Mr. Nash-Will-Dad wants me to go into Boston with him, so he can show me where he works and explain the insurance business to me. He says that I could have a job as an office boy and, with his help, work my way up. He wants me to spend the night before we go to Boston, at his house. It seems that his wife has gone to New York City for a few days to do her fall shopping.

I ask him why it is necessary to stay at his house. He says that that way, he wont have to pick me up and wait for me to get ready. We can get an early start. I ask what he is going to tell David. The truth, he says, only not all of it. He has been helping out at the high school in the career education program, talking to kids in town who might be interested in becoming business majors in college.

“I’m not in school, much less going to college,” I remind him.

“But you are thinking of going back to school,” he says.

“I am?”

“Well, you should be. And if you don’t, you can at least think about a job with me, can’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“I’ve told David, that you have developed an interest in the insurance business, and that I invited you over for dinner the night before, so that I can get to know you.”

“You’ve already told him that I’m coming?”

“Yes. I figured that if you said no, I could just tell him that something came up that you needed to do.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he didn’t remember you very well.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

I tell him that I don’t think this is a very good idea, but he is very persuasive. That figures, I suppose. He wears me down and I agree. We are going to have some time in Boston to see the city and go to a play in the evening. Besides, he kept licking the side of my neck and wouldn’t stop until I said I’d do it.

On Wednesday evening, I arrive at seven. As planned. Mr. Nash-Will-Dad has heated up a casserole his wife left for them. There is little table conversation. He tries to get David and me talking, but his son appears to be distracted, like his thoughts are far away. His dad asks him if anything is wrong. David says that he’s thinking about a paper he has to write for Mr. Blossom, the social studies teacher.

After dinner, we all watch TV in the den. Mr. Nash makes no attempt to look like he’s getting to know about my interest in the insurance business. Obviously, we can’t talk and act like we normally would. We are just waiting around for bedtime. Mr. Nash is sitting in his chair and David and I are on opposite ends of the couch. After a while, David says that he is going to work on his paper and he goes upstairs. Will comes over to me and gives me a kiss.

“Aren’t you afraid that David might come back?” I ask him. He says that I’m right. The house has wall to wall carpeting and you can’t tell when someone is coming. He goes back and sits in his chair.

Around eleven, David reappears and says that he’s going to be bed. The plan is that Will and I go upstairs. I am in the guest room. I am to wait one hour and then go to Will’s room. If David sees me in the hall, I’m to say that I’m looking for the bathroom.

I get undressed and into the bed, leaving the light on so I wont fall asleep. I put on the radio, playing it very softly. Time passes so slowly when all you are doing is passing time. That’s all I’ve been doing since seven o’clock. I don’t know why I let Dad talk me into this. Well, maybe I thought it would be an adventure, but so far it has been simultaneously dull and nerve wracking. I’m so edgy, afraid that I might do something to expose what’s going on to David.

The hour is finally up. I get out of the bed and go to the door. I am wearing only a pair of briefs that I bought for the occasion. I turn off the light, before very slowly opening the door and trying not to make any noise. The hallway is dark except for a light under Will’s door at the other end of the house. I have to pass in front of the door to David’s bedroom. I tiptoe down the corridor. I almost cease to breathe, but nothing happens. I open Will’s door as carefully as I closed the one to the guest room.

Will is sitting up in bed reading. It is a bit of a shock to see him in this feminine room. There is a lot of pink and ruffles and there is a naked man in the middle of it. At least I presume that he is nude, although I can only see him from the waist up. He smiles and pulls back the covers for me to get in beside him. I drop my underpants and climb in. Will turns off the light and we do the usual things. He is less noisy than usual. Sometimes I think that he grunts and shouts for the pleasure of hearing himself. But tonight he is quiet.

After we are done, Mr. Nash sends me back to the guest room so that we wont fall asleep by accident and get discovered in the morning. I open the door and immediately see a light from under David’s door. I go back and tell Mr. Nash. He says not to be silly and to go ahead. After all, I’ve just gotten up to go to the bathroom. I start out again, being stealthy and holding my breath. It takes forever to cross the few feet to the entrance to David’s room, but then I am past it. I walk more quickly to the bathroom, which I use. Now, If David sees me, I can truthfully say that I have been to the bathroom.

