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| Part 1 by Castgimp |
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| It happens every time. It doesn't take much. It is a simpletrigger, but it is a reliable trigger. Just a glimpse in my peripheralvision is enough to yank me violently backwards in time. It is my junioryear in college. Fall term. Early November. I can smell the sourrancidness of the locker room. I can smell the sweet warm close air of thebedroom we shared in the fraternity house. I can hear Joey's voice. I cansuddenly feel the warm weight of Joey sleeping next to me. It happened again this morning. I was just pulling into the parkinglot at the beach. Whenever I am in San Diego for work I try to take a dayto spend on the beach. I rent a car and drive up Route 5 past La Jolla tothe parking lot at Torrey Pines State Park. I have had remarkable luck withthe weather and the tides. You can't walk the beach at high tide. Thewater comes right up to the cliffs. When the tide is out I like to walk allthe way down past Black's Beach almost back to La Jolla. It takes about anhour to walk all the way to the pier. About half-way there, I stop and takemy clothes off and walk naked on the beach with all the other men. It isthe only beach in the world where I walk around naked. Walking alongunderneath the cliffs, the sea air washing over my usually underwear boundcock and balls, my ass soaking up much needed sun, is one of my favoritethings in the world. It is my gift to me once or twice a year. I walk tothe end of the beach and turn around and part way back I find a rock or apatch of sand and set my naked butt down on my towel. I watch the surfersand the hang-gliders from Scripps, and the old leathery naked men twice myage boldly stroking their semi-erect cocks on the beach. The beautifulnaked boys half my age who stand and pose on the cliffs and then disappearinto the bluffs and canyons to grope and suck and fuck each other fascinateme. This morning the tide is on its way out, and will not be high againuntil evening. The sky is brilliantly blue, and there are no clouds. Ihave been to Black's Beach in November and now it is April and I am backagain, a cherished second visit is less than six months. There is nothingfurther from my mind than college and Joey. And then it happens. Throughthe windshield of my rented car I see him. He is maybe sixteen, maybeeighteen, blond, tan and lean. He looks like he is probably a surfer. Atleast I imagine that he is. He is wearing a pale sun-faded tank top andlong loose cotton shorts drawn at the waist with a knotted cord. His armsare ropy and taut, the muscles in his forearms rigid with the effort ofhauling himself along on a pair of crutches. He has a plaster cast on his left foot and ankle, bright white inthe sun against the tan skin of his toes and thigh. The cast ends justbelow his knee, which is bent, charged with the task of holding his injuredankle and foot up off the ground and out of harm's way as he swings forward.In the instant it takes me to see him, I have already imagined the surfingaccident late one afternoon far along the deserted beach. My cock becomesengorged with blood so quickly and so completely that I am disabledmomentarily from even sliding out of the car so that I can turn and watchhim skillfully swing his broken ankle up into the jeep his friend isdriving. Instead I see him dumb with pain and cold and fear as he writheson the beach in agony, clutching his shin and pulling his thigh to his chestto prevent his ankle from touching the sand. I see him leaning heavily onthe shoulder of his surfing buddy, this red-haired guy driving the jeep, asthey make their way slowly and painfully along the empty beach back towardthe road and the parking lot. I can hear him softly whispering "oh myankle, Jesus, my ankle, oh my ankle, fuck" as they hobble along through thesand, stumbling painfully with the unfamiliar effort of two trying to walkas one. And then, seamlessly, I am back in college and it is November of myjunior year and I am walking half a pace behind Joey so that I can watch hisass move in his jeans as he hauls himself forward on his crutches, his leftankle encased in plaster and trailing him slightly as he holds it carefullyup off the ground out of harm's way. My beautiful injured surfer is gone,sailed away in a deep blue jeep, and I am twenty years old again and I amsprawled naked on top of Joey in his narrow twin bed in our room at GammaDelt. He is on his back and his legs are slightly spread and my middlefinger is lodged comfortably up his asshole, past the second knuckle, and heis pulling on my cock as I watch his long toes extend and then curl backdown in pleasure as they stick out from the end of the cast on his ankle.He is whispering my name softly over and over again, "Mikey, Mikey, Mikey"as I push and probe the warm wet soft flesh of his insides, tickling thatsoft knot of a gland that always makes him moan. Nobody ever called me Mikey except Joey. I was Mike, or more often,I was the second half of "Joey-and-Mike." We were both recruited gymnasts,and we were thrown together as roommates