Moments Not Allowed
by K.V. Wylie
PG-14
Archie Comics
Pairing: Jughead/m

---

A woman with her hands over her eyes accompanies all my dreams.  She's blind but she's beside me, intent and silent, in every dream image and feeling.  She goes with me everywhere.  When I wake, I'm nauseated.

Do you believe in the foreshadowing of dreams?  Are they subconscious symptoms or simply liquid junk running off the grey matter?  I don't know myself, but the woman comes so often I'm afraid to sleep.

I'm too young to be afraid.  I'm a nineteen-year-old boy, too thin and too tall, taller than all of my friends and their parents too.  My mother is Cree Indian and my father is Sicilian so my appearance is that of an awkward mongrel.  The two main things that are said about me are that I like food but don't like girls.  I study a lot.  My marks are in the nineties.  When I study, I eat - see the equation?  As for the girls, well, that was never a difficulty until Archie slam-dunked into twelve and suddenly, and it was suddenly, he was out with Veronica every night.  Sorry, every other night.  Betty was in there too.  If they were busy (and unsuspecting), Archie dated any other girl he could find.  Reggie liked Veronica, or maybe he liked her money, but he really wanted Midge.  Midge loved Moose but wasn't quite sure if he was the one.  Charlie had Eileen.  Dilton panted after Jenna.  Betty loved Archie.  This was all at year twelve, and I watched but it didn't happen to me.  Like the blind woman in my dreams, I was unconscious to everything.

No, sorry.  That's a conscious lie for this is what I do know.

Two years after all my friends changed, I'm fourteen and I'm spending Saturdays at my father's office.  He's an insurance broker, miserly, and I'm unpaid labour.  I used to take a book and a coke and sit at the receptionist's desk beside a phone that never rang.

One of my father's clients was an elderly powdery man, Portuguese I think.  His permutations of English left me bewildered.  I used to smile so that he'd think I understood.  I never should have smiled.

He came in six Saturdays in a row, always very early for his appointment, and sat in the vestibule watching me.  If I lifted my eyes from my book, he'd start talking about God knows what.  Sometimes he brought me chocolate bars.  Once it was stale pretzels.  On the seventh Saturday, he gestured at me from the doorway, not entering the office.  When I shrugged, unable to follow his mangled English phrases, he gestured more vehemently.  I got up and followed him into the stairwell, thinking there was something he wanted me to do for him, perhaps carry something up from his car.  I didn't suspect anything and, thus, walked fully into the fire.

All of the offices but my father's were closed and the building, especially the stairwell, had the emptiness of a museum on Friday night.  No one would have heard if I'd yelled but I'm not sure, now, that I would have called out if anyone else had been around.  Not that I had much time, for we had barely got past the fire door when he abruptly grabbed me and kissed me.  His tongue pushed into my mouth, then he opened my shirt and fell down to kiss my hairless, fourteen-year-old chest.

The next image I consciously remember is me with my pants hanging off my thighs, rough cement steps under my exposed ass, and this man kneeling on the step below as he sucked my dick.

At fourteen you don't last long, even if repulsed.  I came in his mouth and he swallowed noisily like a geriatric gull.  Then he stood, helped me to my feet, put me back in my clothes tenderly (even down to tucking in my shirt), gave me a final salty kiss, and left.  He didn't keep his appointment.  I never saw him again.
 

I didn't tell anyone, certainly not my father who was easily upset and more easily used his belt.  I never told my friends but how could I, when this would have made me so much more different than I already was?

Was I raped?  Again, I don't know.  I've spent many nights jerking off to the memory, though.  Masturbation is not the product of rape.

I didn't apply the significance of what obviously turned the old man's crank to myself.  I hadn't taunted him.  I'd given no invitation, no signals or signs.  For three years after it, I simply waited for that magic thing with girls to happen to me, blind like the woman in my dream, not realizing that the old man in the stairwell had been my mirror.

Three years of waiting ends at the night before Veronica's annual pool party.  Archie and I had plans to go roller skating at the arcade but Veronica called him at the last minute (as usual) and I went by myself.  Skating in a daydream was something I enjoyed anyway but my fog lifted with a jolt when I found Cory Simon skating beside me.  Cory was captain of the basketball team, captain of the hockey team, captain of a zillion sports, which was why I wouldn't expect to run into him on my own.  I knew him through Archie.

"Where is he?" Cory asked.

"Veronica called," I said.

He laughed.  "I escaped before my girlfriend called me.  Veronica wants help decorating her patio."

We talked each time we skated past one another, then we went to the snack bar, then we were at my truck and I was offering him a ride home.  But, when I looked at him beside me, I  wanted to take him anywhere that wouldn't end the night.  I knew this as clear and as sudden as the flash of a lightning spike on a meadow.  I felt like I'd been sitting in the grass for seventeen years, never realizing the open sky over me.

