Foolish Fire

by Willard, Guy

  “Do you really?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then tell me,” I taunted. I saw the look of panic which flitted across his face quickly replaced by an uncertain attempt at casualness. I pressed on: “I bet you never even did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “You know. With yourself.”

  He hesitated, then—as if offended—shot back, “Sure I did.”

  “Oh yeah? Then how do you do it?”

  “The same way as everybody else, I guess.”

  “How does everyone do it?”

  “I don’t know how everyone does it. You’ll have to ask everyone.” Then he countered triumphantly: “How do you do it, Guy?”

  Now it was my turn to hesitate. I was weighing the alternatives: to keep him in the dark and continue to needle him, or be the one to divulge the mystery, to initiate him into the secret brotherhood. My choice was clear.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then listen.”

  My throat was dry and my stomach felt cool and weighty. I could almost feel Bobby’s trembling excitement as if we were linked by invisible sparks jumping across the space between us. I swallowed, then went on in a low voice:

  “You know how your dick sometimes gets hard and points straight up, like this?” With my index finger, I imitated a penis coming to erection with a series of short, quick jerks.

  “Yeah?”

  “Didn’t you ever touch yourself when it was like that?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I mean,” I said impatiently, “touch yourself in the way they call ‘beating off?’ You know….”

  Ringing my fingers around a phantom penis in the air before me I demonstrated with a rapid up-and-down jogging of my wrist.

  Bobby’s face blanched. He wore a look of awe and horror mixed with fascination, as if he were witnessing something sinful and forbidden. In the silence we could hear the children in the next yard calling and squealing to each other.

  I tisked with scorn. “God, I can’t believe how dumb you are. All the kids do it. That’s what they’re talking about. Didn’t you know?”

  He remained silent with a look of queasy stoicism.

  “You keep doing it like this, and pretty soon it starts to feel real good. That’s when it shoots out.”

  “It shoots out?”

  “Yeah.” I made a rasping noise with my lips and traced the arc of a trajectory with my finger, landing on his lap.

  “Gross!” He drew away in disgust.

  “It doesn’t feel gross when you’re doing it. It feels good.”

  “How does it feel? Sort of tickle?”

  “I can’t describe it. It…it’s just the best feeling in the world. There’s nothing in the world like it. Nothing even comes close.” Then with a suggestive grin I added, “Why don’t you try it?”

  He shook his head and backed away a little. “No way. Forget it.” He looked shocked and embarrassed, even slightly sick—and I felt a twinge of cruel delight.

  “Do it tonight in the shower,” I urged confidentially. “No one can see you.”

  “No way. I’m not a sissy like you are.”

  “What do you mean? Everyone does it. Besides…I thought you said you did it, too.”

  “Not like that,” he said in a last desperate attempt to regain his dignity. “I do it different.”

  “Sure you do….”

  “If you don’t believe me, I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t worry, I believe you. Who said I didn’t believe you?” But the look on my face must have clearly indicated skepticism, for his expression turned defiant. “Okay, Bobby, forget it. I was just kidding you. Come on, let’s read these comics. Just like the old days.”

  “All right.”

  *

  That night as I sat on my bed, Bobby came running from the bathroom where he’d been taking a shower. With a look of wild joy on his face, he came bounding over to me like a playful puppy, almost bowling me over in his exuberance. Dancing, laughing, he threw playful punches at my face, slapping and pounding my back so happily that I had to fight him off.

  “So you did it, huh?” I said in a low voice.

  He denied it vehemently, but his attitude gave him away. He couldn’t keep from jumping up and down.

  I pushed him away. “Cut it out.” Then I asked in a whisper, “How did it feel?”

  “Great!” he shouted. Then in an excited whisper he described how he’d panicked initially at the onset of the strange new feeling, but remembering my words, had continued on until he’d been overwhelmed by the most delicious feeling in the world.

  “You should have seen the shower wall! But I didn’t even care!”

  In his zeal he began illustrating by pumping his fist furiously in front of his pelvis.

  “Stop it!” I hissed. “What if someone sees you?”

  “Ooops!” He slapped a hand over his mouth and put on a comically contrite look.

  “Nothing in the world feels as good, right?”

  “Yeah.” After he calmed down, he began to talk seriously about certain dreams he’d been having for the past several months. Though he couldn’t quite remember their contents, he did have vague, half-forgotten memories of melting bliss. That was what his experience in the shower had reminded him of, and he’d felt an eerie sensation of recapturing that dream feeling.

  “It’s called a wet dream,” I said. “You were coming in your sleep even before you knew what coming was.”

  “Why does that happen?”

  “The pressure builds up if you don’t let it out every now and then. It’s nature’s way of relieving you.”

  “I always felt a little scared. I didn’t even realize I was wetting my pants. It was always dry in the morning.”

  “At first not much comes out. Then more and more does.”

  “How come you know so much?”

  “I read it in a book called What Every Boy Should Know. That book tells you everything. And it’s right in the school library, too. Me and Jack are always peeking into it.

  “Is that where you learned about beating off?”

  “No. I discovered that by accident one day.”

