The Brotherhood

Part I

This is a story of brotherhood and a buddy named Jon, whom I met when we were both just 11 years old. At the time I wasn’t very athletic, at least not in the conventional sense, meaning I sucked at team sports or any sport involving a ball or puck. My problem was coordination. I had none, something I now attribute to the fact that I became nearsighted and wore glasses at an early age. As you can imagine, my lack of athletic skill was a source of embarrassment for me, even shame, and predictably I was hassled for it by many of my male peers.

The thing is, I was no wimp. I was fast and I was strong, for my size, anyway (I have always been an inch or so below average in height). But gym classes in school were mostly devoted to sports requiring dexterity and coordination, rather than strength – basketball, softball, soccer, hockey and so on. I fared better at football, as long as I wasn’t called on to throw or kick the ball. Catching a football is easier than, say, catching a baseball, and though I fumbled a fair number of passes, I was unstoppable when I managed to hold onto the ball.

But I was in my element in short-distance running, always finishing in the top two or three. I fared pretty well in gymnastics too, especially the apparatuses requiring strength, like the rings or the horse. But what I most looked forward to in gym during the school year was wrestling. I wasn’t the strongest kid on the mat, but I was by far the best wrestler among the boys who approximated me in weight, and I pinned a lot of heavier guys too. Beating me at wrestling required at least a 15 pound advantage, and even then it cost my opponent every ounce of strength he had.

It was Jon who helped me learn to value my power and virility as a male. He was similar to me in size, not quite as broad and muscular as I was, but wiry and agile. And he was a phenomenal athlete. Lots of guys were bigger and stronger than he was, but when Jon strode onto any kind of playing field, he did so with the poise and confidence of a truly gifted athlete, and the respect afforded him by the other players was palpable. If athletic talent alone was the criterion by which one boy taunted another, I had every reason to expect that Jon would taunt me mercilessly.

But he didn’t. For Jon’s gift wasn’t just athletic prowess. It was a self-assuredness that is exceedingly rare in a boy that age. Taunting me only served a purpose if there was some essential insecurity that might be compensated for at my expense. Jon had no such need. Astonishingly, he seemed to admire my prowess in speed and strength. He actually congratulated me when I beat him in the 100-yard dash. And the first time I pinned him in wrestling, he grinned at me from his vanquished position on the mat, then extended his hand for me to pull him to his feet. "Man, you creamed me!" he said when he got to his feet, and there wasn’t a hint that he felt in any way diminished. I was dumbfounded.

Jon and I became buddies. Although the "boy code" permitted Jon to claim superiority due to his vastly greater athletic prowess, he showed no inclination to relate to me in any way other than as a complete and total equal, and I cherished him for it. We starting going to each other’s houses after school, and more often than not we would wrestle. But this was a whole different sort of experience from the wrestling I did at school. I enjoyed wrestling at school, enjoyed the feeling of power and prowess it gave me, but there was a manic quality to the experience because I was primarily motivated by anxiety – anxiety to prove that I wasn’t a wimp, that I owned a rightful place among boys, that I was worthy of their respect. With Jon there was no such anxiety. He made it clear that he admired my masculine prowess, every bit as much as he was entitled to my admiration for his. Instead of anxiety, I discovered a new and powerful sense of intimacy when I wrestled Jon. Soon I began getting an erection when we wrestled. I was embarrassed at first, and tried to hide it from him. But in truth I suspected he wouldn’t mind if he knew. In fact, it occurred to me that he might actually like it.

My first erotic dreams were of Jon. Not surprisingly, they involved wrestling – naked wrestling. It isn’t often that one’s dreams and fantasies are later replicated in real life, but amazingly they were with Jon. We started sleeping over at each other’s houses, and the intimacy intensified steadily. At his house we slept in sleeping bags on the plush carpet floor of the basement, which gave us more privacy than his bedroom because it was two floors down from the other bedrooms of the household, and there was a door at the top of the stairs that we could close. The first time I slept over we stayed up late watching TV together in the basement before going to sleep. When we started to doze off, Jon roused himself to his feet, turned off the TV, and retrieved his sleeping bag, which he untied and rolled out on the floor. I followed suit, and when Jon started to undress, I did too. I felt a rush of excitement watching him strip down to his underwear, and stripping down myself in front of him, both of us acting elaborately casual. I was about to go for the pajamas my mother had packed for me when I saw Jon stretch himself out on his sleeping bag, wearing only his underwear. It had never occurred to me one could sleep that way and I was thrilled, immediately embracing this new and erotic lifestyle as my own (I haven’t worn pajamas since). Jon turned off the lights and we talked for a while, and eventually he fell asleep. I, on the other hand, was too stimulated to sleep. I lay in the dark, transfixed by the sound of Jon’s breathing, then his soft snoring. I loved the sound of it. All of my senses were heightened to his presence beside me. I could smell him, the faint scent of shampoo in his hair, his boyish body scent (too young still for the truly ripe body odor of older boys). I wriggled closer to him in my sleeping bag, as close as I dared, and tried to see him through the dark, but it was pitch black in the windowless basement. I could feel his body heat, though, and the moist heat of his breath. I was dying to touch him, and actually extended my hand over him, bringing it as close as I dared in the dark, but I was afraid to wake him. That’s the last thing I remember of that night before falling asleep.