I fastened the seat belt low, trying to hide the bulge under my fly, and started the truck with a shaky hand.  We got a few blocks when he said something I couldn't quite hear.

"What?"

"Do you want to hit the beach or something?  Skip stones?  It's early still."

His motives were unclear to me and I knew he'd been dating his girlfriend for forever, but the beach would be an excuse for me to enjoy my solitary erection for a little while longer.

I parked by the chip shack.  We'd walked out past the inlet docks when he nudged my shoulder and whispered, "So, do you want to?"

"Want to what?  Skip stones?" I whispered back harshly, panicking that he'd seen me looking at his crotch.  *Sure!*  I *wanted* to get caught out.  I wanted to spend the rest of my life listening to Cory brag about how he'd kicked the crap out of some fag on the beach.

"I don't exactly want to skip stones," he chuckled and put his mouth to mine.

He kissed me delicately, yet it launched a need raging in me so long unbound that it hurt right through my stomach.  What it was, just this touch of him - a relief and a fire both together.

How else can I describe a hunger so subterranean that I never grasped it until that nudge on my shoulder opened the ground?  I'd been ravenous but never knew.  Kissing him, biting, sucking, dancing on my nerve cells and groaning into the wind.  Then the awareness of his cries, for he was exposed and naked to me too.

We did a sixty-nine, a position I'd heard through a hundred dirty jokes but a co-ordination of limbs truly unfathomable until I'd wriggled into one, a circular twisting of sensation as we drew each other round and round.

I choked because he was big and I was eager.  He choked when I drove too deeply as I came, moaning around the shaft of his dick.

He flooded my mouth, then we turned and laid back in the sand in each other's arms.  I was still hungry but, as I started kissing him again, he smiled and said, "Give me a moment to catch my breath."

We only stilled for a few minutes when he took my hand down to his dick.

"Have you ever fucked?" Cory asked.

I shook my head.

He started going through his pants.  "I've got a couple of rubbers in my wallet." When he pulled them out and opened one up, the enormity of the thing hit me.

"You want to put it in my...?" I couldn't say it.

"It'll go in real easy.  Turn over, Jug."

*Turn over?*

He kissed me, and the kiss convinced me for it was so tender.

"Get on your knees," he said.  I did, a position that put my backside into the lake air.  He knelt down behind me with a squeak of latex.

"Relax, sweetheart," he whispered.  "It'll be ok."

I felt the tip of his penis at my hole.  He left it there for a second, then slowly pushed in.  He started panting and I did too for it felt like a massive tree trunk was entering my posterior and I was in agony.

"You feel too good," Cory managed.  "I don't think I can wait."

Thank God.  I was in pain, but the feel of his balls hitting mine vibrated every vein and artery.  My erection was fierce.

He tensed motionlessly behind me, then his dick began to throb.  "Jug, I'm *coming!*"

Was the anguish from him or me?  If he'd only lasted a few moments more, I would have found my own peak, but he pulled out, unrolled the rubber from his penis, and shot it away.

I rolled over and my hard-on stabbed his stomach.

He smirked.  "I think you want to fuck me too."

"I've never done it," I admitted.

He rolled the rubber on me, with a touch that left me gasping.  When I faced his ass from behind, however, my enthusiasm, and hard-on, started to ebb.

"Cory, I don't know how."

He reached awkwardly behind to grab my penis, then directed it.  "Push, baby."

I penetrated him easily.  I wasn't the first.

"Push," he repeated.

Bracing my weight on my hands, I pulled my knees up between his and began.

And ended.

I hugged his sweaty back, shot my sperm, and slid out.

The gorgeous thing was, he laughed.  "Was that it?  Sweetheart, we've got to work on this."

He turned around to kiss me, his tongue warm and playful now that the intensity was over.  It wasn't until I'd discarded my rubber, and was laying half on him and half in the sand, that I asked, "How did you know about me?"

"With you it was easy."

I blinked, then raised up to look at him.  "What do you mean, easy?  Do I look queer?"

He shrugged.  "Nobody calls you queer, do they?"

"That's not what I asked."

"Sshh, or I'll have to put my dick in your mouth again," he said, but softly.

This is where my story really starts.  This is where my memory becomes distinct, where events have dimension and a time frame and a scale where I can sort them all in order.  To say I remember driving Cory home is to say that my memory is so clear and distinct that I can still see the geraniums down the side of his parents' driveway as we kissed goodbye in the truck.  I caressed his denim-covered genitals while looking at the white and pink flowers.  On the way home, I wondered if his mother had bought her boxes of sixty-nine cent plants at the same supermarket as my mother.