When I am finished sitting on the toilet, I don’t worry anymore about the sounds that I am making. I walk quickly to the room that I’m using and go in. It is pitch dark. I don’t remember where the light switch is. I am feeling around for it on the wall, when, suddenly, I am seized by a pair of strong arms. I know at once that it is David. I don’t dare call out, I don’t want there to be a scene. Mr. Nash’s son isn’t hurting me, and I don’t want to provoke him to hit me either. He pulls down my briefs and puts his hand on my bottom, feeling, I know, the lingering dampness from my having just washed myself.

David propels me to the bad and pushes me down on it. Pulls off my briefs and puts me on my stomach. I am pretty sure that he intends to fuck me, because I hear him spitting. I don’t mind the idea of that, although I hadn’t thought about doing it with someone my own age. I am somewhat relieved, because when he first grabbed me, I had thought that he wanted to hurt me. David enters me in one stroke.

Its over quickly. Then I feel wetness on the back of my neck. He’s crying. “I’m sorry,” he says. ‘I shouldn’t have done that, forced you. Have I hurt you?”

“No. You just scared me that’s all.”

“I’m so angry at my father, treating me like a fool. All the suggestions that I should have you for a friend, but for his sake. That baloney about you being interested in insurance. Bringing you here when my mother is away. And those clothes, I have the same shirt and the same shoes in my closet. He bought them for you at Applewood’s didn’t he? How could he think that I wouldn’t notice that? Christ, if I’d worn them last night, we would have looked like twins.”

“So what did you do it for?”

“I thought you’d yell. He’d some in. Then, … I don’t know.”

“He brags about you all the time.”

“It’s not me he’s proud of, he’s proud of himself. He thinks that he’s done it. Made me an athlete and popular.”

“I don’t think so. I think that he really cares for you,” I tell David. “He seems very sincere to me, when he talks about you.”

“Actually, I’ve thought about being with you like this, before.”

“When, before?”

“Off and on, all through high school.”

“You told your father that you didn’t remember me.”

“I lied. When he said you were coming over, I had an idea about what might be going on.”

We lay there for a while without talking. After a few minutes, David started touching me, gently stroking. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have done it like that, without asking.” But he didn’t stop touching me. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t move away from him either.

We talked all night long. When it was dawn, I said, “You’d better go to your room. You don’t want your father to find us like this.”

“I don’t?” he replied.

“I don’t.”

“He wont. He gave me the job of waking you up and making sure that we are both ready to go by 7:30.”

“What if we fall asleep?”

“Come on, we’ll go to my room. I have the alarm set.”

So we go to David’s room and get into his bed. I do go to sleep and am jolted awake by the alarm clock. David grabs me and wont let me get up. I try to twist away, but he is too strong for me. He is on top of me and kissing me on the mouth. He comes up for breath.

“We better get up,” I tell him.

“I am up,” he says and I can tell that he is. But then he gets off me and we go into the bathroom together. We are in the kitchen drinking orange juice, when Dad appears at 7:30 on the dot. The automatic coffee maker has done its thing and Dad slugs down a cup. We hurry away, first dropping David off at the high school, and then on to Boston.

*****

The rest of the day goes as planned. When we get to Mr. Nash’s office, I see his name in gold paint on the door, Thomas W. Nash, Vice President, Marketing. I tell him that I didn’t know that insurance was sold at markets. He laughs and explains that marketing is concerned with all aspects of selling a product. These include research, advertising and sales. I learn a lot more about it, but it is really boring. Everything he shows me about that business seems dull to me. So many people spending so much time with so much paper. It’s incredible in a way. How can people want to spend their lives like this? How can they stand it, I wonder.

We have a better time in the afternoon, walking around Beacon Hill and having diner in a little Italian restaurant where they serve food that I never thought was Italian, but is. It is very good, too. Then the play, The Knights of the Round Table, is good, except that I am so tired that I am afraid of going to sleep. The more I concentrate on trying to stay awake the harder it is. My eyelids keep falling down and I have to think hard to push them up again.

I do sleep in the car on the way back home. I apologize when we get to my place and Will wakes me up. He smiles and says, “That’s all right, I don’t mind.” There is no one on the street, so he gives me a hug and a kiss, right in the car. His touch is different from David’s. David’s is all strength, while Will’s is strong and gentle at the same time.

