In the narrative about Brandon, I mentioned that over the years I'd "seduced" four boys I didn't know. Brandon was the first, when I was 11 years old; the incident I'm about to relate was the second, about one year later. This was really the first time I had sex with a genuine stranger, since I'd known who Brandon was for a few years before I seduced him. By contrast, this boy I'd known for 24 hours.

My family wasn't much on vacationing. The one big exception was our family trips to the beach. My mom was a seriously flawed individual, but she tried in her own way to give us a good childhood - some of it was my grandparents' (her parents') influence, and the influence of other relatives; but she did try. These beach trips were her effort toward the American-dream/family-vacation thing.

We nearly always went to the same place: a dink-splat little beach town in the Florida panhandle. (Florida's panhandle, for those not familiar, is the northwestern part of the state - the part that lies due south of Alabama. It has a longstanding and well-deserved nickname: "the Redneck Riviera". :) It's where deep Southerners typically flocked for their days in the sun.)

Each of those trips would be a story in itself. Before I get to the main event, a few words about a few other vacation trips to the Redneck Riviera:

In addition to the trip at 12 years old, we went with members of my mom's extended family when I was 8 y/o, and again when I was 16. I don't remember much about the trip when I was eight, except that it was fun. We went with my aunt, uncle, and their two kids, my cousins Joey and Randy. I was the oldest of us five boys on that trip. The only kids who knew how to swim well were me and my brother Wally. We had a blast playing in the surf, every day. I distinctly remember the first morning we were there - it was a cloudy, overcast day (rare in the summer in Florida), and the waves were gigantic. Looking back, I think there must've been a storm out at sea that day. But for whatever reason, those waves were the biggest I've ever encountered. I'm not at all sure we should've been playing in the surf that day - in years since, I've seen the lifeguards clear everybody out of the water in similar conditions. But we didn't know about any danger, and that pounding surf was exceedingly cool. I remember being distinctly disappointed when the waves never got that big again for the remainder of the week. :)

That beach trip at age eight was also where I learned to play a couple of new card games - gin rummy, in particular. My uncle, who was a card shark of the first magnitude, taught me how to play (I think out of boredom as much as anything, since neither of the women wanted to play...) And I can't leave this discussion without mentioning my cousin Randy, the stud. He was practically a baby on this trip - four years old - but his future status was already clear. I recall my mom and aunt talking in the local supermarket to a couple of women we didn't know, and their conversation about how Randy, with his dark hair and deep blue eyes and cute smile, was gonna have to fight the girls off with a stick when he got older. (They were absolutely right.)

And I remember sitting in the bathtub with Joey and Randy one time on this trip, and noticing that Joey's weenie was smaller than mine - but Randy's was bigger, even though he was younger and smaller than both of us. I recall thinking off-handedly, "Gosh, he's only four... I guess he's just got a big one..." He sure did. :) I never did anything sexual with Randy, by the way - 4.5 years is a big age gap; and there was no way I was going to do anything with a boy that much younger than me, even when he was 11-12. And anyway, I never saw Randy show the slightest interest in other guys. He didn't have to - he had girls lined up. I saw a story in the news media not long ago, about a 13-14 y/o boy in Atlanta who was charging money to girls to give him BJs. His mom caught him in the act, and it got into the media because everyone thought it was so weird for the girls to be paying him. I can easily imagine it, though, if he was as cute as Randy. :)

(Small footnote: I shouldn't be too hasty about Randy and other boys. In college, we got to talking one night about sex, and among other things, he revealed that he'd done circle-jerks at summer camp. Just kid stuff, granted, but it was something. Actually it's a pretty funny story - Randy's experience was the only time I've heard about an organized circle-jerk. They had actual rules and everything. One kind broke the Number One cardinal rule [he ejaculated on the girly magazine] and got banished from future CJs. Wonder if they charged admission? Oh well, that's another story... :))

The trip when I was 16 was memorable mainly because by that age, I was completely girl-crazy. I'm writing mostly about my experiences with other boys in these narratives, so I'll skip those details. I didn't get laid or anything on this vacation, if you're wondering. :) The closest I came was hooking up with a couple of 17 year-old girls at the bowling alley, and going out to their car to drink beer. I hate beer; and I doubted I'd get lucky with two of them there. But what the hell - I was bored. :) The other big thrills on this trip were two water-sports firsts: My first time waterskiing on saltwater, and my first time "surfing" - sort of... :)

The waterskiing was utterly cool. I was (am) a shameless hot dog on skis. :) And the waves were bigger on the ocean than on any lake I'd tried, so I had lots of scope to pull all my fancy turns and slaloms and stuff. My uncle had rented the boat for an hour, and the rule was 20 minutes apiece for me, my brother Wally, and cousin Bill. I lost the coin-tosses and had to go last, and I remember vividly just getting warmed up when the guy on the beach yelled through his megaphone: "Number 28, return to shore!" I'm afraid I said some very uncomplimentary things under my breath about that guy's ancestry, deviant sexual practices, and general character, as we motored back to the inlet... :)

The surfing, by contrast, was a big bust. There was a concession on the beach that rented surfboards and other water toys (none with engines, no jet-skis or anything like that - jet-skis were still in the future.) I rented a board one day to try it out. Of course, that day we had the calmest surf of the whole trip. :) Out of a zillion tries, I got up three times, and rode the board for maybe ten feet before my pathetic wave petered out. My cousin Bill, who had obviously watched way too many old movies, yelled "Wipe Out!!" every time my board came gently to rest in the shallows. That's pretty funny, now that I think about it. :)

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Those were fun times, too. But mainly I want to talk about the trip when I was 12 years old. So let's go...