My house seemed so strange, like eons had passed while I was in a spaceship on the moon.  The change of the centuries was like the dropping away of all my baby fat.  I was becoming what I should have become at fourteen, what I really should have known.

The rest of that night I was so electrified I jerked off almost endlessly until morning, despite the cramps in my bowels.  This is not to say that I was in love with Cory.  Even though I hadn't yet heard the term 'fuck buddy', I knew that was we were.  I wasn't going to call him, or him me.  We wouldn't be dating.  This clearly fell into the column of 'Stuff You Can't Tell Anyone'.  The endless piling of secrets in my life was beginning in earnest.

It was during the walk to Veronica's the next day that I saw the joggers, two men sprinting across the sidewalk.  I eyes them furtively, terrified to be caught looking.  Consequently, I heard more than saw them pass, then heard the footsteps of one slow.  I glanced up cautiously, caught a quick but challenging look from the one lagging behind, and only managed to return the smile before he sped up to catch his friend.  Realization heady and distinct, the second one had cruised me, half dare, half come-on.

I halted.  The sidewalk wavered through my paralysis.  Was I giving off such an obvious whiff of post-sex hormone that nonchalant joggers could smell it through their sweat?  *How had he known?*

I panicked and fled, the opposite way that the joggers had gone, of course.  I still had some sense of direction.

I ran seven blocks, not towards Veronica's or my home, but simply running away.  I now think I was running for some imaginary closet, a dark patch where I could hide my twisted longings.  If I had been so quickly spotted by someone who had never seen me before, what were those who knew me seeing?  Were my thoughts hanging outside my skin, like the twisted band of garlic Lucy wore to keep away vampires, its pungency rushing anyone who stepped inside her room?

Dizziness forced me to stop. I stooped to wheeze against a mailbox when a familiar backfire sputtered beside me.

"Hey, Juggie!  Hop in!"

It was Archie in his jalopy, Betty beside him, and Moose and Midge in the back.

"I'll give you a ride to Veronica's party," Archie said.

"No...I...uh," I tried but he cut in.

"Hurry up, Jug!"

"It's ok.  I'd really rather..." But Moose was hauling me into the back seat.

"You can sit here," he said, settling me between him and Midge.  "You're the only one I can trust back here with my Midge."

Did he know how hard his words landed?

The first jolt of Archie's car threw me again Midge.  The second flopped me to Moose.  I rode back those seven blocks, lopping back and forth, adding a physical component to my mental agony.

Teenagers engulfed Veronica's entire backyard.  I heard splashing and screaming from the pool when we reached the main gate.  The music had pounded us long before.

I followed the others out of the car, eyes down, my ears alert to every conversation and any peripheral word - Reggie's voice as he made his inevitable challenging flirt in Midge's direction.  Betty and Veronica sizing up each other's bathing suits, landing Archie in the crossfire.  Everything normal except for me, listening through my internal static, a fish bowl over each eye.

I slipped away from them, looking for a place to breathe.  How long could I stay, unnoticed, before I could decently leave?  I was also wondering how long I could keep the band-aid of a neutral expression over the seasickness of confusion and fear rolling through my mind.

Staying in motion on the fringe kept me from undue notice, except for irritated looks from couples petting in the shrubbery.  I walked around with a ginger ale in my hand until it went too warm, sending me into the cabana bathroom with vague nausea.

The door opened as I was spattering cold water over my forehead.  In the mirror I saw Cory come in and stride to a urinal.  He unzipped and starting pissing but, after the stream stopped and I didn't hear him leave, I turned around.

He was nonchalantly holding it in his hands, grinning at me.

"You're not serious."

"Oh come on, sweetheart," he said.

"Isn't Lisa here with you?"

"She's not going to come in here."

"But there are *people* outside!"

He shoved the garbage can in front of the door.

I put a hand over my mouth.  "No way."

"Jug..."

"No," I said, too quietly.

His smile disappeared but he looked hurt, not angry.  He zipped up, pulled the garbage out of the way, and left.

I left too, the whole party, not just the bathroom.  My first love affair was over and I'd been the one to betray the small particle of trust upon which it had been built, even though the trust was no more than the minimum needed to hold together a physical relationship.

The truth sucks, you know.  Self honesty sucks.  I see now why so many people go the other way.

On Sundays, the gang always met at Pop Tate's for a late breakfast.  My mother, not expecting me to be home, walked into my room without knocking.  Fortunately, I was only staring obliviously at a textbook.

She set down the vacuum.  "Forsythe, what are you doing home?  Is something wrong?"

"No, ma'am."

"Why aren't you out with your friends?"