our first year. We hit it offright from the beginning, and stayed together as roommates all four years.I think I was probably in love with Joey from the first moment I met him,though I didn't know it at first. I didn't know what to call my feelingsfor Joey, but I would have been horrified my freshman year if someone hadcalled me queer. We didn't become lovers until our junior year. Our first year as roommateswe didn't even jerk-off together. Each of us, we learned later, jerked-offprivately when the other one was out of the room, always fantasizing that wewere doing it together. I jerked off for an entire year, thinking aboutJoey each time, and it never entered my head that I might be gay. We firststarted jerking off together part way through our sophomore year, after we'dmoved into the fraternity house. It happened mostly I think because we werehardly ever apart. Our schedules and daily habits matched so closely thatneither one of us ever would have ejaculated that year if we had waited tojerk-off until one of us was alone in the room. That was the year that "Joey-and-Mike" became a single name used by nearlyall our friends and teammates to refer to both of us. There was hardly evera need to address one of us without including the other. I don't rememberthe first time we jerked-off together, but I do remember that once itstarted it happened often-almost every night I think. We would each lienaked in our own twin beds on opposite sides of our small room, on our backsbut leaning up on one hip so we could see each other. We never talked aboutit. It just happened. We would jerk-off together and then role over and goto sleep. Part way through that second year I began to suspect that I mightbe gay. I had no interest in women at all, and nothing made me hotter thatwatching Joey jerk-off in the bed across the room. Still, I never imaginedthat Joey was gay, even for a moment, or that there might some day be moreto my sex life with him than pulling our puds together each night after we'dbrushed out teeth. Joey was small and wiry and dark. His size was deceiving, however. Hiscompact Italian body was a powerhouse of muscle and discipline. He was thebest gymnast I ever had the pleasure of working with. He could explode offof the vault like he had been shot out of a cannon. On the rings he wasgraceful and strong and tireless. He was certainly a better gymnast thanme. I was too big, really. My body tended toward the thick and stocky,though I wasn't nearly big enough to play football. I struggled to keep myweight down, and Joey could eat all day and never gain a pound. He burnedit all off in his constant frenzied motion. We both completed successfully on a very strong team, but Joey was alwaysthe star and I was one of the supporting cast members. I contributedvaluable team points, but almost never won an event on my own. Joey won allthe time, and I was happy when he won. He was driven to win in a way that Inever was. I liked winning, but for me the rewards were the camaraderie ofthe other guys and the discipline of constant training and struggle. Itended toward the soft, and I needed the discipline of being part of theteam. Joey, on the other hand, would have gone on whether there was a teamor not. My roots were German and Scandinavian and I hailed from the Midwest. I grewup outside of Chicago, though I might as well have been from Nebraska forall I knew about the world when I went away to college. Joey was a moreworldly person, having grown up in Boston, or at least I perceived him tobe. His familiarity with the world was a constant source of education forme. Joey seemed exotic. The short dark hair that formed a path down hischest and belly toward his crotch and shaded his lower legs and arms andtight firm round cheeks of an ass were as foreign and exciting to me as hisknowledge of opera and the Italian language. Joey's family had some money,and he spoke with neither an Italian nor a Boston accent, yet even his clearplain speech was exciting to me compared to my own flat Midwestern sound.Joey, for his part, had never met anyone quite so naive or sheltered or"pure" as he used to say, until he met me. "Joey-and-Mike" could likely have gone on as roommates who jerked-offtogether and enjoyed each other's friendship and company without more,almost indefinitely, had it not been for one particular gymnasticstournament in the fall of our junior year. The eastern divisionchampionships fell during the first week of November each year, and werefollowed by the nationals in December. That year, we actually stood a goodchance of going to the nationals. Our team was strong, and some of the keycompetitors in our league had been sidelined by injuries. As gymnasts, we were always injured. Pain in your ankles and feet andwrists was a constant. Our room was always littered with the white athletictape that we used to hold ourselves together long enough to get through onemore practice, one more tournament. The tape caused my feet to peel andcallus and peel and callus over and over again. My ankles were taped sooften that the skin on the bottoms of my feet eventually became scarred withhorizontal