Back in my apartment, I practically jump out of my clothes, throw them on a chair and dive into bed. I’m asleep in almost ten seconds. Then the phone rings. It is only fifteen minutes later.

It is David. He wants to see me tomorrow. He asks for directions to my place, he’ll be here at seven. I’ll just be getting off work at Ned’s, I tell him. He’ll meet me there. I hang up, roll over and go back to sleep.

In the morning, I wonder why I agreed to see David Nash. I was too tired to think and he really didn’t give me a chance to say no. He didn’t ask, he just said he was coming. I like him OK, but he’s only a kid, all thrashing about, more energy than brains. I suppose that the boys my own age will grow into men I might be interested in. I hadn’t considered that before. I don’t think that they’ve managed it yet, though. Anyway, it’s too late, I’m stuck with David tonight.

He arrives a couple of minutes early and has to wait while I finish washing pots. He talks to Ned and some of the customers, who know that he is on the football team. Ned seems really pleased that David has come for me. I can’t figure that out at all. Unless he thinks that a football player can’t possibly be gay or a switch hitter, which is more accurate but the wrong sport. Or, maybe Ned thinks that I’m changing my ways, or might, and this is his way of encouraging me. It’s hard to tell, because Ned has never acknowledged that he knows I’m gay, in the first place. But he does know, really.

“Are you done?” David asks.

“Go ahead,” Ned says.

I am finished anyway, but David was busy talking and I was daydreaming, or evening-dreaming, since it isn’t day anymore. I put on my jacket and we go outside.

“Come on,” he says.

“Where are we going?”

“To the pre-game rally at the high school. I have to go. Everyone on the first team has to be there.”

I sigh, to myself I thought, but David must have heard. “Come on,” he repeats, “you’ll have a good time.” He puts his arm through mine and starts me moving. Kids can be physical with each other and nobody minds. The younger you are, the more of this you can do. If boy babies kiss each other, its cute. When they’re six, they can’t do that anymore. In junior high, the boys are always touching each other, which is fine. Then in high school, you’re not supposed to do it as much, except in certain situations, like in sports and someone does something good, you can pat his ass and hug him. Even then, high school kids can do some things that older people wouldn’t be able to do.

Off we go, arm in arm, high school buddies out on a Friday night. Right. It’s gotten a lot colder since the sun went down. It’s going to be really cold tonight. My left arm feels the chill, while David’s arm is keeping my other arm warm, and that feels good, except I’d rather be warm all over. But, instead, here I am, walking a half mile to the high school to go to a dumb football rally.

As soon as we get to the gymnasium, where the rally is to be held, David leaves me. He has to go up on the stage they’ve erected at one end of the gym. He says not to leave without him, that he’ll find me when its over. Terrific.

What joy to be here, part of a mindless, milling, mass. No one pays any attention to me, because I am the right age and look like I belong. There’s a thought. The cheerleaders bounce in. The attention of the crowd becomes a little more focused, although many are still looking around to find someone to wave to, so that they, themselves, will be noticed.

The organized cheering begins. Why do people want to be told what and when to cheer? How can they stand it, I wonder. The cheerleaders are in the midst of, “Barry, Barry, he’s our man. If he can’t do it, Stan can. Stan, Stan, he’s our man. If he can’t do it, …” There is a prescribed order to this recognition of the starters. Defense then offense, interior line then ends, back field in order of brilliance, the captains last. David is third from last. I join in, “David, David, he’s my man. If he can’t do it, his father can.” I don’t yell too loud and no one notices, or can’t figure out what I mean. I laugh, mostly to myself.

That gives me a bit of a fun. Sometimes, you have to make your own good time. This one is extinguished by the speeches. Every stupid line, things you’ve heard a million times before, is cheered, madly. There is some term for over used expressions, but I forget it. Sounds like clique, which this group isn’t, I don’t think. How big can a clique be?

The principal’s speech is the worst. He says that at our high school, football is a part of the students’ education. If this event is educational, I wander for what. From watching all those games with Walter, like I did last Sunday, I can see how maybe the players get something out of playing. Maybe the spectators would, if there was less noise and they really thought about what they were seeing. But this is weird.