  “Guy, where do you usually do it?”

  “Right here on the bed. About where you’re lying.”

  He quickly shifted away from the spot and I laughed. Then he asked me with a straight face: “What do you do with your come?”

  “When I’m ready to come I roll to the side of the bed and do it onto the floor.”

  He glanced downward.

  “Don’t worry, I always clean it up.”

  “If you do it tonight, be sure and wake me up. That way I can jump out of the way when you’re ready to shoot.”

  “Get lost!”

  He laughed and jumped over to his cot. He imitated the motions of jerking off frantically, his face contorted like a monkey’s, his throat emitting simian grunts.

  From that night on, Bobby’s quick pantomime of a jerk-off became a secret signal between us. We did it at each other whenever we thought no one was watching—in the hallway, in the living room, outside. It became a symbol of our giddy, shared joy. And when we were safely unseen, we attacked each other with the gesture, making sputtering noises with our mouths, dirtying each other with the imaginary ejaculate, and afterwards breaking down into helpless, howling laughter, giggling until our sides ached. No one could guess why we were acting so strangely.

  Whenever Bobby returned from a trip to the bathroom, I accused him of beating off. He did the same to me. At first we both denied it, but then confessed that the thought of being suspected of it only made us want to do it.

  On the fourth day of his visit, we went to see a movie at the Sunnyside Mall. We were sitting in our seats waiting for the feature to start. I was feeling bored and restless, not at all interested in the movie, and I could tell that Bobby, too, had other things on his mind. We fell silent for a long time. Then suddenly we look
ed into each other’s eyes and smiled. Not a word was exchanged. As if at a pre-arranged signal, we rose to our feet and walked up the aisle, back toward the men’s room. By the time we got there we were both skipping, barely able to contain our excitement.

  The men’s room was completely empty, and we took two stalls, side by side.

  I’d done it often enough alone in here, but there was something about Bobby’s physical proximity that heightened my excitement this time. I was acutely aware of him in the next stall like a twin or alter ego. His sneakers and a bit of pant leg were visible in the lower gap of the partition between us.

  “Are your pants down?” I called to him softly.

  “No.”

  “What are you waiting for, dummy?”

  I heard the rustle of his pants dropping to the floor, the clink of his belt buckle hitting the tile.

  “Okay, I’m ready.” His voice echoed slightly in the high-ceilinged restroom.

  “Are your briefs off, too?”

  “Yes! I’m sitting here buck naked, with a hard-on fit to bust!” His voice trembled, though it was kept discreetly low. “What about you?”

  “I’ve been ready.” Indeed I was already fondling myself.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this, can you?” he whispered. “This is crazy. What if someone came in just now?”

  “They wouldn’t know what’s going on—unless they can see through walls. What are you afraid of?”

  I could hear faint sounds from outside, but the roaring in my ears dimmed it out. The speakers installed inside the men’s room suddenly crackled into life; the feature was starting, but we didn’t care. I heard Bobby smother a giggle, then catch his breath.

  It grew silent but for the sound of our breathing—breathing interrupted by our mischievous giggles. I listened to the sighs and catches in Bobby’s breaths, timing my own beat to the tiny slaps I could hear whenever his fist hit his groin. It was soon hitting in a steady rhythm. I felt as if we were mentally linked, caught in the same psychic web, our two separate pleasures becoming one.

  Then I heard a quick gasp as he sucked in his breath. After what seemed a long, tension-filled interval, I saw, accompanied by the sound of his grunt, the sudden quivering appearance on the floor of the adjacent stall of a small white gob…then another, another—like drops of hot wax from a candle someone was shaking.

  At that sight, I felt my vision get blurred. A heartbeat later, my own offering, identical to Bobby’s in every way, joined the floor down between my feet. My heart was pounding furiously, as if I’d just run a sprint. As I tried to catch my breath, I could hear Bobby on the other side of the partition breathing just as hard, a staccato soughing punctuated by the catch of nervous laughter. Amazed at what we’d just done, I gazed down at the irrefutable evidence that Bobby and I were one: we had done the same thing, had felt the same ecstasy at almost the very same moment. And the scattered drops of white on the floor were the perfect seal to our boyhood bond.

  *

  It was the last night of Bobby’s stay. We were talking about what we’d done at the theater.

  “I can’t believe we actually did that, can you?”

  “We would probably be locked away if they found out.”

  “Who’s gonna find out?”

  He was sitting cross-legged on his cot with his back against the wall, and I could tell he was aroused. I could see the thick lump of his erection under his pajama bottoms, a hardness like a jackknife. I wondered if he realized how obvious it was. Despite myself, I found my glance stealing downward at his crotch, and he, noting the direction of my glance, brought his knees up in embarrassment.

  We found ourselves growing keenly aware of each other’s excitement. I saw a trapped look come into his eyes and he began to stammer and swallow.

  I tried to turn my thoughts elsewhere, to dampen my own urge, hoping that it would go away. And I knew he was probably doing the same thing. It became almost a competition, an endurance contest. Neither of us wanted to admit to the desire to masturbate. I was waiting for him to weaken and give in, and with a guilty look on his face find some excuse to go to the bathroom…earning my knowing grin—the grin of a victor for the vanquished.

