Kenny's Back. Victor J. Banis
it really was more of a game than anything else. We still argued about size and such, and I doubt if Kenny was ever happier than the day he found out he could shoot further than I could.
It went on like that for a while and then it kind of died down. We both outgrew it a little, I suppose, although occasionally we still played around like that. I was twenty-one by this time, and even though I still enjoyed and looked forward to those games of ours, I kept telling myself I was past the age when guys should be playing around with other guys.
As for Kenny, he had discovered girls and, for a year or so, that made a big difference. Of course, he had no more trouble persuading his new partners to play games with him than he had with me, and I guess he tried out that sport to his satisfaction, and to the dismay of a number of girls, who sent him notes and called at the house and otherwise pursued him. Thankfully none of them came up with any more evidence of their foolishness than broken hearts.
I thought that our fooling around was over—and in a sense it was. There was one girl Kenny had worked on for longer than the others, six months in all. He was seventeen then, going on eighteen, and as handsome a Romeo I swear as ever prowled the Ohio farmland. During those six months, we’d had none of our playing around, and I had pretty well gotten used to the idea that it was sadly over.
Then one night he came home from a dance he had been to with this girl—I don’t even remember her name now—and he came slipping down the hall to my room to wake me up and have a cigarette. Before, that would have been a sign that he wanted to play, but now I wasn’t sure, so I made no move in that direction, and for a while he didn’t either, but just lay there on the bed and smoked his cigarette and talked about a lot of little things.
“How’d you do with your girl?” I asked him finally, knowing by now that something was bothering him, but not knowing what.
“I made out,” he answered with his usual frankness.
“Great,” I said, without much enthusiasm.
“It’s funny, Mar,” he said, propping himself up on an elbow and looking at me in the moonlight that spilled through the window. “It’s not the same with a girl as it is with you.”
I laughed aloud at that. “I hope not,” I said finally.
Kenny remained serious though, and even that was a little bit unusual. “No, I mean it,” he insisted and then, after a pause, “Mar, do you want to? Now, I mean?”
I think I guessed that this time it was different, but saying no to Kenny was never easy, and downright impossible when I was in the mood myself, which I was just then.
“Sure, Ken.” I rolled over and took hold of him. He was higher on the bed than I was, so his belly was right in front of my face. I could smell the sweet, musty smell of his thighs, mingled with the scent of soap. He’d showered, I decided, before coming to my room.
“Put your mouth on it,” he said after a moment—not demanding, just asking in a quiet voice.
It gave me pause. We’d never done anything like that before, and I don’t think I’d ever thought about it, favorably or otherwise. But Kenny had asked. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t thought of it either before then, or he’d have mentioned it. Kenny wasn’t shy about what he wanted.
I had never thought about a cock being beautiful before, or even especially desirable in itself. It was something to have fun with and take pleasure with. But now I was staring at Kenny’s in a different way—and all of a sudden, it was beautiful. I stared at the head of it, mysteriously dark in the pale light, at the length of it, silky smooth and pale, with the faint color of veins running raggedly along it, like the marble on the dresser in Olsen’s room that had fascinated me so much when I was little. The hair at the base was already thick and glossy black. I could see his belly heaving up and down the way it did when he was excited.
I did what he’d asked, putting my lips lightly on the end of it. He let out his breath in a rush and moved slightly toward me.
“I like that,” he said in a whisper. He put his hands on my head, mussing my hair with his fingers, and coaxed me gently downward. “That’s nice.”
I didn’t know whether I liked it or not. It was strange tasting and kind of uncomfortable when it went into my throat. I choked on it and had to stop for a moment while he waited without moving, but I started in again and it got easier than it had been to begin with.
Of course Kenny was not about to be left out of anything new. “Let me try,” he said after a bit. And as usual he couldn’t go at it slowly and test the water. He had to swallow it all down like a starving man—and almost choked himself to death.
“Whew,” he said, gasping for breath and coughing. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“I want to fuck you,” I said on an impulse. That was the first time that idea had ever occurred to me, but now that the thought had come into my mind, I knew that I had wanted it that way for a long time.
“In the back?”
“Yes.”
If he’d said no, I’d have let it go at that. I was already scared at my audacity to even suggest it. He was always the one that thought up new stuff for us to do. But he thought about it for a minute and then he said simply, “Okay.”
Neither one of us knew how to go about it, and it took a while to figure out the right positions even. The two of us laughed a little, from nervousness and from our ignorance. But we got it figured out soon enough, and after a couple of bad tries, I got it started.
“Ouch,” he said. He had been holding his breath, and he let it out loudly and jerked away from me.
“Hurt?” I asked, pausing. I knew it had, as tight as he had felt. Half of me wanted to stop, but the other half wanted badly to go on.
“No,” he lied, and pushed back toward me. He wasn’t likely to admit that he couldn’t take it after he had agreed to it, and if I tried to stop now, he would have thought I considered him a baby.
I went on with it, taking it slow, trying to be gentle even though I was pretty clumsy at it. After a little, I could tell his reactions. I could feel him tense up each time I went a little deeper into him, and I would stop where I was, letting him get used to it. And when I felt him relax a little, I’d go on.
I had never been so excited over anything before, or so happy. It was more than just the physical pleasure of being in someone, although that was certainly thrilling enough. Kenny was giving himself to me, and I knew then, suddenly and beyond any question, that I loved him—loved the soft little cheeks brushing against my thighs as I pushed into him, loved the dark hair of his head that my face was buried in, loved the feel of my hand on his cock, hard still so that I knew what I was doing had not turned him off.
I think the little devil learned to like it. He started pushing it back to me after a while, and wriggling around. He kept getting harder and harder in my hand and then suddenly he stiffened and came, shooting over my hand and his belly and wetting the bedclothes. His body shook and convulsed the way it did when he came, and I made it a minute behind him, emptying myself far up inside him, hugging the breath from him. He took it all without a complaint and afterward he laughed and called me “Big Swede,” but he didn’t mean it the way he had before.
It never happened again. When my desire went, it was replaced by a river of guilt that suddenly separated me from him. I was ashamed of what we had done—of what I had done. It was wrong, I was sure of it, and crazy. We weren’t kids anymore, we were men, and men didn’t do things like this.
Kenny was puzzled at first, and later angry. He never did understand why I was upset. “What’s wrong with it?” he wanted to know, arguing with me in tense whispers. “We both liked it, didn’t we? I liked it better than with girls, Mar, I really did. It’s not like it was anybody else, it’s you and me. Hell, I’d do it again. Right now, if you want to.
“No.” I jerked away from him when he tried to reach for me. He would have done it again