I remember being not too keen on this vacation before we went. It was just the family going - and I loved my family, but I loved my friends too, and I knew I'd miss them. And I was seriously aggravated that I'd miss a swim meet and two soccer games. If we'd gone a different week, I might've missed only one of each, or possibly even zero. But that was my mom's vacation week at work, and she couldn't (or wouldn't) change it.

The ride to our destination was miserable, as I recall. It was high summer, and the heat and humidity were stifling. My mom kept trying the AC, and cursing under her breath when it kept pushing the car toward redline. My brothers and I were engaged in one long continuous argument the whole trip - it's a wonder mom didn't throttle us all.

I recall distinctly sniffing the air for the last hundred miles or so, trying to catch a whiff of salt air. I was 12 years old, not a little kid anymore, but I could still get excited about beach vacations. :)

We pulled up in front of the shabby old F________ Motel, with its orange neon sign. After warning us to stay in the car and not go running down to the beach, Mom went inside to register us, while we fidgeted and chafed. It seemed to take forever - especially when I kept looking through the big plate-glass window and saw Mom carrying on a leisurely-looking conversation with the owner-lady. Finally, she returned, bearing the room key. All three of us boys had way too much pent-up energy to ride the few dozen feet down to our room, so we took off running while Mom maneuvered the car down the narrow pavement, past the row of sickly-looking palmettos and into our reserved parking space.

I have only vague memories of unloading the car. I think poor Mom got stuck with the majority of the task. We were too busy tearing around the room, looking out the window at the ocean waves, and begging: "Can we go down to the beach, Mom? Pleeeeze? Now?" I wasn't too grown up to show my excitement. And I guess I'm not a grownup yet, because every time we go to the beach, I still feel the same way - gotta get down in that water, now. I just conceal it better nowadays. :)

Eventually, after around eight million years spent with Mom unpacking and us changing into swimsuits and other delays, we found ourselves leaping off the motel's back veranda and sprinting beeline-straight down to the waves, reaching the blue water at warp speed. I can't recall what my brothers did, but I know exactly what I did, because it's the same thing I've done every time I've gone to the ocean, from the time I was old enough to swim: I ran out until the water was ankle-deep, and took a flying dive headlong into the next oncoming wave. I think the world is divided into two groups: those who edge into the cold water, one agonizing inch at a time; and those who plunge. I'm a plunger. It's the only way. :)

Well, it's tempting to go into a play-by-play on what we did that time, and every subsequent day on the water, but I won't. I'll just say that the next day, and the next, were mostly just a series of white-sand-and-blue-water blurs in my mind. Ocean swimming, building sand-castles, water-games with my brothers... you can picture it, I'm sure.

I was too busy that first evening and the next couple of days to realize it. But, around late afternoon of that second full day, when I'd spent enough energy to slow down and walk instead of run, I realized something: I was bored... and I was lonely.

I wasn't afraid to be alone; it wasn't fear. It was... a vacuum. A vacuum that needed to be filled. Some of it for me, as a 12 year-old boy, was physical. I needed touch. I craved touch. Being the kind of boy I was, one kind of touch I craved was sexual. Sex satisfied. But sex alone didn't fill the vacuum. What else? You can call it friendship; sometimes you can call it love. To me, those two concepts aren't separate, although we separate them for our own purposes.

I had no words for these feelings, back then. I wasn't even consciously aware of them, back then. Back then, I got up in the morning and faced the day head-on, living through each moment as it happened, not dwelling in the past or planning for the future. At 12 years old, I was a creature of the Now.

And now, on this second day, when my senses leveled out and I could breathe without exploding, I realized: I miss my friends. I need a friend, here, now. It would be so cool... I wish Paul was here, or David or Leif or Trent, or somebody... or everybody... I don't want to be alone.

Of course, I wasn't alone at all; my family was here. I'd had a blast playing with my brothers. Despite all the sibling-squabbles, we got along pretty well. But it wasn't the same. Your friends fill that vacuum in a way that no one else can fill it. I wasn't analytical, wasn't self-aware; so then, my conscious awareness knew only two things: I was lonely, and I was horny. Back then, they were connected concepts, and the bridge between them was my friends.

For some reason, that particular vacation, there weren't many kids my age at the motel. I remember scads of little ones - babies up through 7-8 year-olds. And there were a few big kids, who were rarely around - as I recall, they tended to vanish off the veranda as soon as the minimum social politenesses had been observed, and head down the beach to the brighter lights of the town's public beach, which lay a quarter-mile or so to the west. When I was 16, on our last family trip to the motel, I realized why they were going - that beach was the teenagers' local hangout spot.