  I knew it wouldn’t be long now. He had a troubled look on his face. A faint aroma of semen wafted in the air, and I didn’t know if it was from him or me. It made me slightly queasy. Then, his eyes glowing, he swallowed hard.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” he muttered suddenly, getting to his feet.

  I grinned.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “I really do have to go.”

  “Sure you do,” I said pointedly. “You’d better go before you do it in your pants.”

  His hand was resting on his crotch, unsuccessfully trying to hide the mound thrusting up beneath his pajamas.

  “It’s not that,” he insisted, dropping down to his knees, then onto his stomach, hiding it. “That’s all you ever think about.” He sounded peeved.

  “Why don’t you just admit it?” I pressed. “You wanted to beat off, right?”

  “Why don’t you admit it?” His ears were turning red.

  I stared at him then made motions of a boy beating off. He kicked me in the leg. For a long moment we were both silent. When he finally spoke, his voice was little more than a croak.

  “So what if I did? Didn’t you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Didn’t you feel like it?”

  I felt my ears burn.

  “You probably wanna do it right now,” he said.

  I felt as if I were at the start of a roller coaster ride, inching slowly up to the top of the first big hump where the roller coaster is poised briefly, almost at a complete stop, just before the steep, rushing, mind-numbing decline. The roaring in my ears wouldn’t go away. My voice sounded funny as I heard myself say: “Okay, then, I’ll do it if you do it.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “What, here?”

  “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?” Emboldened by the way he flushed scarlet, I pressed on, “Come on, how about it?”

  He remained silent. A doubtful look crossed his face. I changed my tactic to one I knew would have a greater effect. “Ah, you’re just chicken, that’s all.”

  His face colored some more and I felt my own excitement rise.

  “I should have known you’d be too scared,” I taunted.

  “I’m not, either!”

  “You are!”

  “I’ll do it….” He looked up. “…if you go first. How’s that?”

  I felt my scalp prickle. The thought of seeing Bobby naked—and not just naked, but with an erection—was getting me excited.

  I’d never seen another boy’s hard-on, though I’d often noticed the semi-rigid state of some of the boys in the PE showers—a condition which, given the intimacy of the situation, probably couldn’t be helped. Such teasing intimations had only made me yearn to see a boy’s full erection. My knees were weak and trembly.

  It seemed a long time passed before either of us spoke.

  Finally, in a strained, weak voice I said, “How about if we do it together?” I shot a silly grin at him.

  Looking a little scared, he nodded.

  For a few moments we felt weighed down by the heaviness of our decision, unable to say or do anything.

  “Well?”

  Not wishing to appear scared myself, I initiated the action. Getting to my knees, I slipped my T-shirt over my head, then hesitated with my hand on my pajama bottoms, waiting for him to follow suit.

  “Do I have to take my T-shirt off?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I knew that for him, baring his chest was a major hurdle of inhibition.

  Self-consciously, with an expression of reluctance, he slipped out of his T-shirt, then waited a moment, scratching at a spot just below his left nipple.

  “Well?” I said, suddenly nervous myself. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I’m not going till you go.”

&
nbsp; “We’ll do it together, then.”

  Our hands hovered uncertainly about the waist bands of our pajamas. Then, stealing shy glances at each other, we slid our pajamas down and stood bashfully before each other clad only in our white cotton briefs. We snickered nervously, neither willing to take the final step—even though our mutual excitement was outlined in bold diagonal relief under our shorts, only held in check by the elastic waist bands.

  “Go ahead,” I said breathlessly.

  “No, you go. You’re first.”

  “Chicken.”

  “You’re chicken. It was your idea.”

  “At the same time, then.”

  “All right.”

  “One…two…three…go!”

  As if racing, we wriggled out of our briefs, kicked them away and straightened up again. At first we both found it difficult to look at one another, to gaze directly at what most drew our attention. Yet neither did we make any attempt to cover up our nakedness. Now that the last barriers of modesty had been removed, we were struck dumb with shyness.

  There was a special feeling of intimacy in seeing him naked now, and it was quite different from watching a classmate in PE. In the locker room or the showers, nudity was taken for granted. But here in the privacy of my bedroom another boy’s body became also imbued with the “idea” of nakedness, the necessary prelude to the most private acts a boy could perform: bathing, defecation, or masturbation.

  “Well?”

  I thought his penis was the biggest one I’d ever seen in my life, and felt my chest shiver. At the same time I was relieved to see that it looked so much like my own—even down to the swollen veins. It was just as I’d imagined it.

  Poking up flat against his stomach, its bulging glans was glowing a deep reddish purple. At the base of the shaft was a wispy patch of light brown hair much sparser than my own. And hugging the groin tightly were the balls, small and close together, almost as if enclosed in a single sac. A few isolated hairs poked out from them.

  My mind was in a daze. I felt light-headed, as if all this were happening in a dream…in some naughty daydream as I sat doodling at my school desk or reclining in my backyard hammock.