I work my way toward the side of the mob, so that when it leaves I wont get caught up in it. I look at the kids, mostly younger than I, now. The freshmen look like babies, and I felt so grown up when I became a freshman. It feels strange to remember that.

It takes David a few minutes to find me when the rally ends. We leave at the back of the crowd, with his jock friends and some of their girl friends. “You remember Bobby,” David says to some of his teammates. “Yeah. Sure,” they reply. They accept that I am David’s friend and, therefore, acceptable in their company, but they have no interest in me otherwise.

Our half of this group heads downtown, the rest go in the other direction, toward their homes in the outlying residential districts. Every so often, part of the group breaks off. The sounds of parting crack in the cold air, “See you tomorrow … Later ... So long,” and wisecracks, mock insults, predictions of victory tomorrow.

We pass the YMCA and enter a section of houses. Soon there are only four of us in our group. We stop at a corner. One of the players says to David, “Are you going to stay at my house tonight?”

“Thanks, no,” he answers. “I’m going to Bobby’s.”

They enter the side street. David takes my arm like before. “Your staying at my place?” I ask him.

“If that’s all right with you. I’m dying to see it. It’s so unusual.”

“Wont your father wonder where you are?”

“No. I told them that I would be staying over with someone on the team.”

“What if they call to check?”

“I didn’t tell them who. Besides, that’s what I say when I’m going to stay at a girl’s house, like when her parents are away. It’s like a code, ‘don’t ask.’ So they don’t ask. Is it much further, my hands are freezing.”

I’ve got my hands in my jacket pockets, that helps a little. I should have worn a sweatshirt too. It takes another five minutes to get to my apartment. I open the bulkhead doors and go down the cellar steps first. There is another door at the bottom. David follows close behind me in the dark. I tell him to say where he is until I put on a light. Then I lock the bulkhead door and close the other one. David is looking around.

“Do you want anything?” I ask.

“Yes, you. Come here.”

I toss my jacket on a chair and go over to him. He puts his arms around my waist. “I want to undress you and I want you to resist me a little.”

“What?”

“I want you to push against me, like you were trying to stop me, but not very hard, not effectively.”

“Why?”

“You remember when you were at my house, and in the morning we kind of wrestled a little? I liked that. I liked the feel of your body, the strength and hardness. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. I’ve been wanting to do this ever since.”

“My body? Hard?”

“Yeah. Put one hand on my chest and push, Now with your other hand touch your own chest.”

I see what he means. Meanwhile, David is fumbling with the top button on my shirt. I try to hinder him a little, like he asked me to. I put my hands on his arms and try to push them away. I can feel his muscles tighten. His muscles are a lot harder and a lot stronger than mine. “That’s good,” he says. His fingers feel icy cold on my skin.

It is odd watching this boy taking my shirt off. The other night it was dark. He is a good deal bigger than me. David must weigh about 175 to my 130. He is at least four inches taller, man sized. But, in the light, his youth is an inescapable fact.

He has to seize my arm to undo the button on the cuff. I grab the wrist of his other hand and try, not very hard, to prevent him from doing it, or rather, undoing it. He pulls my shirt off and touches me with his frigid hands. “That’s cold!” I exclaim, twisting away from him.

David moves quickly around to my back, undoes my belt and the top button of my pants. Plunging his hands into my crotch, he says, “I know how to warm them up.” We struggle and fall onto the bed. He is on top of me, his hands in place. My squirming does no good, except maybe to speed up the warming of his fingers.

He sits on top of me to remove my shoes and socks. My trousers and briefs are dragged down my legs. I kick a little to make it difficult, but he wraps his arm around me at the thighs and pulls everything down, then at the knees, then at the calves, then at the ankles and the pants are removed.

He pulls me off the bed and stands me back up, holding me at the waist, feeling my body with one hand, then the other. I lean back and push against his torso or his arms. I try to take his arm from around me, but I can’t. He is still wearing his football jacket with the school letter sown on the breast. As I rub against him, I feel the cold metal of the zipper, the roughness of the fabric.

David says that he is really enjoying what we are doing. He asks me to continue to struggle with him as he takes off his own clothes. When that is done, I tell him that I want to get the skin lotion.

