As for university, he had gone up to Cambridge the previous autumn in the condition of virgin, though a busy little wanker, and returned at the end of his first year in exactly the same state.
Then, this summer, Stuart had appeared. Not for the strawberry picking, but at the beginning of the week that followed it. John had been assigned for the week to the lettuce plots. Most of the work here would consist of mind-numbing, backbreaking hoeing between the rows of growing seedlings, bent double hour after hour. It was not one of John’s favorite jobs, especially as he was usually on his own. And this Monday began wet. On arrival in the barn he immediately picked up an oilskin cape and sou’wester from the row of hooks, put them on; grabbed a hoe and went into the workshop to sharpen it.
But there, standing by the workbench, his hoe already clamped into the vise and already at work on it with a Carborundum stone, was someone who might have been himself from what could be seen of him—though that wasn’t much. A young figure of medium height, also clad from head to Wellington boots in protective waterproofs.
“I guess I’d better join the queue,” John said in a friendly manner to the back of the other’s head. That caused the head to turn round and a pleasant voice to say, “Oh, hi. You must be John. I’m Stuart. Just starting today.” He offered a hand, which John shook.
“They didn’t tell me about you,” John said. “Not that that matters,” he added hastily. “Hoeing lettuces all on your own is the pits. It’ll be good to have company.”
And it was, after a fashion. Hoeing in the rain was a dispiriting business, a clog of mud and seedlings adhering to the hoe and to your boots and building up till you could hardly see what you were doing among the growing green shoots. But then to look up and see someone else a hundred feet away, as extravagantly dressed as you were, so that you looked like two trawler-men in an Atlantic gale, was quirkily comforting, even if you only exchanged a sardonic wave by way of communication.
They had their coffee break (which Sussex farmers call lunch) and their packed lunches (referred to as dinner) sitting in the barn, looking out at the rain. John learned that Stuart was also a university student. He went to Bristol, about as far away from Sussex as Cambridge was, but in the opposite direction. His family had moved into the village next to John’s just a few months ago. They both liked cricket.
There wasn’t much to be seen of Stuart, bundled up in oilskins. But what there was looked nice: a face that was not in fact dissimilar to John’s. They both had fair complexions and light brown, unruly hair. Both had bright blue eyes, rather on the large side and framed with long thick lashes, which always seemed to have the spark of a smile in them that was ready to ignite at the slightest excuse. Where they were different was in Stuart’s finer bones: straighter, sharper nose (John’s was snub-bier), more prominent cheekbones, and lips which, though no less sensual than John’s rather kissier pair, were a little thinner, and more elegantly sculpted.
It was enough to keep Stuart in the forefront of John’s mind when he masturbated in bed that night—something that he had been prevented from doing during the day, ironically, by the very presence of Stuart, so that by bedtime John was pretty well bursting. When he was ready to come he pulled back the covers, rolled sideways, and squirted his load clear of the bed in four energetic spurts that leapt like tracer fire, catching the final trickle (the afterthought, he called it to himself) in his cupped hand. Cricket practice came in useful sometimes.
By the next day summer had returned, and John and Stuart found each other dressed in shorts and plimsolls and very little else except their shirts when they arrived by bicycle at work. At first John found himself slightly awkward in Stuart’s company, as is often the case when you’ve had a wet dream, or a wank, over someone the night before and have to deal with them in real life in the morning. But pretty soon that feeling was overtaken by a more present lust. Stuart struck John’s eyes as utterly gorgeous. His big blue-check shirt magnificently brought out the color of his lovely eyes. He had a beautiful pair of legs, lightly muscled and lightly tanned, adorned with a light sprinkling of light-catching golden hairs; his calf muscles were like a pair of exotic, elongated fruits awaiting a caress, while his crotch was impressively ornamented with an almost indecently large something that formed a dome in his shorts. Was he wearing a cricketing box, for god’s sake? During their lunch and dinner breaks John had to make an effort to keep the conversation going between them, in order not to be seen to be too obviously running his eyes over Stuart’s body and gazing raptly into the other boy’s eyes. But it did cross his mind once or twice that…no, it couldn’t possibly be true…that maybe Stuart was having a similar difficulty himself.