"Exams are coming up."

She frowned.  "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She glanced at my desk, then around my room.  "Usually when you study, piles of candy wrappers start appearing in the corners."

"I'm still full from breakfast," I said.

She eyed me, her mother-instincts obviously clanging.  "When did you have breakfast?"

"When you and dad were at church."

"What did you have?"

"Why?"

She crossed her arms in front of her chest.  "There weren't any dishes in the sink."

"I did them."

"*You* did the dishes?"

"I won't do them again!" I shot back irritably, then lowered my head to my book.  I suppose she stared at the top of my head for some time because it took her a bit to pick up the vacuum and leave.

Can you hear the frustration with which I'm writing?  All I wanted was a few moments in peace - of course those moments are difficult to grab when your mind is running through windmills.

How do you come to terms with yourself?  If I continued down this path, I'd meet people who would castrate me.  But if I remained in this void, I'd castrate myself.  Weren't there other choices?  My life didn't have to be determined by a single incident, did it?

Between classes the next day, Archie found me by my locker.  "Where were you yesterday?"

I shrugged.  "I didn't feel well."

"Were you sick on Saturday too?  You left Veronica's pretty early."

"I felt lousy," I said, which wasn't much of a lie.

"Too bad.  It was a great party."

History was our next class.  As we walked there, Archie said, "Did you get all those questions done on that treaty?"

"There were only six."

"I didn't get any.  I have no idea what the damn thing's about.  I am going downhill with this one big time."

"Ask Betty to tutor you.  She wouldn't mind."

"Yeah, but Veronica would."

Charlie and Dilton caught up with us.  "Wasn't that a fun party?" Charlie asked.

"It was fantastic," Archie said.  "Did you see Cheryl's bikini?  You could see the lips of her pussy just *begging* for it!"

"I took my life in my hands doing so," Charlie said.  "I looked once, I swear, just once, and Eileen blew up."

Archie laughed but Dilton said, "Not that I didn't enjoy Veronica's party but it is an annual reminder that school is nearly finished for the summer."

"Spoken like an egghead," Charlie sighed.  "Some of us like that reminder, Dilton."

"This year has been especially tough," Archie said.

"The school is preparing us for college," Dilton told him.  "We're nearly there."

"Ssh!" Archie and Charlie both said at once.

We got to class and found our desks arranged in pairs.  My desk had been pushed against Betty's.

Our teacher, Mr. Forrest, said, "Everyone settle, please.  You may have noticed you're facing someone.  It's not a mistake.  Your final essay for this class will be a mutual production with another student.  You will need to research, outline, and write your paper together, if you want to pass.  If you don't want to pass, well, I guess I'll see you again next year.  If you decide that you don't want to look at me for another term, the paper you hand in will be 10,000 words, due in two weeks.  I expect that two brains, working together, will produce some superior compositions."

Mr. Forrest did not allow groaning in his class, however, some of the looks he received were pained.  An intrepid student asked, "What are we to write on, sir?"

"That is a fair question, though ungrammatical.  To prevent eerily similar papers from appearing on my desk, as has happened this year, each set of partners will receive a unique topic." Mr. Forrest started walking around the room, dropping a slip of paper at each pair of desks.  "I will also tell you that each set of names was randomly drawn.  Like it or not, the person you are facing is your partner.  There will be no substitutions."

I saw Betty glance behind her at Archie who had been teamed with a girl, however, when the paper dropped to our desk, she smiled at me and asked, "What topic did we get, Juggie?"

I looked at the paper.  "Oh man!"

She took it from me.  "Describe a day in the life of a prisoner in Auschwitz pre-1945.  Use examples you can reference." She silenced for a moment, then whispered, "Oh dear..."

"Where do we start?" I wondered.

We booked time on the school's internet-accessible computer.  The computer sat in a small cubicle in which it was impossible to sit without banging each other's knees and arms.  I did a search on the word 'Auschwitz' and received a return of three hundred thousand sites.

"We'll have to refine the search a little," she said.

I watched her blonde hair slide off her shoulder as she leant forward over the keyboard.  I'd never noticed her hair, or that she used pink nail polish.  Actually, I'd never been this close to her before.  Was this the first step down the normal road?

Her search turned up less than a thousand entries, somewhat more manageable.  As we started sifting through, looking for web pages of first-hand accounts, her right leg came to rest unconsciously against mine.

My senses noted the pressure disinterestedly.

"Perhaps we should pick a specific type of prisoner," Betty said, "and work from there.  They wore different coloured triangles."

I leaned forward until our shoulders were gently rubbing.  I could smell the shampoo she'd used recently, a lovely raspberry smell.

And still nothing.

