basketball player about to make a move, or the drops beading down a swimmer's back. Copies of those pictures made it into a special photo album he kept in the drawer next to his bed, along with a small bottle of baby oil. His very favorite was a picture of one of the senior basketball players, grinning just after he'd made a shot. Jerry fantasized getting a look like that from another boy someday, just as he was about to get undressed. That picture wound up as the centerpiece for one of the pages in the annual. He wondered how many other girls--and maybe guys--in the school masturbated over it, besides him.
The only one of the guys from the old jacking-off group that Jerry got together with anymore was Dale. To his surprise, the other boy sought him out a couple of weeks after school started. Telling him about the conversation Jerry'd had with his dad, especially the safe sex talk, almost had Dale rolling off his bed laughing.
Ever since then, they'd gotten together every couple of weeks just to shoot the shit. Jerry wasn't completely sure why. Somehow, it was like the experience of being around when everything had gone all to shit, and the conversations they'd had around that time, made some kind of connection with them, so that they could share whatever was going on in their lives without worrying about it. Jerry also thought that maybe Dale, hanging out mostly with the other jocks, didn't have as much of a chance as he liked to talk about people and his observations about them. He had a wicked way of seeing through to what was really going on inside people. More than once he said things that startled Jerry about people he thought he already knew well. But Dale always seemed to be right, as best Jerry could tell.
Dale and Paul had grown apart. "I guess it was always gonna happen," he said. Paul had gotten focused on girls, and less and less focused on his schoolwork. He didn't have much time for Dale nowadays. Dale, on the other hand, had ambitions. He had to work sometimes for his grades, but he already had thoughts about what he wanted to do after school. Jerry admired that, while at the same time admitting that he wasn't nearly that ambitious. College was still three years away, after all. He knew that he planned to go to college. That was plan enough for now.
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Junior year was more of the same. Jerry was more confident in himself now, and thought he wouldn't really mind going to the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, except that he had plenty on his plate already. He preferred to keep some afternoons to himself, where he could curl up with a good book. Okay, curl up with his cock and his pictures, and then curl up with a good book afterwards.
And then partway through the year, it started getting to him again: the fact that he didn't have anyone to spend time with romantically.
Dale was finally dating. She was a cool girl, but Dale said neither of them were serious.
Jerry's horniness had gone through another boost, it seemed like. He wasn't hair-trigger anymore, like he had been. Didn't get a hardon each time he saw another boy run a hand through his hair. Still, there were times he went through school, that he wanted to be with inside another boy's mouth or asshole--sometehing he'd never experienced, but had started fantasizing about while he jacked off--so badly that he almost felt like going for it in front of the whole school, if he thought it had a chance of actually happening. This was several months after he'd talked with Karl and found out that he was dating a college sophomore. Now he could sympathize. He thought about hanging out at the college himself, just to increase his chances of picking up another guy.
It was then that his science partner, from his chemistry class, asked if he was gay.
It was very strange. Stephen was one of the kids he'd met in the chess club, who always seemed more clueless socially than Jerry had believed it was possible for anyone to be. So when he asked if Jerry was gay, Jerry was shocked. If Stephen had guessed he was gay, half the school had to know.
"Why you wanna know?"
"I dunno." The other boy shuffled his feet, and wouldn't look at him.
It was lunch. The two of them had gotten together at one of the unused tables in the quad to do some planning for their next project.
"Right," Jerry said angrily. "I'm sure as hell not gonna talk about it with someone who won't tell his reasons for asking a none-of-your-fucking-business question like that." He grabbed his backpack and got ready to storm off.
"Wait!" Jerry paused. "It's, um," he trailed off. "Not here, okay? Like, maybe we could talk after school. All right?"
"Where?" asked Jerry cautiously. The other boy shrugged. Oh God, he thought, remembering Karl. I've been here before. Why me?
They wound up walking away east of the high school, toward where Stephen said his house was. Jerry had a license but lived too close to the school to drive a car, according to his parents. Stephen didn't have a car.
They'd gone about half a block when Stephen blurted out, "You used to go to the jackoff club, didn't you? By the YMCA?"
Jerry could feel his muscles tightening. Oh, shit. "Did you?" he asked in turn.
"Yeah." The other boy sounded embarrassed. "A few times in eighth grade. I was in a different middle school than you, so I didn't know who you were. Later on I figured it out, though."
"What do you mean?"
"Ya know Trevor Madsen?"
"That asshole!"
"Yeah, that's about right."
"What about him?"
"We used to live a few houses down from him. Back in seventh grade, I heard one of his older brothers giving him a hard time about his 'faggot friends.' He mentioned your name."