lines that crossed my arches and instep as if they had beenetched with a knife. My feet and ankles still aren't right all these yearslater. My arches were torn and strained so many times without ever healingproperly that even now when I get out of bed in the morning and first set myfeet on the ground that raw searing pain of torn muscle and tendon shootsthrough the bottom of both my feet and I have to hobble around like an oldman trying not to bend my arches for the first hour I am awake until my feethave loosened up enough to make normal walking possible. One thinggymnastics taught us was the discipline of working through the pain.Anyhow, our team had ridden a bus to Nashua, New Hampshire, for this easternfinals tournament at UNH. We were staying at a small motel near campus, twoof us to a room with a single double bed. It was a set-up with which wewere familiar. Our accommodations when we were on the road were never veryglamorous. Oddly, on the occasions when Joey and I had to share a bed onthe road, our mutual jerk-off sessions came to an abrupt end. The proximityof lying next to each other was perhaps too close for comfort. We each madea special effort to hug the outside of the bed, hiding our hard-ons fromeach other, careful not to let our naked toes or feet touch underneath thecovers. Coach always said no sex the night before a competition, and asalways, Joey and I were faithful to coach's guidance. The sequence ofevents which was to forever change our monastic ways, and in fact changeboth of our lives forever, started that Saturday afternoon. We had reached the last round of the vault, with Joey leading. A guy fromUConn was closely trailing him in points, however, and there was pressure onJoey to nail his last attempt. He was a picture of studied calm anddiscipline. I was a nervous wreck for him. I watched anxiously from thesidelines as he exploded off the springboard, nailed the horse with perfectform, and then spiraled through the air clearing the horse with greatdistance. He came down hard with both feet stuck right together, nailinghis landing perfectly and bringing his explosion of a body to a complete andimmediate stop. He plugged his landing with such force that the sound ofhis heels slapping the mat with all of his spiraling flying energy echoed inthe gymnasium and brought a shocked moment of silence to the loud cavernousroom before the crowd burst into roaring applause. It was the best vault Ihad ever seen him do. He had to know that it was a perfect vault and thatthe event was his now no matter how well the guy from UConn vaulted. Joeyheld the perfect stillness of his landing with his feet together and hisarms flung up over his head facing the judges while the crowd continued toclap. It was the kind of stylish finish for which he was well known. The characteristic face-splitting grin that usually accompanied his bigfinishes was missing, however. And then, I could almost count the beats, atthe moment when he usually breaks his statued pose and trots back to theteam waiting on the side, he didn't. He held his still pose a momentlonger, and then another, his face stony and grim. I knew in my gut thatsomething was wrong, but I just couldn't think fast enough to know what itwas. Then, finally, he moved, stepping forward toward the edge of the mat,and as he did so, he stumbled. He didn't fall, but he pulled his left footup before shifting his weight off of it, and then he lurched forward, comingback down on that foot awkwardly. His face contorted in pain. There was anaudible gasp in the stands and then a hushed and eerie silence as peopleheld their breath and waited for his body to come to rest. Through sheerforce of will he caught himself and hopped onto his other foot two quicksteps to a full stop. I was frozen. My heart was racing and unexplainablyI found myself getting hard. Coach was already on his way out to help him,but rather than waiting for assistance, Joey stepped forward, slowly anddeliberately, grimacing horribly as he did so. Ever the athlete workingthrough his pain, he limped forward. His ankle seemed to nearly give wayeach time he moved forward and put his weight down on it. Coach reached himon about his third painful step and offered his arm and shoulder forsupport, but Joey held him off, raising his arm to keep Coach from comingnearer. "I'm fine," I heard him gut out through clinched teeth as hecontinued to limp all the way back to the bench. I was beside him before he could even sit down. "Jesus Joey, whathappened?" I blurted out. He lowered himself gracefully down onto thebench, balancing on his right foot and holding his left foot out in front ofhim. Only after he set himself all the way down did he expel his breathwith an explosive "Shit!" Coach was kneeling in front of him almostimmediately feeling his ankle and foot and toes and bending and twisting hisankle joint up and down and right and left. It didn't seem to be sprained.Coach was able to rotate Joey's ankle without causing him additional pain.The sight of Joey's long toes in Coach's hands and then Coach's fingerspressing and probing Joey's lifted ankle was making my