"Yellow triangles were for Jewish prisoners," Betty said as she read the screen.  "Red for political." She glanced at me, her blue eyes a mere six inches from mine.  "Green for those who had been convicted of stealing or murder.  I don't want to write from a green triangle's perspective, ok?"

"Fine," I said, noticing that she was very pretty even up close under fluorescent lights, but my perception of her looks was remote, as though I were looking at an artist's work in a museum.  Lovely to look at but no motivation to caress.

"Black triangles were for gypsies or the handicapped.  How terrible," she continued.  "Can you imagine?"

"Being a gypsy?"

"Having to wear a coloured triangle like that for everyone to see," she said.  "Look at this one, Jug.  Pink for homosexuals."

I twitched.  "How did they know that?"

"Pardon?"

"How could they...I mean, what did they do?  Ask?" I felt my ears burn under her look.

"It doesn't say how they knew, Juggie," Betty said softly.  "Do you want to choose red?"

I pulled as far away from her as possible, which amounted to about two centimetres, and mumbled, "Yeah, let's do red."

We printed a few pages and took half each.  Later, as I was getting my knapsack out of my locker, I heard someone say, "Hell, are you ever lucky!"

I turned.  Stan Quinn, a runner on the football team, leant against the locker beside mine.

"Why?"

"You get to work with Betty.  She is so beautiful."

"She is," I agreed.  He came after me as I went down the hall.

"Are you going to walk her home?" he asked.  "Because I could do that."

"Her dad picked her up," I said.

"Are you and her going to be staying late in the library tomorrow as well?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"If you are, would you mind letting me know ?  I could ask her to go out for a hot chocolate or something afterwards.  It's hard getting near her during school.  Archie or Reggie are always around her."

I eyed him furtively, wondering what it was like to feel that way.  Then I caught myself.  I *had* felt that way, three nights ago.  "I'll ask her tomorrow."

Stan grinned.  "Thanks, buddy!"

It wasn't easy approaching Betty the next day.  I'd known her for eight years but my physical twitch over the pink triangles, coupled with my new self-focused paranoia, made me afraid of what she might be thinking.  Worse, would she share any of those thoughts with her best friend, Veronica?

I dragged through most of the day in a bubble of self-pity.  How many stages of neurosis and denial are there?  I kept trying to hide, to stay in the quiet places, but just how long can you go without breathing?  By the time I got to history class, I was so miserable that I couldn't look up far enough to meet her eyes as I passed on Stan's message.  I spoke to her in a quiet voice, but inside I was screaming.

"I don't know, Juggie.  My mom and I are supposed to go to my aunt's tonight.  Besides, Stan is...well, he's no Archie."

My God, I thought.  What's wrong with you.  The guy's *gorgeous!*

The moment I thought it, my stomach heaved.  I bolted to the bathroom and lost what little I'd eaten that day, then spent at least five minutes gasping over the bowl as I struggled to catch my breath.

Betty was in the hall when I came out.  "Jug, what's wrong?"

"I think I've got the flu," I said to the floor.

She put a hand on my forehead.  "You don't have a fever."

I pulled away.  "If you touch me, you might get it too."

"I don't think you have the flu but you'd better go to the nurse.  I'll go with you."

"I can manage myself.  I don't want you to miss class."

"I can miss watching Archie with another girl." She pulled on my arm.  "Come on, Juggie."

The nurse's office was on the first floor.  As we started down the deserted stairs, Betty said softly, "Jug, why won't you look at me?"

My hand tightened on the rail.  "I didn't realize I wasn't."

"What's happened?  What's wrong with me that you can't look at me anymore?"

"Nothing."

She bounced down to the step below me and stopped dead, her face turned up to mine.

"That's not a good place to be with someone who feels like throwing up."

"Jug!"

"Betty, for Godsakes, there's nothing wrong with you!  Honest!" I sat down on a step.  "How many times do I have to tell you?"

She knelt below me, still looking up.  "You've been acting weird since Veronica's party.  Archie and I are worried."

I finally looked back at her and almost, almost told her.  I don't know how I didn't.  What stopped me.  Fear of the consequences?  A need for more self-torture?  Or a last faint grasp that Cory had been a blip?

My pivotal moments happen in stairwells, have you noticed?  I guess it's symbolic that I am halfway up or down somewhere, and that I'm always accompanied by one person.  I look for stairwells now but, at seventeen, in the stairs there with Betty, I missed the chance.  I knew I could spill it out in two words, and that she wouldn't damn me, but I was afraid how far else it would go.  I just couldn't trust her, yet the problem didn't lay with her.  It lay with me.

She finally stood, giving up, and we got to the nurse's office.  I was sent home but it took a force equivalent to ten elephants to keep Betty from coming with me.