"So you thought you'd find out if I was really a faggot," Jerry said coldly.
"No, dammit!" The other boy ran a hand through his hair. As usual, it looked like it had been hacked off with a weedwhacker. "I'm shit at talking about stuff like this."
"I noticed."
"So, no. Just--" He stopped. "I don't know if I'm gay, all right? I mean, girls look hot. But, uh, guys look hotter. And, uh, I can't talk to girls, at all. But guys--"
"Got ya." Jerry did. Someone as socially backward as Stephen would have a hard time talking to anyone. Shit, it sounded like he'd been perving on Jerry now for almost three years, and it had taken him this long to finally talk to him.
"So, like, you think I'm hot?"
"Not really." That was Stephen for you. It didn't even occur to him to lie about things, just to grease the wheels socially. "But, like, I saw you looking at one of the guys on the soccer team a while back. And I saw some of the pictures you took for the annual. They're not, uh, porn or anything, but they look, well, hot. I thought maybe a girl had taken them. Then I found out it was you."
Huh. No one else had made that connection, or at least no one had said anything to Jerry about it. Maybe Stephen wasn't quite so dumb when it came to things like this, when he actually noticed them.
"So I figure maybe you're gay, or at least you're maybe up to messing around. And, shit. I figure it's a way to find out, figure out maybe if I'm gay. Collect a little more data, at least. And have fun at the same time." He grinned suddenly.
At least he didn't seem as messed up about stuff as Karl had been. Jerry's cock, already hard within his pants, surged, telling Jerry it wanted him to say yes. "Sure," he said.
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They ended up jacking each other off that afternoon in Stephen's room, before Jerry took off to go home.
Stephen wasn't very good at it. Clearly, he'd never jacked off anyone else before. Whatever method he used on himself seemed like it was pretty weird--some kind of combination of twisting one hand and squeezing balls with the other, that Jerry thought hurt more than it turned him on. Finally, Jerry had to get some lube--they used Vaseline from the upstairs bathroom--and put his hand over Stephen's, guiding it, to make it work for him.
Figuring that Stephen seemed to like it kind of rough, when it was Jerry's turn he didn't use any of the lighter, more teasing methods he sometimes liked to do with the guys. Instead, gently but relentlessly, he massaged Stephen's balls with one hand, while pulling in a quick, steady rhythm on his cock with the other. Stephen's eyes quickly got very wide.
Stephen's cock wasn't very long, but was quite thick, bent a little bit even when it was completely hard, and uncut. Seeing it, suddenly Jerry remembered him from the jackoff club: a little kid back then, but already with a pretty thick cock. Guess that shows what I was paying attention to, he thought.
Jerry was quite proud of the loud groan that came from Stephen when he came. I've still got it, he thought to himself. Stephen's cum didn't shoot very far; instead, it semi-spurted about an inch, then kept squeezing out more through quite a few more pulses. By the end, Jerry thought it might have been the most cum he'd ever seen from anyone at one time.
During the last part of his orgasm, the other boy laid his head on Jerry's shoulder, shuddering as Jerry kept on milking the liquid out of him. "Th-that was, really good," he panted afterwards.
At least he didn't freak out, Jerry thought to himself.
"So. Think you might be gay?"
"I think I might be whatever makes it feel that good."
Jerry thought a minute. It hadn't really been all that great for him. Still, he wasn't about to close the door on the only action with anyone else that he'd had in almost two years. Before he left, they'd agreed that they'd get together again.
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The next day Jerry talked about the whole thing with Dale.
"I gotta wonder, is this just another one of those I-use-you, you-use-me things?" he asked, after he'd described the incident. "I mean, it's not like I'm in love or even serious like with the guy. Not like I have a crush on him even. And he's not nearly as good at sex as the guys all used to be." Dale grinned at that. "So I gotta wonder, is this a stupid idea?"
They were sitting in Dale's room. Dale was on his bed, and Jerry was sitting on the floor, in a weird kind of banana chair that Dale liked and Jerry had never seen anywhere else.
Dale uncrossed his legs, a thoughtful look on his face. After a minute he spoke. "You figure he wants something different from what you want?"
Jerry shrugged. "Not really. I think he just wants to get off, like me."
"Is he a good friend?"
Jerry thought a minute. "Yeah, actually. I mean, I think he could be. I don't hang out with him a lot away from school, but I don't really hang out with anyone much outside of school, except you sometimes. Now that I know he's maybe gay too--" He shrugged again. "Actually, I'm not sure even that makes that big a difference. He's just, I dunno. Smart, when you get past his dumbness about the way other people work." He snickered. "He can be really, really funny sometimes. I like him."
