Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

  Eighties music was already blaring from the speakers in Coach’s SUV when I got in. I liked some of the stuff my mom and dad put on from time to time, but his choices left a bit to be desired. Too much synthesizer, not enough soul. He turned it down for a while but then jacked it back up when I couldn’t hold up my end of the conversation. He’d asked me what classes I’d signed up for.

  “Mostly the mandatory stuff,” I’d answered. Then he’d asked about my hair. I still hadn’t shaved it again.

  “The minute you stop coming in under your best times, I’ll do it while you sleep.” He’d made it a joke, but I hadn’t laughed, not even a little.

  MATHIAS’S HOUSE was ridiculous! It wasn’t as big as the Kardashians’—whose show I only started watching after seeing hot Rob on Dancing with the Stars the previous fall—but was still as big as four or five of mine put together. Mathias was sitting in front the TV watching Days of Our Lives when we arrived. He paused it, then shut it off. “They got a couple of gay guys on here now,” he said.

  “Oh?” Coach Keller looked at me. I felt like I was going to Webber my pants.

  “Just saying.” Mathias shrugged.

  Good cover. Not!

  “Anyway, I’ll watch the rest later.”

  Of course he had DVR service. Anyone with a TV as big as a garage door would.

  “My mom and dad aren’t here yet. Sorry.” He offered Coach Keller a handshake. I got a hug. In plaid shorts and a polo shirt that perfectly matched the yellow vertical stripes of the shorts, he looked like something out of a clothing store ad. Not a Walmart or Target flier, but rather a fancier store that sold clothes and nothing else, yet mostly advertised with hot guys hardly wearing any, and had catalogs filled with page after page of h-o-m-o-e-r-o-t-i-c-i-s-m. No Slim Jims at the register where Mathias Webber bought his wardrobe. No power tools or pots and pans either.

  “I’ve been swimming every day,” he said. “I’m still in top condition.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Coach Keller replied.

  “I can hardly believe what you’re proposing. My parents are okay with it. Are you sure you can get me out of my senior year of high school?”

  I wondered what happened to all the excitement over second prom, graduation, and class rings.

  “Positive.”

  “He did it for me, no problem,” I said.

  “Cool.”

  Mathias’s mother arrived an hour late. I’d had two glasses of Coke by then and really had to pee. We all went into the kitchen, where she poured me a third. I was surprised they didn’t have a guy for that, or a woman. I took a sip to be polite. I had to move my hand away from in front of my face to do so every time. Eventually, fearing we were about to repeat history, only this time with me in soaked pants and red cheeks, I revealed my need to hit the head.

  “May I use your lavatory?” I actually asked it like that. After I pissed, I might request some Grey Poupon, I figured.

  “Right down the hall,” Mathias said with a smile. “Fifth door on the left.”

  Fifth on the left. My hallway only had four doors total. One was a closet, and they were all on the same side. I compared my attire to Mathias’s in his bathroom mirror—after I compared our bathrooms. Our fake marble floor looked nothing like the real thing. We didn’t live poor by any means, and I didn’t really understand why the moment I was around him and his things I suddenly felt inadequate. The towels all looked too new and fancy to dry my hands on after I washed them, so I waved them in the air toward the shower so I wouldn’t get the mirror and chrome fixtures spotty. It took a while to dry them that way. I tried not to think about how long I’d been gone when I reentered the kitchen. I also tried not to think about them thinking about it. I caught my reflection in the granite countertop. I’d managed not to see it in the bathroom mirror somehow, but now I was suddenly reminded how much I didn’t like it.

  Mrs. Webber was pacing while jabbering into her phone. Yeah. Her kitchen was large enough to pace in. She was talking about donating clothing. “I’m sure we have a ton of stuff someone less fortunate could use.” I could have sworn she’d looked at me when she’d said it. It was weird. Coach Keller and Mathias were quiet, still sitting at the island counter. It was as if they were afraid to be rude and interrupt the conversation she had started with someone else while talking to them. “No. She’s pregnant again,” I heard Mrs. Webber say. “Before even finishing high school.” There was a pause. “Well, that’s how those people are, I guess. I better go.”