I drove through downtown since it was the least direct way to get home.  The streets were packed with delivery vans and taxi cabs, so it became a slow, demonic route.  While I was stopped at a red light, I noticed the Stanza Brothers store to my right and an empty parking meter in front of it.

The store was a necessary sin in Riverdale, decrepit, full of cigars and condoms and fruit imported from exotic countries.  Most of our parents forbid us to go there even though they'd go themselves at least once a week.  Anything could be bought through this store - books, videos, speciality foods and cigarettes - and in the back, on wooden shelves, were the most incredible array of magazines.  Archie and I had snuck in once when we were fifteen, after much plotting, to see the magazines of which we'd heard legends.  And, yes, we'd bought a magazine each, the kind you don't show your mother.

I went in and the same old man was behind the counter, wearing the same shirt, a cigar in his breast pocket that was so old the cellophane had turned yellow.  He barely looked up as I went to the back.

Straight across the shelf at eye level were Mad Magazine, Home and Garden, Crochet Weekly, and Playboy.  I had my hand on Playboy when I noticed, just above it, something called Hard-X.  The picture of the man on the cover was discreetly out of camera range from the belly-button down but, inside, only a single staple prevented an unobstructed view.

I got it and Playboy, put a copy of Martha Stewart's Living on top, and went to the counter with a 'fuck-you' expression on my face, as though I bought porn every day.

The old man finished his crossword puzzle before punching the amounts into the cash register.  Just before the total rang up, I grabbed a package of rubbers  from the display at the side of the counter and put them on top of the pile.  He added them in, bagged everything interminably slowly, then creaked, "Fifteen eighty-five."

I paid, collected my change, and managed to walk, without appearing to rush, outside to my truck.   I cruised slowly so that I would get home at my regular time, then snuck the bag in with my knapsack to my room.

I deliberately opened the Playboy first.  Miss May, anatomically correct, lounged in sunlight at the beach.  'Biker-Babes' occupied the next section, some of them in leather and chains, and in the back were 'Secrets of the Maid'.

All the while I was looking at the magazine, I waited for some spark, some pulse of interest somewhere, anything.  Finally, pathetically, I put the girls away, but I forced myself to wait until after dinner before I dared touch the other.

The pictures in Hard-X were mostly black and white, as if the magazine had been smuggled in from some other era.  The first picture showed a man in a suit.  By the third pose though, he'd given up completely on it, shedding even his socks.  In the fourth shot he faced the camera and, my God, he was hard!  Head up, eyes staring straight at me, not a hint of shame, and his huge dick poking straight in the lens.

I pulled my knees together to cover my own swelling, like some maiden aunt at a strip show who pretends to be unaffected

Hard-X was a cheesy pictorial, its whole existence dedicated to pictures of horny guys.   They sometimes posed in pairs, sometimes alone, but all of them were, in every atom, physically perfect.  There was not a blemish, not a chest hair out of place, and the camera got so close I could see the shine off their skin.  These Chippendales had been air-brushed and fluffed.  But this was also a hint of a world I hadn't suspected.  These men were not only gay, they were damn-proud-in-your-face gay.  They weren't hiding in corners and they weren't giving an inch (figuratively) at all.

It took me a while to get through the rest of the magazine.  My breath kept catching, making me dizzy.  Plus, too, I was starting at every sound from downstairs, every creak of a floorboard and every ring of the phone.  I didn't dare touch myself, as if I was still pathetically hoping to cheat the litmus test these magazines represented, but in my heart I knew I was failing.

So I have to wonder how much self-hatred I had, for the very next day I set myself up for further failure.  I asked a girl out.

Archie found me right after home room and circled me like a gnat, obviously worried but unable to be anything more than annoying about it.

"I'm fine," I kept insisting as he tailed me from class to class.  "I've had the flu before, you know, and survived."

"It never seemed like this before," he said.

"Shit!" I managed.  "Archie!"

"All right!" He said, finally leaving, but now it was after lunch and I'd had him on my heels for most of the day.  I stomped around the corner and knocked Cheryl against the drinking fountain.

"Boy, you recover from the flu quickly," she said as I helped her back to her feet.

"I'm sorry, Cheryl," I said, picking up her books and purse.  "Did I hurt you?"

She laughed.  "I'm not admitting it.  You might offer to check for damages."

"I...uh...I'm not that crude."

I tried to hand her her books but she said, "The least you can do is make sure I get to my next class in one piece."

We went down the hall but it seemed to me that she was walking very slowly.  The bell had rung before we got there.  Outside the door, she took her texts, then leaned up and kissed me.  "Ice cream is the generally accepted cure for bruised..." She paused, then whispered, "areas."