hard-on unbearable.I held a towel in front of me to try to hide the huge bulge in my tightshorts. A crowd made up of our team and officials from UNH and straymembers of some of the other teams surrounded Joey and Coach. I wantedeveryone to go away and leave me alone with Joey so I could take care ofhim. Coach yelled for some ice and I took the opportunity to disappear intothe locker room with my erection to try to regain my composure. I didn'tunderstand why I should be so incredibly turned on by the sight of Joeylimping off the mat. I filled two bags with ice and briefly held them to mycrotch before I went back out to the gym floor with them. Coach was still ministering to Joey. "Does that hurt?" he asked, poking. "Yes, Jesus, stop, yes, right there." Joey was pulling his ankle backtoward him and away from Coach. "I think you've just bruised the bone Joey.It's not sprained. It doesn't seem to be broken. There's no displacement.It's not swelling. I think the concussion of landing that hard gave you abit of a contusion. Let's get some ice on it. Gimme that Mike. Here, holdthat while I get some tape. That's going to be pretty sore but I thinkyou're going to be all right. Nice vault by the way. I think you ought tocall it quits for today and rest this ankle." "No." "No what?" "No I'm not quitting today. Not yet. I've still got the rings. I can winthat. We can win this title. You can't do it without me. I'm going to dothe rings." "No way Joey." Coach was firm. "You can't dismount on that ankle today.""Yes I can. A bruise isn't going to kill me. Mike can tape me up good sothat nothing falls apart. I can gut out the landing." No one challenged Joey. He spoke with authority in his voice and we allknew that determined voice of his. Short of physically restraining him,there was no way to stop him. And he was right. He could win the rings,and we could win the Easterns and go on to the Nationals. And we couldn'tdo it without him. I sat down on the bench next to him while he sat withhis ankle out in front of him wrapped in ice. I didn't say anything. Wesat there for the better part of an hour in virtual silence as the rest ofthe meet went on around us. Finally he moved his knee over so it wastouching mine. "Tape me up," was all he said. Joey and I had been taping each other's ankles and wrists on a daily basisfor three years. This time, however, I felt the weight of responsibilityfor his well being in a way I had never felt before. With his heel bracedagainst my crotch I wrapped his foot and ankle tightly with white athletictape. I tried to be gentle where it was sore, but he gritted his teeth andgrimaced and held his breath and I felt terrible. "You don't have to dothis, you know," I whispered to him. "I know," came his inevitableresponse, "but I'm going to." To his credit, he walked back out onto themat with barely a limp. I had a hard lump in my throat and a hard lump inmy pants as I watched him go. That was the moment that I knew for sure, forthe first time, that I was definitely in love with Joey. His work on the rings that afternoon was flawless. His last element beforehis dismount was an impressive iron cross into a press planche. He held hisbody perfectly still for five seconds. No one else in the league could holdit that long. His powerful shoulders and arms held him completelymotionless as he hung, suspended in the air, his hips bent at the waistholding his legs straight out in front of him at a right angle to the restof his body. Joey alone on our team had perfect form. His feet werepointed, his long toes sticking out straight as a ruler, his body formingtwo perfectly straight lines. Even with all of the tape of his left anklelimiting his mobility, he managed to extend both feet equally, the nakedright one and the taped one next to it, his two big toes and his heelspressed firmly together. The tips of his longer middle toes were the lastpoint on the line, the furthest extension of his beautiful lean form. To mehe looked like a Roman statue suspended in mid-air. His dark features werefrozen in stony concentration. Almost impossibly there was no movement atall. The strain of holding the cross and then the planche caused most guys'wrists to shake at the end, but Joey held the rings still and pointed histoes and as I watched him I felt warm wet tears running down over my face.At that moment Joey was the most powerful and polished I had ever seen him.I believed he was probably the strongest college gymnast in the country.Long beyond anyone's ability to imagine that he could hold that frozen actof will and strength, he finally dropped his legs down so that his bodyformed a perfectly straight vertical line, and then he pulled himself uphigh on the rings and began to swing to build the necessary momentum for hisdismount. He swung his legs back and forth and back and forth, faster, andthen up over his head and around and over again and then he was airborne.Joey's dismount had the highest level of difficulty of anyone competing inour league at that time. He did two and a half full somersaults and a fulltwist before he landed. His powerful swinging gave him great height. Iheld