I knew Larry Burton in elementary school. We were in third, fifth, and sixth grade together. When I went to a new school in ninth grade, it was the first time I'd seen Larry since I'd left the sixth grade. He had grown tall and thin and still smiled all the time.
I hadn't grown quite as fast but I smiled when I saw him. His hair was darker, mine was lighter, his dark eyes more penetrating, mine were still the same old gray blue. We immediately stood together under any circumstance that allowed us to stand together. We didn't talk any more than we did in elementary school, but there was a comfort in just being around one another.
Larry was one of the guys I always got along with. I hadn't missed him while we were in different classes and then different schools, but my lack of close friends at fifteen made me happy to see him, and I figured I'd most likely missed him. We shook hands right off and made sure we sat together in Art class and stood together in gym, when we weren't involved in some activity, but we tried to stick together.
In Art class the first week, we each got a box of clay with the intention that we'd create something memorable with it by semester's end. Neither Larry nor I were in possession of any noticeable talent for working with clay, so we spent most of our time creating nonsense to make one another laugh.
Luckily we sat far enough away from the teacher that she rarely wandered back there, so our attempts at humor got more and more outrageous. One day Larry created a rather convincing penis. He did better with this adaptation than anything else he'd done. At first it was funny but when someone looked over, in his haste to hide the obscene object, it tumbled into my lap with Larry's hands tumbled after it.
I don't know why the sight of the penis he created excited me, but it did, but what doesn't excite a fifteen year old. As luck would have it his penis, the clay one, ended up on top of mine, the real and now growing one. As Larry retrieved the clay he also collected me with his hand. The collection stopped as he looked at me and then where his hand was. I looked at him embarrassed that he'd found me out.
Other kids started to notice Larry in my lap, and he crushed the clay penis, dropping it back on the table with a loud thump and a laugh.
"Sorry," he said to me, and everyone went back to creating when they saw he was only doing his usual clowning.
Larry looked at me and I looked at him, being the only ones that knew what the word sorry referred to. I was trying not to be embarrassed and I wasn't sure what he was thinking, but he lost interest in the clay, sitting very quietly, looking out beyond the class. That's when he did it, and I sat there confused with his hand in my lap.
Larry had always been unpredictable. We were constantly wrestling and touching when we were ten and eleven years old, only we weren't ten or eleven any longer. I don't recall every thinking anything of it before. Now, I sat in Art class with him feeling, squeezing, massaging me, while I tried to look like my rapture came from the clay I fondled.
I no longer dared to look at him and he didn't look at me as far as I know, and no one indicated they had a clue. I arranged myself in my pants as I stood, and my obvious display hid up near my belt, undetected. Larry walked out behind me.
"Race you to gym," he said, racing past me.
We stood next to one another at our lockers and changed into our gym shorts. We both left our underwear on but I could see where he was in his because he too was still excited by what he'd done to me. It wasn't mentioned and he bumped and jostled me as he always did when he got dressed first.
As luck would have it, it was raining, and we would watch films in gym class. They called it sex education, but mostly it was cartoons talking about things that made the gym teachers blush. It was boring because all the guys went there hoping to catch a glimpse of it if only for two or three seconds, but they were careful to make the figures devoid of anyting you could recognize as remotely dirty.
We watched these films in one of the small rooms next to the gym. There was one chair, the gym teachers, which he'd have pulled up next to whatever device he was running in order to show us this required information. I sat in the corner next to the wall and Larry sat directly in front of me so he could lean on the wall as well. The other twenty three boys lounged and sat around on the blond wood.
The gym teacher reminded us he wouldn't tolerate laughing or adolescent comments. The lights went off and my education started. I usually dozed off once it got dark. I didn't fall asleep this time.
Larry sat in front of me using my knees to support his back. It's the kind of thing I'd have done if he got the prime seat, which was my back being against the rear wall for support. Once the film started his hand went down the inside of my leg and into the leg of my shorts. In the dark it was far more exciting than in the light.
At first he squeezed, keeping his hand on the outside of my undershorts. He found it, it was hard by the time he got his hand on it, and he squeezed gently. After a few minutes, he let it go. That was the best sex education class I'd had up until he'd let me go. I was surprised when his hand came back, fumbled with the opening to my underwear, slid through and his bear fingers felt my naked prick. My legs spread as wide as I could get them.
We stayed there like that for the rest of the class. He moved his hand up and down, squeezing, feeling the tip, rubbing in the droplets as they appeared, squeezing more. I felt like I was on fire, feared getting caught, feared him moving his hand, the end of class, that the world will end before we could play this game again.
We stood next to each other after class, neither of us could shower. The front of his underwear poked way out this time. I looked at the bulge and was terrified when he peeled them down hooking the elastic under his balls, making his prick stand straight out.
"Touch it," he said, looking around.
I looked around to make sure no one was aware of what was going on. Most boys were in the showers and before I knew it my hand was holding it.
"Squeeze it," he said.
I did.
"Pull on it," he said.
I did. Boys came talking and laughing and turning down our row. I let him go. The elastic snapped as it assumed its position at his waist. I tried to get dressed but really wanted to faint.
"Write down your phone number," he said at the end of class.
The phone was ringing when I got in from school.
"Hello," I said.
"This is Larry, you just get home?"
"Yeah," I said.
"I've been calling. Can I come over?"
"Yeah," I said with an excitement that surprised me.
"Where do you live?"
Send Rick an email at quillswritersrealm@yahoo.com
More Rick Beck Short Stories
Rick Beck Home Page