But between the little and the big kids, there was a gap, or so it seemed. And on the second evening, I noticed it, felt it.

We spent a little while after dinner out on the back veranda, that day, as we did every day of the vacation. My brothers and I were playing some simple games with the little kids from the room next door, while my mom talked to the adults on either side about weather and food prices and all that stuff adults talk about during the getting-to-know-you phase. I was bored after about 20- minutes, wishing there was a kid my age to play with, or just hang out. I looked up and down the veranda. Nobody around, boy or girl.

What to do...? I thought of strategies I'd used to make new friends in new places in previous years, but none seemed workable... until... Hey! I brought my soccer ball, didn't I? Kicking that around - that could be the ticket. And if I kick it against a wall or something, loudly enough, so some kid hears me and comes to check out what's happening... it's worth a try.

I went inside the door, found my ball in the corner, went out the front door. The motel's ancient Coke machine stood about four doors down. I had no love for that machine. Around 50 percent of the time, it swallowed without a trace the coins you fed it and refused to disgorge a cold Coke. I figured it could do no harm to kick my ball against the front of the Coke machine. Maybe it will cough up one of those Cokes I already paid for. And anyway, I need a goal to shoot at. So I backed up into the parking lot about 12-14 feet, took aim and fired.

No Coke emerged, but the ball smacked against the machine with a satisfying metallic thud. I trapped the return, shot again, and then again... for maybe 6-8 minutes.

I don't have any clue how the universe works. Things happen in life that you take for granted at the time; and later, you think about it, and wonder: "Was that fate, or what?" I believe in God, and maybe that's all that needs to be said. Anyway for whatever mysterious reason, my soccer-ball plan (impulse) worked - perfectly.

About six minutes into my drill, just as I'd trapped the ball and was getting ready to shoot again, one of the doors down to the right, toward the office, opened. And someone came out, looking down in my direction to see what all the racket was about - looking at me. He was tall, brown hair, 13 years old. His name, as I soon found out, was Grant.

I was momentarily surprised. In the back of my mind, I figured somebody would show up... and it would probably be somebody's granny. When Grant came out, and I saw it was a boy my age, I was taken aback. I think he was as surprised as I was. We stood and just looked at each other for a second. It sounds like a romantic story, but it wasn't like that - just two kids.

I usually get over my surprise quickly. So after a second, I called over: "Hey... wanna play soccer? I'm just practicing." He didn't speak, not yet; he just stepped out from under the eave into the light.

I was in "reflex-mode" - i.e., my reflexes were on hair-trigger at this point, as a result of the need to trap the ball a split-second after it rebounded off the Coke machine. If you've played soccer, or any sport in which reaction-time is critical, you know what I mean, and why I did what I did next. As soon as Grant moved into the light, I passed the ball to him - BOOM!

He was startled, needless to say. :) But his response made me feel good about him, immediately. He moved to one side to dodge the shot (basic human instinct) - and simultaneously, he stuck his foot out and tried to block or trap my pass. He missed, but that was a function of the suddenness with which I passed. I saw that, and I said, "Way to go - nice try!" And I meant it. Inside, I was thinking: "This guy knows soccer!"

That particular thought turned out to be only partially true - as I found out, Grant had played regulation soccer only a few times. But he had played basketball alot. The reflexes aren't all that different, except for specific moves (e.g., you need to adjust to not raising your hands when the ball comes at you airborne.) The bottom line was that I'd found a kid to play with. Cool! :)

We played until it was too dark to see, then just sat on the metal chairs out front and talked for a while - anything and everything. Eventually it got late. I said, "Wanna play again tomorrow morning? Or how about body surfing?" Grant said, "Cool!" And we got up, and he headed up to his room and I went out to the grass, got my soccer ball, and then went to our room. No more plans than that were made, but none were needed. We were 12 year-old boys, and you didn't need to make plans, like "meet you at 10 o'clock" or whatever - you just figured you'd find your friend when the time was right.

Now, during all this time with Grant, sex wasn't on my mind. When I first saw him come out of his room and into the light, I did have a distinct thought: "Wonder if he beats off? Hmmm..." But then we got into the soccer and then the conversation, and I didn't think about it again. (Despite the way it may seem, sex was not on my mind 24/7. It was more like 23.9/6.5. :)) Anyway, it wasn't until I got back to the room (my mom and siblings were long since back inside) that the thought returned.

I should note something here. I was in the midst of puberty - at least some aspects of puberty - at this point in my life. I had already begun ejaculating, as I've noted; I had some pubic hair, not much, and it was still the downy stuff; my penis and testicles were getting bigger. On the other hand, my voice had not changed yet, I had no armpit hair, and I was nowhere near shaving status. Most relevant, inside I was a ball of raging hormones, as I had been for a year already and would be for another two. I think it's a miracle I managed to think about anything but sex during this time. :) It wasn't front-burner for the first few days of this vacation, but that's mainly because there was so much else going on... Anyway, I have two points: (a) I was in the habit of masturbating nearly every day, and (b) I liked boys. So it was inevitable that Grant and sex would occur to me in the same context.