Stop that,
John told himself.
Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not
that
beautiful.
But John was.
The stoolball match took place the next weekend. Marlpits Farm fielded a team, half male, half female, against Stocks Mill Farm on the other side of the village. Of course, in the best of British traditions, it didn’t matter who won; the important thing was the booze and the grub afterward. Which, this Saturday evening, on trestle tables under the trees, was an impressive array. Pies, quiches, salads, hot roasted chickens on spits, Italian sparkling wine, cider in jugs, and a small wooden cask of Harvey’s Sussex ale.
How it was, or exactly when this point was reached, John never really remembered, but at some point there was Stuart waving an opened but still full bottle of white wine in front of John and taunting him with it. “Take it off me,” he was saying. “Come get it.” And John was making playful but ineffectual dives toward it. But after a few moments John’s dives grew more determined, and Stuart was forced to shift his ground. “Okay,” he said, laughing, “rugby then,” and turned and ran, the bottle tucked under his elbow in imitation of the oval ball.
John followed. At first Stuart went at a teasing jog-trot, zigzagging as he went, with John hopping after, both laughing. Then the pace quickened and they had no breath to spare for laughter. John could feel the wind rush in his face. He was never more than a yard behind Stuart, his fingers just inches out of reach of the wine bottle, or Stuart, whichever it was he was trying to take. But the faster he ran the faster Stuart managed to go, till John thought he had never made such a speed in his life, not even when he’d won the hundred meter sprint on his last sports day at school.
They had left the stoolball pitch and the party far behind now, and were in thick rough grass, running downhill, approaching the tree-hung boundary of the field. From out of sight the cries and half-drunk laughter of their teammates and workmates were fading to an indistinct wave of sound. And then John caught Stuart, almost by chance; not tackling him low, correctly, but in a sort of foul, catching the waistband of his shorts on both sides at once with a hook from his two thumbs.
Stuart fell. There was a tearing sound of cloth, the pop of an exploding button or two, and as Stuart’s shorts first revealed a bottom like a magnificent giant peach, and then came ripping down his thighs, there came another sound: that of Stuart’s suddenly released cock springing upward onto his bare belly like the release of a mousetrap.
Thwack.
Stuart let out a whoop of laughter. “You’ve ripped my sodding shorts, fuck you!” Landing on the ground, facedown, he immediately rolled round to face his attacker, bottle still firmly held under one arm. “Look what you’ve done!”
John looked. At Stuart’s startlingly unclothed crotch his penis jutted forward from out of his pubic bush as uncompromisingly as a wall-bracket. It was at least as big as John’s, though it had no taper, and no foreskin either, finishing in a massive cockhead the color and size of an overripe, oversized red plum. “My god,” said John, “but I hope you’re not blaming me for that as well.”
“Come on now,” Stuart taunted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t got a hard-on, too.” And he reached forward to the spot where he guessed it ought to be, made a grab, and proved at once that he’d been right. “Go on, let’s see!”
John was laughing too now, in sheer delight. He could hardly believe this was happening. “You’ll have to let go of it if I’m to get my fly open,” he protested. But Stuart paid no heed. He served John with the same treatment he’d had himself, yanked at his shorts with both hands till they in turn ripped at the seams, and pulled them roughly down over the boy’s hips, releasing John’s own pent-up penis in its turn. “Jiminy, you’re hung,” he said. “Like a wolf. Like a bear.” He made a grab for it again, and this time felt it naked and pulsating in his hand, his attentions causing John’s foreskin to slide quickly back to reveal his dainty, pointed glans.
“Oh, my god,” John said—almost gasping. “I’m going to come.”