  “Those people.” Wow! I immediately felt my back go up in defense. I was those people, and I knew it. Even if she wasn’t talking about us—Beth, my family, and me—which she probably wasn’t, I took offense.

  “Sorry about that,” she said as she swiped a perfectly manicured finger across the screen of her phone with the partially eaten apple on the back. I pictured her asking the sales clerk if they had a model with a logo no one had bitten into. I’d known her mere minutes, but I recognized her type from some of the Real Housewives shows where real housewives never appeared. Mrs. Webber definitely gave off the air of a woman who wouldn’t want fruit anyone else had touched. “Now. Back to business.”

  Coach Keller offered the same spiel he had used on my parents, replete with all the stuff about sponsors, scholarships, and student aid that most likely didn’t apply or matter much to Mathias’s mom and dad. I figured it was sort of a script he’d come up with and memorized. He likely didn’t dare go off book for fear he would leave out something important. Mr. Webber never showed up, and Mrs. Webber, even when not on the phone, seemed rather detached from the whole thing.

  “Sounds fine,” she said at the end. There were no interruptions, like there had been from the Bellamys, no questions for Coach or for Mathias. “Sounds fine.” That was all she said. Then she smiled halfheartedly and got up to make a call next to a fridge with three doors and a drawer.

  “Why don’t you hang out a while?” Mathias suggested as Coach Keller and I headed for the door to leave. “Unless you have to work?”

  “I’m off for two days,” I said. “I guess I could.” Did I really want to? Yes and no. Knowing Mathias and I would be alone most of the time, my dick said, “Stay.” My head, on the other hand, was telling me I didn’t belong there.

  “Call your parents before I leave,” Coach Keller insisted.

  “I don’t need permission,” I said haughtily, my hand blocking my smart mouth.

  “Yeah, you do,” he countered. “Even if you didn’t, you left with me, and therefore, it’s only courteous to let them know why you didn’t come back with me.”

  I rolled my eyes. I’d never do it again. So much for trying to come off all macho and in charge. I quickly realized that wasn’t how this was going to work. Coach Keller smacked harder than my dad. I was glad I had some hair back there to buffer it, though not nearly enough.

  THE WEBBER pool was crystal clear, and the surrounding white and blue tiles had nary a spot of green gunk. The deck furniture looked like it belonged in someone’s formal dining room, and the way not a single chair leg, cushion, or pillow was out of alignment made me wonder if anyone ever had fun out there. Devon and I would have had daily fights with all three, using one as a weapon, one as a shield, and the heavy metal chairs with fancy scrollwork as our fortresses.

  The water was nice and warm. We spent most of the day in it, competing, floating lazily on inflatable rafts under the blazing sun, and playing childishly. He splashed me first, so I had to get him back.

  “Hey! You’re going to pay for that.”

  “Come get me,” I challenged.

  He did, and we wrestled. I accidentally pulled his trunks partway down in back when I leaped on him like John Cena at a WWE match. We weren’t very good at conversation. If I had to count, I could have only come up with maybe forty words between us since I’d gotten there, including those ten. We were good with touching each other, though. He wasn’t at all shy about grabbing me around my wet, naked tummy,
and I had no second thoughts about getting between his legs underwater to project him up and out, off my shoulders. He looked like a dolphin at SeaWorld when he sailed into the air, and his laugh still reminded me of a seal.

  I did it three or four times, flipping him forward, but then, the last time, we tried the other direction. He did a backflip and made a huge explosion of water when he hit. His shorts came partway down again, flashing shiny, muscular glutes in back and a lot of wet curls in front when he bobbed up out of the water.