My brothers were both already asleep when I got in - as I recall, this was between 10 and 10:30 p.m. My mom was in her bed, reading. She asked where I'd been. I said, "Just talking to a kid I was playing kick-soccer with out front." She said, "Mm-hmm," and returned to her book. I started getting ready for bed - took off my tank top, then my shorts (and remembering, as I took off my shorts, that I hadn't paid Grant for the Fresca - the lack of pockets reminded me.) I got some clean underwear out, went into the bathroom wearing just my briefs (I usually wore boxers at age 12, but I was wearing briefs that day, for the simple reason that they were on top of the pile in my suitcase the night before), and my pukka-shell necklace (anybody remember pukka-shell choker necklaces for boys? :)) I closed the door, stripped, and got in the shower.

I was horny, and knew I'd have to jack off. I've never liked doing that in the shower very much. But this was the motel, and I was sleeping in the bed with my brothers. So it was either the shower or the toilet; and to me, it was kind of distasteful to sit on the toilet and do it. I don't know why - just the psychology of it. So, as I had on previous nights, I went for it in the shower. And this time, I fantasized about Grant, about sucking him off, and then vice-versa. (I had yet to discover the pleasures of 69, as you may recall.)

Well, that was it for the night - almost. I put on my boxers (back to boxers, yeaahhh :)), brushed my teeth, went out and got in bed, and promptly fell asleep. And had a dream. About Grant. It wasn't a wet dream. I've never had one in my life. It wasn't even sexual. We were climbing a sand dune in the dream, getting ready to "ski" down from the top on our bare feet. But I woke up from that dream and I was stiff, and I didn't especially have to pee.

The next day was fun. This story could get lengthy (if it isn't already), so here's an outline of that day - up until evening, when Grant and I found ourselves... well, you'll see.

• Playing miniature golf that morning, my family, and Grant too. Grant beat the stuffing out of me, all three rounds. :)
• A wonderful afternoon in the waves, body-surfing (the waves weren't really big enough, but who cared?), playing games like Splash-Attack, and so on. Mostly it was me and Grant, but at various points we hooked up with other kids - my brothers, Grant's little sister, and a random assortment of fellow vacationers.
• The late-afternoon multi-kid cutthroat Chinese Checkers match, followed by the even more cutthroat game of War (the old card game), ending with a truly Grand Finale in which everyone threw their cards all over the veranda and the sand, and then promptly were commanded to pick them all up again by the various parents in attendance.
And, a few sexual hot-flashes for me, that day:
• Going down to Grant's room that morning to set up the mini-golf plans, and having him come to the door (behind his mom) wearing just his gym shorts, no shirt. His pec muscles were nicely developed - I didn't care much about muscles on boys, but in that moment he looked hot. :)
• Along similar lines: Waiting in Grant's room (and getting from his mom the Standard-Mom-"where-are-you-from"-etc.-Quiz) while he changed into his swimsuit in the bathroom. He came out, tossed his clothes on the bed, and I noted something I'd been curious about: Briefs, not boxers. (Grant wore briefs the next two days, too; but I have no idea if he always did. We never got around to talking about the burning issues surrounding boys' choice of underwear. :))
• Seeing Grant body-surfing or whatever, and something about him catching my attention... and I'd see him with that red sexual aura all around him, radiating boy.

Let's move on to the evening. And the night. Night is when most of my boyhood sex life happened. Maybe that's true for everyone - I have no idea. But I'm always remembering starry skies, or deep woods, or the interior of some dark room... and it's all mixed up in my memory with the salt-bitter taste of some boy's sperm, or the thrill-feel of my penis in some boy's mouth, or the hard breathing and the gasping and the noises from two of us as we approached climax in the dark, in the dark.

Grant and I had planned to get together again that evening, after dinner. We'd idly talked about another game of kick-soccer, but nothing was firm.

I'd had my mind off sexual matters most of the afternoon - as was not uncommon when I was doing something physical, like sports, or (in this case) playing water games. But those hormones were running through my 12 year-old body. And when things calmed down, around dinner time, my mind drifted toward sex - and Grant. What were the possibilities? Grant seemed like a sweet and somewhat naive kid. Was he a virgin? In my experience, at that age "sweet and naive" often meant "virgin", though not always. How to find out?

One "technique" that I've mentioned a bunch of times already was asking a boy direct questions about sex - e.g., "Do you look at Playboys?... Do you get hard?... Ever jack off?... Want to...?" Another approach was even more direct: show a boy your erection. You could make that look accidental or deliberate, depending on circumstances. All of this was subconscious. I didn't plan stuff like that consciously. But I can't say it was unplanned, either; because I recall consciously planning circumstances to make it possible - like getting alone with a boy.

What happened with Grant was a case of little Danny arranging circumstances. This wasn't hard to do. I had decided - this was a "semi-conscious" decision, I guess you'd say - to approach Grant directly with my typical questions. The key was finding a place and time, that evening.