“And so am I,” said Stuart, just realizing it at that moment. He thrust his whole body forward against John, toppling him, till they lay belly to belly on the ground, their two cocks mashed together between them, and there, without further prompting by hand or anything else, they pumped out their hot white floods, which melted together between them into a single slick of sperm that glued them tight, for a moment, as if that might be the way of things for all time to come.
But it was only for a few moments, of course. Muffled voices at a distance called their names from beyond the brow of the field,
Where are you?
Reluctantly they pulled apart. Breathlessly, looking down at them both, Stuart said, “We can’t go back like this. Torn shorts. Matted with spunk and grass…”
John was close to panic as he said, “But how can I—can either of us go home, show up at our parents’ looking like…?”
“It’s okay,” Stuart said, his voice unsteady but trying to be calm. “My parents are away tonight. You can stay over with me—if you want to, that is. Phone your parents from my place and tell them you’ll be back tomorrow.”
John was mightily relieved by all this, but he said, “What about our bikes? They’re right over by the gate. No, wait. We can get out through the bottom of the field, go round by the lane, and pick them up from the outside. No need to go back past the others at all.” Then he remembered to thank Stuart for his merciful invitation.
It was getting to be dusk, and they floundered rather, crossing the uneven tussocky regions beyond the field’s edge, sometimes falling into each other and one having to grab hold of the other to avoid falling. Somehow that helped to bond them and to keep them relaxed in each other’s company, rather than falling into the dark and doubtful states of feeling that sometimes follow the first-in-a-lifetime experience of sex with another boy. They reached their bikes, lying flat just outside the field’s front gate, only just in time. The party was breaking up and beginning to wander in their direction. They mounted quietly and slipped away, without lights, down the twilit lane.
It was only ten minutes to where Stuart lived. He let them in with a latchkey.
Smart house,
John thought, as Stuart gave him a tour of it, a bit diffidently and trying not to seem to be showing it off. By some miracle he still had the bottle of wine with him. They drank it, sitting outside the French windows in the summer not-quite-dark. They had put their two pairs of shorts in the washing machine. They planned to let them dry overnight and restitch the burst seams (which were actually only slightly torn) in the morning. They sat for a long time on the lawn, in their T-shirts to protect them from the light summer-evening breeze, but otherwise naked: barefoot, bare-legged, bare-arsed, barecocked, bareballed. Sipping their wine, they enjoyed the novelty view of each other’s elegant bare legs, which they had half-deliberately spread a little, and of the semi-engorged cocks displayed between them, which drooled lightly onto the seats of the garden chairs, and curved like the ones on statues over the cushions of their chunky, furry balls.
In Stuart’s bedroom they removed their fig leaf T-shirts. “I’ve never done this before,” admitted John huskily. “Gone to bed with anyone.”
“Nor me,” said Stuart. “You’re sure you…?”
“Of course.”
They reached for each other and stood embracing for a long time, teaching each other how to kiss. Then they climbed into bed, or at least onto it—for it was a very warm night—exploring with their fingers the shapes and contours of their slightly different but by now rock-hard cocks. They tried to fuck each other, but didn’t yet know how, not realizing that for tonight at least they were still too tense. Their efforts ended in ticklish, giggling failure, pricks buckling and sticky between thighs. Then Stuart said, “You’ve heard of something called sixty-nine?” John had not, but once Stuart had rearranged himself so that he lay on top of John, head between his legs and cock poking around near John’s chin, it was more than clear what the expression meant, and what he was expected to do next.
It was the most magical experience of John’s life: the feel of Stuart’s hot pulsing prick inside his mouth, the touch of his drum-tight ball sac beneath his fingertips, and the crazy Doppler effect—that the same things were being done to him at the other end. John’s head drove back and forth as he felt Stuart’s doing the same. With a free hand he reached out and stroked Stuart’s warm thighs and calves. Minutes later they came in each other’s mouths in bouncy, salty springs. First John, then Stuart, excited by his sudden mouthful, a few seconds behind. And in all those good things happening to John at once the best of all was thinking about
who
. It was Stuart. That was who. Stuart and no one else.