Maybe it was the fact that she was the first person in four days not to ask me if I was ok, or maybe it was because I was trying to figure out how to work this thing the way Cory was.  "Would you like to go out after school?"

"Um...all right.  Since you're beseeching me."

"Since I'm what?" But she was already in the door.

"I'll meet you at your truck," she called.

For some reason, we both forgot about the ice cream.  We ended up getting hamburgers and driving out to Danbury.  She was easy to talk with because not much penetrated her self-preoccupation - nothing I did was under scrutiny.  In fact, she hardly noticed me.

We were driving along a mountain brow in the dusk on our return home when Cheryl suddenly cried, "Juggie, stop!"

I pulled over in an emergency area of gravel and trees.  "What is it?"

"Look at the lights!  I can see the stadium!"

She was half leaning out of the truck window.  I grabbed her belt, thinking she might fall, and, as she came back into the cab, she said, "Keep your wandering paws to yourself!"

"I'm sorry.  I just thought..."

"And no excuses, sir."

I silenced.  She grinned and said, "That's better."

Then she leaned over, grabbed me by my ears, and kissed me.  It was not a delicate kiss.  She launched her tongue in my mouth and I ended up swallowing some of her lipstick.  She also shimmied onto my lap.

"I knew you liked girls," she said.

"I don't."

"You're hiding it well," Cheryl murmured, wiggling.  "Do you want to pet a little?"

"Uh..."

"Well, I don't." She abruptly slid off my legs.  "Unlike you, *I* have self-control."

"It's a unique self-control."

She pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them down her top.  "Do you have enough self-control to get these?"

I felt like laughing at her.  I probably did.  Out loud I said, "You can't honestly want me to try."

She put her mouth to mine, pushing against me more lightly this time.  A car drove by, its headlights coursing past us.

"I bet they saw us.  I bet they're calling the police on a cellular phone right now," she mumbled against my lips.  She opened my shirt, then pulled off her top and pressed to me.  My keys jangled to the floormat as her breasts rubbed my chest.

"Cheryl," I said, as she started licking my neck.

"Hmm?"

"Someone could be calling the police."

I felt her smile.  "And so they should.  It's terrible what you're doing to me." She took my hand and suddenly crushed it between her legs.  "You should be stopped."

"But this could become a bit...embarrassing."

"Only for you when you get arrested."

She raised her skirt, then laid back.  Good Lord, there it was.

"Can you tell I'm a natural redhead?"

I looked at her sadly.  "Cheryl, I'm sorry but..."

"You're supposed to apologize afterwards." She tugged on my hands.  "I've always wondered about you."

"What do you mean?"

"Wondered what it would be like, you know?  You're gorgeous.  Lay down with me.  Kiss me."

I went down with a heavy chest.  Here was the opportunity to be normal.  She was lovely and she wasn't asking for much.  So I tried.

I kissed her, felt her warmth under me, her thighs encircling mine.  Her hair, flowery and soft, grazed my cheek.

She bucked her hips up to me.  "Do you have any protection?"

"I do, but..."

"Good," she breathed into my mouth.

I kept kissing her, moving on top of her the way I thought I should.  I truly tried, but my end was still a void.  After a few minutes of rubbing without feeling, I gave up.

"I can't."

She blinked.  "I was just teasing about the police.  I don't think anyone will interrupt us."

"It's not you.  I can't explain it.  I just...can't."

She sat up, covering her breasts with her hands.  "You're really serious."

I did up my shirt, then got my keys.  She pulled on her clothes slowly, not looking at me.

"Are you queer?"

"No!" I shot out.  "No, I'm just..."I fished around.  "I'm very catholic."

"So?"

"I'm sorry."

"All day you've been apologizing to me," she said angrily.

We said nothing more during the drive back.  At her house, she gathered her books and jumped out before I'd completely stopped.  She slammed the truck door and ran across her lawn.

How many times do you have to say you're sorry before it's been said enough?  Or, maybe, I was trying to apologize to the wrong person.

I went to school at six the next morning, because I knew the soccer team used the field then.  Cory, being the Captain, would likely be the first for practice, and I wanted to speak to him before the rest of the guys showed up.

He looked up in surprise when I stepped into the changeroom.  Then his expression darkened.  "Did you join the team or something?"

I glanced around the changeroom.  "Are we alone?"

He shrugged.  I sat down on a bench, facing him.  "Cory, I owe you an apology."

"Why?  Just because you don't want to fuck in a washroom?  I guess it's not for everyone," he allowed.

I leaned against the wall, feeling the cold through my back.  "I've been so screwed up since Friday.  The whole week has been strange." I took a deep breath.  "I never did anything until you."