After dinner, I went down to Grant's room, to see what was up. His mom (a nice lady) answered the door and invited me in. Grant and his dad (a strong silent Gary Cooper type) were watching TV. I don't know where his little sis was, but I didn't see her that evening. I said, "Want to go do some shooting?", pantomiming a soccer kick as I did so. Grant grabbed the pillow and threw it at my foot and caught it right at the tip of the arc. That kid had some good reflexes. :)

Needless to say, he was willing to go with me. I don't remember what was on TV, but there aren't too many kids who will sit and watch a TV show if a friend comes along with plans. We said goodbye to his parents. Grant was vague about when he'd be back, and they didn't object - it was vacation, after all...

We went down to my room, grabbed my soccer ball, had a similar conversation with my mom ("just don't stay out real late"), and went down to the beach. Playing kick-soccer on the beach was decidedly inferior to playing it on grass or asphalt; the impact-absorbing sand and the rippled surface made gauging the ball's speed and direction difficult. But soccer was only part of my reason for going down there.

We ended up playing kick-soccer for about 15 minutes. It was obvious from the first shot or two that it wasn't quality soccer, but we had fun anyway. :) After a while, it got too dark to see well (in Florida, dusk descends rapidly after sunset), and by unspoken mutual agreement, we started walking down the beach, kicking the ball slowly as we went.

We talked about school for a while. Grant was entering 9th grade; I was entering 8th. My school was usually a good way to lead the conversation in the direction of boy-sexuality. The all-boys environment was curious to alot of kids who went to "normal" junior-high or high schools.

Eventually the opening came - in the form of a conversation about school food. That may seem like an unrelated topic - until you know that there'd been a lively rumor for many years that our school put saltpeter in the food. Saltpeter was supposed to kill your sexual desire. That was absolutely bogus, of course. Saltpeter doesn't kill sexual desire; and even if it did, the school would've been in bigtime legal trouble if they put something in our food without permission (or even with permission, I'll bet.) I didn't know either of those facts then, but I doubted the rumor for another, very practical reason: my sexual desire, and the desire of most boys I knew at school, was very much alive. :)

As I recall, the conversation went like this: Danny: "Yeah, it's lousy food. Everything's cooked in grease, and it all tastes the same. They even cook the green beans in grease..." Grant: "Yuck!" Danny: "...and it's all salty. They just load in the salt." Grant: "I like salty stuff. But not too salty. My friend Bill likes salt alot. He puts salt on his French fries and in his ketchup." Danny: "Yeah! This kid David in my class does that, too. But even he said the school food was too salty... And you know what else they do?" Grant: "What?" Danny: "They put saltpeter in the food." Grant: "What's saltpeter?" Danny: "It's some kind of chemical. [pause] It keeps you from getting horny."

Grant reacted to that comment the way I expected: he giggled. Your standard 13 y/o boy's reaction to the word "horny". :) I went on: "They don't want us goin' crazy, I guess." And I paused again.

This was the beginning of a crucial phase in exchanges like this one. The other kid's reaction would usually give me a clue. If he was too shy, or was uptight about sex, or got cold feet, he'd usually either change the subject at this point, or there'd be a clearly-uncomfortable silence. If he was really curious, he'd respond with something directly on the topic of sex (rare, but it happened.) Or, most commonly, he'd be quiet, but not uncomfortable. Sort of an "I-need-to-think-about-this-a-second" quiet. And that was an opening.

Grant again surprised me a little by doing none of the above. Instead, he asked: "I wonder if OUR school does that." Good question. :) I understood the all-boys-school implications, but it had never occurred to me that the mythical saltpeter might have a role in regular public school. After a moment's thought, I said, "Well, I guess they could... but I don't know. I don't think they would want girls taking it." (To understand that, you have to know that Southern boys in my era still believed girls were absolutely uninterested in sex. And all our experience pointed to that being true. I firmly believe that one reason I ended up having so many willing boy-partners, is that all of them thought it would be a cold day in hell before they found a girlfriend who would do it. And in those times, they weren't far from the truth - especially younger boys. Southern girls were mostly virgins until 11th or 12 grade, if not until marriage.) Grant said, "Oh, yeah... I guess you're right."

Grant wasn't upset or bothered by this turn of events. So I pressed on: "I don't think it works, anyway. It doesn't stop me from being horny." Pause. He giggled again. Not a bad sign. Next step. I said, "You know - I guess they do it so you won't get a boner in the middle of class or something... But I still get 'em, all the time." Pause. More giggling - both of us, now. He wasn't freaking out - good. So I delivered the logical follow-up: "Do you ever get boners in school?"

This was a variation of the old, old intro that I often used in prepubescent days with my friends, as you may recall. Back then, the line was simply "Do you ever get boners?" By ages 12-13, I knew that was a silly question to ask another boy my age. If a 13-y/o boy had never gotten a boner, I'd wonder about his anatomy. :) So adding "...in school" was just a way to ask the same question - use the same conversational opening - without it seeming ridiculous.