  “Impressive,” I said, speaking of the flip. “Maybe, if we don’t make it as swimmers, you can go into diving or gymnastics.” I always found gymnasts really hot. Ben Thornton was my dream lover. In less than a month, he’d be competing at the 2012 Olympics in London. It was too bad we had to wait all the way through the next cycle, because I really wanted to meet him and the Stoker twins—one of whom made a porno—and also diver Tyler Hin. I was picturing myself in Ben’s bed when Mathias jumped on my back with his arms around my neck. I felt cool air, actually warm air, on wet skin, on a part of me that should have been covered. Then I felt Mathias’s foot touch the same place, and eventually go deeper down inside my trunks. There had been several options in the pool house, which, not shockingly, was also bigger than my actual one. Mathias had handed me a yellow pair with tags still on.

  “I’ve seen you in blue,” he’d said. “These will look nice with your skin tone.”

  I immediately wondered what tone he saw.

  His toe went between the crack of my ass—whatever color it was—and despite the slight scrape of the nail, I found it very enticing. I backed up to the wall of the pool with him still clinging, and pressed myself against the toe and the concrete as I fought to keep my balance against his weight. It wasn’t a bedpost, but rather just the right size for a novice, so I tried to let it tease deeper.

  “Whoa.” Mathias struggled to hang on. I struggled to hold him. He was more than a little taller, and the dude was heavy. Eventually, he climbed down and sat on the fancily designed concrete edge, probably nervous about the unsteadiness himself. I pulled up my swimsuit, and when I turned to face him, found myself looking right up at an overhang of hardness—a swim trunks awning with an erection support—because he’d stood up.

  “Nice.” Why did I say it? Because I’d thought it, and I lacked a healthy enough supply of oxygen to my brain necessary to stop the word from going from there to my big mouth.

  “Sorry.” He put his hands in front of it. Not on it, just in front. I could see he’d left space, and really wished he hadn’t.

  “It’s all good.” I rose up and down, coming far enough out for him to see I had one too.

  “There’s a lake on the property.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Nobody ever goes back there.” He held out his left hand. I took it and climbed up beside him. His awning was striped green and white. Mine was solid yellow. “I like to hang out naked back there,” he said.

  “Naked?”

  “With no clothes on.” He touched his tent pole then, just put his hand against it. I wanted him to wrap it in his fingers and pump.

  “I know the definition.” When I put my hand down my shorts and pushed on my hard cock, Mathias swallowed. I watched the action in his throat. “I probably learned it in fourth grade. I… I know what naked means.” What I didn’t know was why or how things were progressing so quickly.

  “Let’s go.”

  Apparently I wasn’t much bothered by it, though, because I followed when he took off.

  7

  IT WAS funny how little there was left of him to see after competing against each other in tiny Speedos, yet how very strongly I yearned to see it. Human biology, I supposed. We held hands all the way across the perfectly manicured, large backyard, where lush green lawn and perfect flowerbeds eventually became more wooded. Somehow everything still looked neat, unlike the overgrown mess behind my house. The trees were all large and lush. By comparison, many of the ones up behind the hill from which I spied on Julius through the bathroom window once while he showered were spindly and tangled. I remembered Mathias’s “We have a guy” remark from back when we’d raked leaves. Whoever the guy was, he did a nice job.

  “Well. That’s it.” He pointed at the body of water with both of our hands, since my fingers were still laced between his. Once again, despite the lack of blood flow to my head due to my anticipatory boner, I was able to recognize a lake when I saw one.

  “Yup. That’s a lake.” We were still and really close. I’d brought my free hand up to my face again, in order to hide my two front teeth. It was a nervous habit—automatic—and I hadn’t even realized I had done it until Mathias moved it away.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Cover half your face.”

  “Oh.”

  The sun glistened off the ripples in the water stirred by a summer breeze. There was a hammock between two trees and a dock that went partway into the water. A thousand leaves above us rustled, and some sort of bird sounded like he was saying a name. “David, David, David.” I wondered who David was, and why the bird was calling him, as Mathias now held both of my hands. He brought them to his face. I thought he was going to kiss the back of one or both, but he untangled them and then inhaled deeply, with his nose at my palm.

  “What’s it smell like?” I asked.