"I thought that after I left the bathroom.  You told me on the beach you'd never been fucked before but I didn't think it meant-"

"Everything," I finished.  "It meant everything."

He smiled.  "I wish you'd told me.  I would have made it different."

My shoulders relaxed a little at his smile.  "No, it was great.  It was...incredible."

He grinned widely.  "Man, the way you were just going at me like crazy, I thought you were ok with it, you know?"

"I'm not.  I don't want it."

He rubbed his leg on mine, which gave me an erection.  He glanced down at my fly and laughed.  "Doesn't look like you don't want it." Then he kissed me, his mouth hot and glorious.  My whole body reacted to him, all parts aching pleasurably in sync.

We pulled apart when we thought we heard a noise.

"False alarm," Cory said after a moment.

As he bent down to do up his laces, I said, "This is stupid, kissing like frightened swallows, ready to dart at every sound."

He laughed again.

"How are you going to work this, Cory?  What happens after graduation?"

He gave his socks a final pull.  "I don't know.  Probably marry a girl, and visit a guys-only gym every so often."

"Why not marry a guy?"

"Is that what you're planning?"

"I guess so."

"Yeah?  How you gonna tell your parents?  Can you imagine doing that?  How are you going to walk down the street without getting the shit kicked out of you?  And do you think your friends are going to stick around, once they know?  Do you think Archie will chance hanging around with you, 'cause he'd be called a fag too, you know." He studied me.  "Hell, Jug, you'll lose everything."

"I don't want to spend my life having sex in bathroom stalls."

He gave me another kiss, then stood up.  "It doesn't always have to be in the stall."

We heard noises from the hall, real ones this time.  I went to the study hall to wait for home room and attempted to look at my history notes.  Cory seemed so self-assured but how could you bring a girl into it?  How could you marry her?  It hardly seemed fair to me, the bargain unequal, like a devil's compromise.  Marrying to create another place to hide, a different hell but a pit nevertheless.  My evening with Cheryl had given me a glimpse of what kind of deal that truly would be.  After I'd dropped her off, I'd almost crawled home.

Besides, how could such a cover stop the sharp tugs in my heart?  If I was truly honest and unflinching, I knew what I wanted.

Our own place.  Waking up beside him.  Making coffee as the shower starts.  Quick kisses by the fridge.  Sharing the daily routine, the bills, and a common doorway.  Sharing moments.  I hadn't been aware of my closet for very long but it already felt like a dungeon with those chains like the ghost of Marley wore.  An unbreathable place that would silence and neuter me, complicate my feelings beyond repair, a place that would kill me.  I felt ghostlike now, as though I were sending out an apparition of myself each day, a part of me with no real substance, a stand-in for public scrutiny while the real me convulsed under fetters and tight padlocks.

If I wanted to breathe, there was no choice here.  I was deeply frightened, yet I think I was more scared that I would go through my life and die without ever speaking or finding someone I truly wanted.

Just after seven, Betty came in.  "Good, you're here.  Your mom said you'd left early.  We need to get working on our essay." She sat beside me and pulled out some papers.  "How are you feeling, Juggie?"

"I feel fine."

She glanced up, then said happily, "You're looking at me!"

I was looking at her.  Not that I was prepared to take giant jumps but I thought that, maybe, she could be my first little one.  Maybe I could trust one person.

"Betty, I want to tell you something."

"Does it have anything to do with pink triangles?"

That paused me.  "Not...really, but I need to know that you won't tell."

She thought for a moment.  "Remember when you were ten, when Hot Dog got very ill?  The vet told you that he might die and put him in the animal hospital and I found you behind the slide in the park, crying." She leaned forward over her books, her eyes quiet on mine.  "I never told anyone, not Veronica or Archie, not even my mother."

"I'd forgotten.  I've been blind lately."

Betty frowned.  "What does that mean?"

"I'm gay." Her expression didn't change.  "You knew, didn't you?"

She shrugged.  "I wondered."

"Are many others wondering?"

"I don't know, Juggie.  Perhaps.  Has someone been hassling you?"

"Only myself."

"You did a good job." But her face grew serious again.  "You know, there's nothing wrong with you.  You're still the same guy to me.  I'm not sure how many others will think that way though."

I gestured at my notes.  "It seems to me that a lot of people hate it."

"They fear it." She came around to my chair and hugged me.  "Are you going to tell Archie?"

I shook my head.

"He's your best friend."

"It's different for guys.  Even if he says it's ok, it won't be.  At some point he'll look at me and wonder, and then he'll pull away."

"That's not a definite," Betty said, but a little too quietly.  She knew as well as I did.

As she spread out our papers, she said, "Well, Juggie, after your two words, we only have nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight to go." Then she looked at me and smiled.

(end)

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