"You got your answer, then. He's a good friend. He's not expecting more than you are. It's fun, so why not?" Dale paused. "See, this is different from doing stuff with the guys. For one thing, you're older. Two, you're not trying to hide that you're gay from him, and you're not wishing he'd fall in love with you or other shit like that.
"It don't sound like he's all messed up about it either, the way Karl was." Dale snickered. "What are his parents like?"
"Atheists. First thing I asked. He doesn't think they know he's gay, but they think banning gay marriage is stupid. His dad works with a gay guy, and says he doesn't mind who he screws, he just wishes he didn't screw around as much at work."
"Good point. Faggots can be assholes too."
"Wow! Deep shit. Let's put that on a T-shirt and sell it for one of those gay fund-raisers."
"Asshole."
"Yeah, and I'm gay too."
Dale tossed a pillow at him. He liked firm foam rubber pillows, so it actually stung a little when it hit.
"Ow!"
"Only what you earned, being a sensitive-shit asshole faggot."
"I'm not even gonna try to figure that one out."
Dale got more serious for a minute. "See, I figure your folks and my folks and stupid-ass human relations teachers and all are right when they say that feelings and relationships are what we're all gonna want someday. Even gay jerkoffs like you. But hey, we're teenagers right now.
"See, they want two things. They tell us it's all about relationships and shit. And then they say we're too young to get really serious. Well, hell! I figure they're right, but whadda ya know? That means that either, a, we give up sex, or b, we're gonna have shallow, meaningless sex. Guess which one most of us are gonna choose?
"Especially you gotta figure that hey, you're a guy, AND you're gay. Usually it's the girl who tries to slow things down. So who's gonna be the one to slow things down if you get together with another gay guy? Not gonna happen.
"So I figure this is about as good as it's gonna get. Honest, I'd be more worried if you thought you were gonna grow up and marry this Stephen guy and maybe have his babies and shit. Partly cause, I gotta tell ya, he has a really ugly face, and a body that's not much to look at, as best as this straight guy can tell, so I gotta hope you got better taste than that.
"But hey. He's a friend. You got a maybe-gay friend who wants to mess around with you. What harm does it do? Just, ya know, don't mess each other up, okay?" He snorted. "Yeah. Call me a marriage counselor like Doctor Dumbshit on TV. Shit, I sound just like her, don't I? But yeah, you want my opinion, you got it. Go for it. Shit, if things get too slow on the girls front, maybe I'll come around and join in." He held up a hand when Jerry started to say something. "Just kidding. But yeah, it's okay with me. You have my blessing, son," he intoned in a deep voice, then burst out laughing.
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Later that night, Jerry thought about what Dale had said. He'd thought for sure that Dale would think getting together with Stephen was a stupid idea. Why, he couldn't say exactly. But he hadn't.
It wasn't much of a relationship he was looking at. Friends with benefits. Fuck-buddies, maybe. Still, now that he thought about it, he was okay with the idea.
Dale was right. He wasn't ready for a real relationship. He could see how he'd want one, someday, but if he had one right now, he'd mess it up for sure. Partly, he was just plain too selfish. Not really very considerate about other people sometimes. Pretty much like all teenagers, he supposed.
But he could be a friend. He figured he'd be good enough at that, if he tried. And it would be nice to get hand jobs and blow jobs again, at least once he'd taught Stephen how to do them right. And maybe more than that. He thought about the packet of condoms, unused in his bedside table, and grinned a little.
He'd liked the time he'd spent with his friends back in middle school, but there hadn't been any future in it. Even at the time he knew it. He wouldn't trade the experience--God, no--but looking back on it, he thought the whole thing had actually screwed him up, some ways. Made him start worrying about pairing up with people earlier than he was ready. Made him know too much about what he wanted, too soon--before he was really able to do anything about it, except get sad and frustrated.
This with Stephen, though. This was more his size. It wasn't much, but it wasn't fake either. It was real.
The next year would be good. And then off to college, and whatever happened next. He grinned. He was looking forward to it.
(c) 2008 by Traumarei. All rights reserved.
Author's Note: And thus ends my first substantial multi-episode longer story on Nifty.
All comments appreciated. My goal here was to provide an at least semi-realistic, but also enjoyable, slice of life, set at a point when boys are growing up and discovering their sexuality. A little humor, a little angst, some emotion, and more sex than I at least experienced at those ages. And sure, it doesn't end with Jerry finding the love of his life, but how many of us do in high school? I hope you'll agree with me that it was a MOSTLY happy ending.
Thanks again for reading. Please let me know what worked for you, and what didn't.
For other stories I've written, see the links under Prolific Nifty Authors.