  “You. Me, maybe, because I held it so long. It doesn’t smell like your… you know.”

  “Is that what you were hoping for?”

  “Sort of. Yeah.”

  I nodded. The bird called David again, and I asked Mathias if he heard it. “Does it sound like…?”

  “David, David, David. Yeah. I know a kid named David.”

  “I have an uncle,” I said. What the fuck were we talking about?

  “I always wondered if other people heard something different. ‘Brian, Brian, Brian,’ or ‘Peter, Peter, Peter.’”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it, immature though it may have been.

  “What?” Mathias asked. Then he got it, without a response, and he smiled too.

  “Peter,” I said anyway, and then I let some silent moments pass. “You never asked anyone?”

  “Huh?”

  “About the bird.”

  “Oh. No. No one ever comes down here with me. Out here. Outside. Inside. Anywhere.”

  “You don’t have friends over?”

  “I don’t really have that many.”

  “Swim buddies?”

  He just shrugged.

  “Not even your mother or father?”

  “No. We don’t really hang much.” There was sadness in his tone. “You’re my first.”

  My dick flexed.

  “So….” He grabbed his shorts midthigh, about to yank them off. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal, ri—”

  “Wait!” I interjected far too abruptly, loudly enough to scare away the David bird. “It’s a little bit of a big deal… isn’t it?” I asked more quietly.

  “Oh.” He moved his hands. “Maybe.” Then he turned. “You want me to take them off in the wat—”

  “No!” I did it again. I had to. He’d taken a step toward the lake. What a waste that would have been—to get naked underwater.

  “Okay.” Mathias turned back. “I thought maybe you were shy.”

  “A little.” I raised my hand to my mouth again, and once more he took it away.

  “Don’t.”

  “Sorry.” I reached for one string to the tie at his waist and pulled, then gently tugged at the other one, undoing both loops so he wouldn’t look at my face. “But I meant something else.” With just one finger, I got under the part of the tie that crisscrossed to hold the waistband snug. The moment I undid it, the shorts fell to Mathias’s ankles, and my breathing accelerated. “Whoa!” That was all I could say. Maybe it was regurgitated porn dialogue. Probably not, though, since I always watched on mute. I didn’t really have a choice, but even if I did, I’d pro
bably still turn off the sound, at least when the “actors” were talking. Mathias touched himself, first the wild blond fluff above his now soft, floppy dick, and then it. He hadn’t been as thorough as I back in my shaving days.

  “You’re beautiful.” The moment I’d said it, God! I felt like a fucking dork. “Idiot.”

  “I’m a beautiful idiot? I can live with that.”

  “No.”

  His smile was beautiful too.

  “I am,” I said. “An idiot, not the—”

  Before I could finish, he’d reached for the string on my shorts.

  “You are. The beautiful part.” He stared at my crotch, and so did I. All the white, black, and pink I saw reminded me of a box of Good & Plenty candies with a few busted open, like some always were. My pubic hair was back, but it was neat and short, as if I tended to it daily with a little rake, like maybe “the guy” who kept the Webber’s yard had been at it. My dick head was definitely pink. When I looked at Mathias again, though, I decided white was wrong. As white as I felt with Cal, beside Mathias, even with his tan, I saw myself darker.

  “Sorry.” My dick was hard.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “Is it? Am I?” My heart was racing, and whatever I was feeling was new. Where had my arrogance gone? Why was I suddenly an uncertain mess, while nervous Mathias was so suddenly confident and bold?

  “Of course.” He touched my chest. “The water is probably still a little cold.”

  I didn’t care about the water.

  “But that might come in handy.” Mathias smiled, and even though I could have stared at his cock all day, right then I was happy to look into his eyes. He reached for my hand again. “Why don’t we go in after?”

  “After what?”

  “After.” He released my hand and took hold of my dick in his left one. “Don’t you want to…?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know if you did.”

  “I do.” Mathias led me over toward the hammock. “I have… for a long time.” He led me by my hard-on. “It’s hot.”