All this time, we'd been walking up the beach, eastward. The houses and motels and structures were growing steadily farther apart as we moved, and the empty spaces became noticeable. We'd been taking turns kicking the soccer ball in front of us; sometimes we'd carry it, if the ball strayed too far inland, or a wave threatened to wash it away - or if we just felt like it. In hindsight, I realize that having a task like keeping track of the ball, trivial though it was, made exchanges like this easier - on the other boy, at least. It was always more awkward if you were facing each other. Eye contact was invariably uncomfortable for the other boy at this moment. It wasn't always easy for me, either, as bold as I was.

Grant had the ball at this point. He was walking along, kicking it ahead of us, quiet for several seconds. I didn't know what to expect - you never did. But after a moment, he answered. And he didn't flinch, either. After that silent pause, he said, simply, "Yeah."

Okay. We were on the subject now. I said, "Yeah?... Do you beat off?" And before he could react, I added: "I do. Every night, just about. It feels really cool." He answered, immediately: "Yeah. It is cool." A better answer than I expected... and then it got even better. He added, "My friend Jimmy and me did it together, earlier this summer." Wow! I wouldn't have predicted that. He was okay about doing something with another boy - he'd done it, and he'd told me about it. Awesome!

I went on, instinctively reacting to his comment: "Neat! Wanna do it again?" Short pause. "We could go back there, somewhere." I gestured vaguely at the low scrubby landscape to our left, inland. I had no idea what was up there, but it looked empty. Another short pause. "I'll go first."

I've said this before, but it's appropriate to repeat now: I was prepared for a "no" at any point in this process, or to see Grant bail with no particular reason. I would've been disappointed, yes. I wanted to fool around with him. But it's important to understand the ratio. My desire for sex with Grant was one part loneliness, one part horniness, and three parts simple friendship. That ratio differed from one boy to the next, and from one time to the next. Sometimes it was just biological - physical desire. Seducing Brandon the previous year was 90 percent lust, for example. But more often, my desire went back to an emotional need. That need was way deeper than physical desire, and buried much closer to my heart. And friendship (or love, if you like) was the key to that door.

I didn't wait for Grant's answer. I turned and ran up the beach, inland, calling over my shoulder, "C'mon!" He was right behind me. We didn't think to take the soccer ball - which made for an amusing scramble, when I remembered the ball after we finished...

The Florida panhandle doesn't have true sand dunes - they're more like low hills. Not much, but enough for some privacy. I ran up the first dune and down into a small hollow. It wasn't as deep as I would've liked - you could still see the water if you were sitting up - but it was dark. And I was horny, now.

Grant was behind me, running to keep up. As soon as he got into the hollow, I got started. I was a strike-while-the-iron-is-hot boy. :) I unzipped my cutoffs, pulled them and my boxers down, all in one motion. I wasn't hard, thanks to the running, but as soon as I started stripping I felt my dick swelling. I sat down on the warm sand and grabbed my semi-boner and just started stroking, getting it fully stiff, and said to Grant: "Sit down, man. This is gonna be so cool... you'll see..."

In hindsight, I'm sure Grant was a little stunned by the speed at which all this happened. He was a little shy, as I said. None of this interaction was different than what we'd done the evening before, playing soccer. He'd showed up, and I'd immediately passed the ball to him. I acted; he reacted. Tonight it was similar, except it was about sex instead of soccer.

And, like the evening before, I guess his reflexes took over. At any rate, he didn't hesitate. He pulled his shorts and briefs down (he was wearing gym shorts, no zippers to worry about) and sat down across from me. The light was dim, so at this point I couldn't see his penis very well, but I could tell he was erect. His cock wasn't very big, although at that moment I couldn't tell if it was because he wasn't very far into puberty, or if he was just small, period. He spit in his palm (unlike me, he had to do it wet, I guess), got hold of it and started stroking, vigorously. Grant was a very energetic masturbator. His hand was flying. :)

All this was unusually quick, even by my standards. I was on fire, and the momentum was rolling, rolling fast. I wanted to go all the way, as far as I could with him. I was making noises: "Ahh, annhh, uhh, uh." Grant wasn't vocalizing, but he was breathing hard. I remember thinking, hazily, "If I wanna suck him, I'd better do it quick - he sounds close to coming." So I said "Here, let me show you something... this is what I do with my friends back home... I'm gonna put my mouth on it, okay?" And with no ceremony or preparation, I fell over on my right elbow and leaned down and got my face in his lap.

That close-up view allowed me a better look at his dick and balls. As I'd sort of suspected, he was into puberty - he had pubic hair, more than me in fact, and his scrotum wasn't small and tight like a little boy's. His penis was small - around the size of mine, I think. That surprised me a little. I'd had enough experience by that time to know that my weenie was smaller than average - and Grant was older than me, and bigger, too. It didn't matter, of course.

Understandably, my sudden move freaked Grant a little. He flinched, and his jack-off hand hit my cheek. I didn't mind - in the rush, I barely noticed. I took my left hand off my boner and touched his hand, and then touched his stiff penis. It was hot and wet with his saliva, and that touch rushed me, bigtime.