It’s interesting how the feeling of intimacy that night stands out in my memory among all the subsequent sleepovers. Interesting because it became much more physical than that. We would wrestle before turning in to sleep, and we would undress before turning in to sleep, and soon the wrestling and the undressing merged into one activity. I think I was the first to take it to the next level. I remember we were on our knees facing each other, both wearing t-shirts and gym shorts, and I pulled Jon toward me by the back of his neck, dropping him onto all fours so I could press my chest and stomach against his back and lock my arms around his midsection. In doing so his shirt crept up, exposing the lower half of his torso, and I pressed my cheek against the warm bare skin of his back. Then, without thinking, I straightened up and pulled his shirt all the way off of him, turning it inside out as I pulled it over his head and arms. He was on me in an instant, clawing at my shirt, then rising to his feet in front of me as I kneeled, pulling my shirt up and off of me. Our wrestling resumed with new intensity as we pressed against each other, intoxicated by the feeling of bare chest against bare chest, and bare belly against bare belly. I rolled onto my back with Jon on top of me. He straddled my crotch on his knees, our hands locked together, gazing intensely into each other’s eyes, breathing hard into each other’s faces. 

And then he did the most incredible thing. He slowly lowered his pelvis and pressed his groin directly against mine. I went nuts, my actions now driven by raw lust and instinct. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tightly, pressing against the full length of his body. I clutched his ass with both hands and began to grind against the firm bulge between his legs. Next thing I knew my hands were under his gym shorts, gripping his warm, muscular butt cheeks through the thin cloth of his briefs. Then his shorts came off, then mine, and we were naked except for our underwear, bucking and grinding against each other. By this time I had a raging erection, and so did he, and I could feel his hard cock against mine through his briefs, and he could feel my hard cock against his through mine, and we couldn’t care less that the other knew, in fact we were glad, ecstatic even…

Well, maybe we were a little sheepish with each other later, but it didn’t last long. We never talked about the erotic aspect of the wrestling, we just talked about "wrestling", and we did it because it was "fun". As for the undressing, we didn’t discuss that either, in fact we were very careful to make it seem spontaneous, as if we just happened to end up mostly nude in the course of wrestling, and it was completely natural and unpremeditated. We never did wrestle completely nude, but as I later discovered, I actually found wrestling in briefs more erotic – the potential for nakedness excited me more than the finality of nakedness itself. 

The thought of Jon naked thoroughly inflamed me. I saw him naked sometimes in the locker room at school, but usually in quick peeks while changing hurriedly back into street clothes before the bell, and in any case it wasn’t very cool to gape at him in the presence of a bunch of other guys. Then one time, when we were alone at his house, Jon called to me from the shower and told me he was out of soap, and could I get him some from the other bathroom. I walked in to bring him the soap and there he was in the shower stall, the glass door open, and he turned to face me, reaching to take the soap from me. The sight of him naked and wet in the shower, totally exposed and completely unselfconscious, took my breath away. I was turning to leave when he asked me something, and when I answered he immediately continued the thread of the conversation, and it was obvious he intended for me to stay while he showered, so I sat down on the seat of the toilet and watched him shower, conversing with him but not really paying attention to the conversation, my heart racing a mile a minute. 

It only happened that one time, but it stayed with me forever. I was dying to repeat the experience, to reverse roles so he could watch me while I showered, and I especially wanted for us to get naked and shower together. But with the exception of that one time, there was always someone else around and about the house, and it would have been awkward and suspicious for the two of us to cloister ourselves in the bathroom while one or both of us showered. So instead I played out the scenario in my fantasies and dreams, dozens of times, wishing desperately we could do it for real, but the right opportunity never seemed to present itself.

And then we went off to camp together, for the very first time.