my breath and watched and counted his feet go over once and twice and athird time before torpedoing back down to the mat with both feet slammedtogether. All I could think about was his ankle. I kept imagining hisankle snapping under the weight of his landing. I closed my eyes at themoment his feet slammed the mat, afraid to see his left foot distorted atsome awful angle beneath his shattered ankle. But then after a moment ofdeafening silence the gymnasium again exploded with applause and I opened myeyes and there was Joey, standing triumphant on the mat with both feetplanted firmly beneath him. His face revealed a complex mix of joy andanguish. I knew that the landing had to hurt. He held his landing for thefull three seconds that the judges require, and then he stepped forwardheavily with his right foot. And then nothing. He seemed afraid to move.It only took me a split second to figure out that just because his footwasn't twisted grotesquely beneath him didn't mean that he wasn't hurt.Coach and I moved with equal speed toward him on the mat and arrived at hisside at the same moment. Instinctively we slid our shoulders under his armsand wrapped our arms around his back. "It's bad," he whispered through gritted teeth. "I think it's broken." We half carried him off the mat, hisright foot touching down periodically as we moved across the floor. Histaped left foot he held up off the ground. Joey's uncharacteristic silencespooked both Coach and I. I knew he had to be hurt pretty bad not to walkoff the mat by himself. Joey always walked through his pain. "I think Ibroke my fucking ankle," he whispered again as we headed toward the lockerroom. Coach wanted to take Joey directly to the hospital, but Joey wantedto wait for the final scoring. We decided to leave his ankle taped tosupport it until we could get him to a doctor. We always traveled with anold pair of wooden crutches that somebody had gone to get from the bus. Allthree judges gave Joey a perfect 10 for his performance on the rings. Hewon the event and the all-around and his points were enough to secure afirst place finish for the team. Hobbled but not bowed, Joey lumbered backout onto the floor towards the winner's stand on the crutches to a standingovation from the crowd. There was an ambulance waiting and with hisfirst-place medal still hanging around his neck, Joey hauled himself outthrough the locker room on his crutches. I wanted to go with him to thehospital, but Coach went with him instead and made me stay behind and goback to the motel on the bus with the rest of the team. We had a celebratory dinner at the Denny's in the mall parking lot across from ourmotel. It wasn't very glamorous, but it was festive. We were giddy withour win but Joey's absence was keenly felt. I was so distracted thinkingabout Joey and his ankle that I barely touched my meal. I worried that Ihad somehow caused his injury by not taping his ankle securely enough or byimagining the worst at the last moment, my image of his twisted anddistorted joint somehow causing him to actually hurt himself. I was wide awake lying on top of the covers staring blankly at the ceilingwhen finally I heard Joey's voice in the hallway and heard a knock on thedoor. I jumped up off the bed, my heart in my throat. I could hear Coach'svoice in the hallway too. Well at least they didn't have to admit him, Ithought with some relief. I had been dreading the possibility of having toget on the bus back to school the next day without Joey. More than anythingI just wanted a chance for us to be alone together. There had been too manypeople around all day. I flung the door open not knowing what to expect.Joey was standing there leaning on his crutches with a big grin on his face. "Well," he said with great bravado in his voice, "they told me I'm going tolive!" There was no cast. His left ankle was wrapped in an ace bandage. Coach, standing behind him, was also grinning. "It's not broken," he saidtriumphantly, following Joey into our room. "I think if Joey rests itproperly and stays off that ankle entirely he'll be all right for thenationals next month. Keeping him off that ankle is your job Mike. I wantyou waiting on him hand and foot." Coach winked at me, still grinning. "Gee thanks Coach," I played along. "But you know Joey does what he wants." "If anyone can influence him it's you Mike." "All right already," Joey interrupted. "Quit talking like I'm not here.I'll stay off it already. Now get out of here Coach. I'm tired. I need toget some sleep. Go away and let me get off my ankle. That bus leavespretty early tomorrow morning." I had to fairly push Coach out of the room. I closed the door and locked itand turned to see Joey lowering himself heavily onto the end of the bed. Hemoved slowly. It was clear he was trying not to jostle his ankle. The grinwas gone from his face. "Oh Jesus Mikey my ankle hurts." He pushed himselfalong the mattress until his back was against the pillows along theheadboard. Then finally he gingerly set his bandaged ankle down on themattress. I sat on the edge of the bed next to him. |
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