I don't know what he thought; I never will. But I know what he did. After the flinch, he took his hand away, and I think - I'm fairly sure - he scooted his pelvis a little, so as to give me better access. I may be reading more into it now than he meant at the time, but it seemed unmistakable at that moment.

I closed my mouth over his dick and sucked and moved my tongue in those familiar rhythms. Grant's dick was easy to suck - almost all of it fit in my mouth. I had been right about his being close to orgasm. I sucked and rubbed the underside with my tongue; and within seconds, like lightning, he jolted and I felt his sperm shoot into the back of my throat. I swallowed as he kept shooting, managing to get it all down. He was shaking a little as he orgasmed.

When he finished, I pulled off, sat up, and looked at him. He was breathing hard, as you might imagine. :) Needless to say, I was ready for my own climax. I asked him: "Do you wanna do it to me?" It was okay if he didn't. I think more than half the boys I sucked over the years didn't care to reciprocate. Grant was one of those. He didn't answer, but I could tell he was reluctant. So I finished myself, jerking and stroking until I fired off onto the sand between us.

I guess I could describe more about the actual sex. I remember more than I'm writing here. But it's hard to write about BJs, explicitly, without two things happening: (a) you sound like a sleazy porno novel; and/or (b) after several descriptions, it all sounds kind of the same. That's not because it is the same. No two are alike. But the variables that make them all different are not necessarily sexual things. They're things like: where you are (on the roof, in a bedroom), what you're smelling (salty ocean air, swimming-pool chlorine), noises (birds, surf, TV in the next room) what you're wearing (sex with your boxers still on is different - and exciting, to me anyway.) And none of this even takes account of who you're with, and that's what makes the real difference.

Sometimes after orgasm, I'm spent and ready to come down. Other times, I'm still fired up - not just sexually, but my entire energy level. This was one of those latter times. I finished shooting my sperm onto the sand, gasping as my orgasm wound down. Grant was watching me, still breathing hard and looking kind of glazed, as most boys did after. I looked at him, and my immediate thought was, "Wow! What an awesome night! Let's keep going!" I didn't mean more sex. I meant running, or swimming, or anything energetic.

I scrambled to my feet, and pulled up my shorts and underwear, yakking away to Grant: "Wasn't that cool? Hey, did I suck you good, or what? You oughta try it the other way sometime. Wow! I feel like climbing Mount Everest or something. Or like I was listening to my Rolling Stones 'Exile on Main Street' tape. That gets me fired up. I always listen to that before soccer. You know?"

(That "Exile on Main Street" thought sticks in my memory, because I did listen to that tape - specifically the song "Rip This Joint" - to get me pumped for soccer games or swim meets or whatever, for years. More than five years later, my first semester at college, I was still playing that song to y feet, and pulled up my shorts and underwear, yakking away to Grant: "Wasn't that cool? Hey, did I suck you good, or what? You oughta try it the other way sometime. Wow! I feel like climbing Mount Everest or something. Or like I was listening to my Rolling Stones 'Exile on Main Street' tape. That gets me fired up. I always listen to that before soccer. You know?"

(That "Exile on Main Street" thought sticks in my memory, because I did listen to that tape - specifically the song "Rip This Joint" - to get me pumped for soccer games or swim meets or whatever, for years. More than five years later, my first semester at college, I was still playing that song to get me psyched before intramural football games for my fraternity. Worked as well as ever on me. And I had the fun of seeing it fire up all the other kids on our team, too. :))

Grant was looking at me during this monologue, as he slowly got to his feet and went about getting his clothes back together. He was looking a little shell-shocked. I'd seen that before, too, and I knew what to do about it - or thought I did. I said "Hey! Are you ticklish?" Simultaneously, I reached over and started tickling his ribs on his right side. That got him out of it. :) He was twisting to get away from me, and laughing, and I kept at him, and then he got tangled in his shorts (he'd managed to get his briefs pulled back up but his shorts were still around his ankles), and fell down on his butt in the soft sand. I went around behind him and grabbed him under his armpits, the way you'd grab someone to help him back up. My real purpose, of course, was to open a second battlefront - to move the tickle-attack to his armpits.

Grant saw through my stratagem immediately, naturally - that boy was nobody's fool. :) He dodged as best he could (considering he was still sitting down) and clamped his arms down tightly. That worked in the short run; I quit the attack and just stood back there, laughing and gasping for air. Grant got to his feet, starting to turn to face me as he did so. It wasn't quick enough to stop my next move - I jumped onto his back and clamped my thighs around his waist. He bucked to get me off, and I let go and fell to the sand. By now, we were both laughing hard. It was pretty cool. :)

All of this was, of course, your standard 12-13 year-old boy rowdiness. I didn't plan anything that we did. Looking back, this rough play served a few useful purposes, though: it got our minds off the sexual encounter (which can be rather heavy-duty, after all); it gave us (me, anyway) an energy outlet; it cemented our friendship; and it proved we were just ordinary guys. I'm tempted to go philosophical again, and talk about how it grounded you back in reality, that post-sex physical play. But I've already said that elsewhere; and besides, this piece is getting awfully long. :)

One small footnote, though: When I jumped on Grant's back and wrapped my legs around him, and pressed my weenie against his butt as he stood there in just his briefs... it occurred to me that we could do it again, and that I'd like that alot. But he threw me off, and the moment passed.

I let Grant get dressed again, still yakking away. I don't remember what i was talking about, but it led me to think about soccer, whatever it was. And that, in turn led me to remember something. I abruptly turned and touched Grant's arm: "Oh yeah, we left the soccer ball down there! Shoot, I hope a wave didn't get it... or some other kids didn't steal it..."

I wasn't seriously worried. The beach was deserted. And we'd left the ball safely up past the breakers. But all the same, I was sentimental about that soccer ball - and they cost good money, too. So I hustled my butt over the small hill of sand and down the other side. And there was my ball, faintly shining in the starlight. Relief! :)

It was a mirror image of what had preceded the sexual part of our evening. I ran down to the ball; Grant was right behind me. I got lined up and shot the ball down the beach, and there he was beside me, and back we started toward the motel. We were talking away - and Grant was keeping up his end of the conversation. I wasn't directly paying attention to his behavior - I wasn't sensitive enough back then to know if a boy was upset, unless he showed it directly. But I guess subconsciously I knew it was all right. We were laughing and joking, just like before, about school and sports and all the usual stuff.

And we discovered one more thing we had in common. I don't recall what started it, but we went off on a conversational detour for ten minutes or so, talking about: (a) the Dallas Cowboys; (b) Roger Staubach; and (c) Tom Landry. We discovered that we had much common ground. We both: (a) hated them; (b) hated him; and (c) hated him. We took turns turning and yelling out across the Gulf, in the general direction of Texas: "Hey, Landry! You SUCK!!" :)

Soon enough, we were close enough to the motel to see the yellow bug lights and the tacky brown paint. I wasn't ready for the evening to end. I asked Grant: "Hey, wanna listen to music?" He said, "Sure... but will your mom be asleep? My parents will be." I said, "No problem - we can listen in the car."

I guess that sounds like an invitation, in retrospect: "Danny Sucks Off Grant: The Sequel." :) It wasn't like that - not consciously. I really wasn't thinking of anything except rock and roll. Once we were inside the car, of course... who knows? But it didn't happen. Grant said, "Umm... won't we need the car keys to make the radio work?" I said, "Oh, yeah." (Duh!!)

So that was the end of the evening, after all. We stood around for a few minutes, trying to think of other things to do. But this was small-town Florida - and that meant the place was dead after around 10 o'clock, beach or no beach. (I'll bet it's very, very different today...) Finally, Grant said, "I'm gonna visit Mister Sandman, I guess. See you tomorrow." (Yes, he really said "Mister Sandman." It wasn't funny at the time, just sort of normal. But I'm smiling at the memory, now.) And he went up to his room and knocked; after a moment, someone let him in; and he was gone.

I sat around for a few minutes longer, looking over past the end of the motel at the ocean, pale and silver under the stars, with lines of white appearing and disappearing as the waves crested and fell. I remember thinking: Man, I am not ready to sleep. And - now that Grant was gone, and things were quiet - I realized I was still excited. Regular old energetic-excited, yes; but I was also sexually excited. Now I wanted to suck off Grant again. But Grant was gone. So I took the safest alternative. I got into our car, grabbed some Kleenex, and beat off. It was a true quickie. I didn't even pull my pants or boxers down. I came quickly. And my focus was the memory of what Grant and I had done, so very recently.

-----

There's not much more to the story. Well, actually, that's untrue. I could write a book about that vacation. But I think I'm already danger of doing just that, so I'll quit. :) The answer to the Big Question is: Nope, we didn't do it again. Didn't even come close. I hinted alot and twice I outright asked Grant: Want to fool around some more? The first time, he sort of changed the subject. And the second time, he rather directly said: "No. I just don't want to do it again." I knew how to interpret that. I wasn't sensitive, but I knew a closed door when I saw one. :)

Luckily, Grant and I stayed friends for the next few days, until he left. Actually, that was common for me; I usually managed to stay on good terms with the boys I had sex with, even if they didn't want to repeat it. We played more soccer; did miniature golf again (he beat me soundly, every time); and we spent alot of time just playing in the water.

And eventually - four days later - Grant and his family loaded their car and headed back to Alabama. I was there to see them off. A couple days after that, we did the same, my family and I. I don't recall much about those last couple of days. Except that I had a hole in myself, and nothing filled it.

Grant and I exchanged addresses - his mom's suggestion. Predictably, neither of us ever wrote. I haven't forgotten him, though. Not by a long shot.

What was Grant looking for? Not sex. I don't think he minded; I never felt anything from inside him like resistance, or regret. But it wasn't his purpose in connecting. I guess it was friendship, pure and simple. Like most people, he had a vacuum inside, too. Maybe, if my life had gone differently, I would've been more like Grant, and innocent friendship would've been enough to fill that void inside me. Maybe I wish it had. Or maybe not. I don't know.