“What’s that for?” he asks. I explain and he says that he is going to use spit. We keep up the game, even through fucking. He has a hold on each of my wrists and I squirm around as though I’m trying to shake him off, but I am careful not to, of course. Every once in a while, I get an unusual sensation from doing this, almost like I need to pee.

After he comes, he gets my left arm behind my back and my legs in a scissors with his own. In this position I couldn’t stop him from jerking me off; except, of course, by using my mind to think myself somewhere else. Doing something else like washing pots at Ned’s diner. That’s a sure turn off. But why would I want to do that? Instead, I grab a handful of his hair and get into the illusion that he wants to create.

*****

I sleep the whole night through. What is strange is that I am aware that I am sleeping, really different for me. I’ve never had that experience before. In the morning, I’m poked awake by David. I wonder if we are still playing, but David wants me to get up. We have things to do, he says.

I find out that we are to go to Mass. “But you aren’t Catholic, are you?” I ask him.

“The whole team goes to Mass on Saturday morning, before the game.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s a tradition that has been going on for a long time.”

“Probably, some of the Catholic kids used to go and then the rest thought that it would be a good idea, for the unity of the team, if they all went,” I suggest.

“Could be. I don’t think anyone knows, now, how it started.”

I think that it fits right in, but I don’t say anything. The rally, the game which the kids take so seriously, how when one of them gets hurt the opposing spectators yell, “Hit ‘em again, hit ‘em again, hit ‘em again, harder.” The players going all together to a church that more than half of them don’t believe in.

I could say no to going, but it is clear that David really wants me to. I’m a sucker for someone wanting me, I guess, and I don’t have anything else that I have to do. So I go along, I listen to them all repeating the same phrases over and over, each time the priest pauses in a reading. It’s like cheering, except quieter.

When the Mass is over, David says that we’re to go to brunch at the Knights of Columbus. “Isn’t that just for the team?” I ask him, but he says that the guys bring friends all the time and no one else would notice. I feel pretty uncomfortable about it.

We have to stand in line to get our food and then take it to one of the long tables that have been set up in the hall. We sit with other kids who are on the first team. It is obvious that I don’t belong there and I don’t see anyone else who doesn’t look like a football player, but no one seems to mind. Some of the freshmen and sophomores don’t look like football players either, but they aren’t sitting at this table, and most of them probably never will.

After the brunch, the whole group heads to the high school to get ready for the game. We arrive before any of the fans. David wants me to go into the locker room with him. I think the coaches will throw me out, I tell him. He says that he’ll just get me through to the playing field, so I wont have to pay to get in. After the game is over, he wants me to wait for him at the entrance to the locker room.

It doesn’t work though, because no one has been let in yet and the gate keepers see me and make me get out. More embarrassment. So I have to buy a ticket after all. Then they open the gate for the first people who have arrived. I find a place way up at the top of the stands. It is a long while before the game starts. I see Mr. and Mrs. Nash arrive, at least I think that it is Mrs. Nash, since she is with him. I’ve not met her before. They sit below me and to my right. I don’t think he has noticed that I’m here.

The game is full of blunders; fumbles, slips, wobbly passes, shanked punts. Our team beats Winthop 25 to 13. David scores one touchdown, but does not have a particularly good day. He only has one long run, for twenty yards. The rest are mostly two or three yards, with a couple at six or seven.

He is happy enough, though, when he comes out of the locker room. He brings me an apple from the bushel that the Boosters Club provides for the players. As we walk toward his house, he tells me that he has a date tonight for a dance at the country club. He says that he can call a girl and we can double date. I tell him that I don’t want to go.

“Come on,” he says. “You’ll have fun.”

“I wont. I’m not interested in going out with girls and I’m not going to do it.”

“It’s fun to fool around with girls, You should try it.”

“It’s not for me.”

People will think that you’re queer, if you don’t.”

“I am queer, for Christ’s sake.”

“But people don’t have to know it. If you get married and have a family, no one will think that you are. Then you can have a good job or a profession and do well."

“I’ll just have to get a job where it doesn’t matter.”

“What sort is that?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find something.”

“Well, you better think about it,” he says, but he gives it up for now. “Come to my house tomorrow morning, then.”

“I can’t, I have a date.”

“I thought you didn’t go out with girls.”

“My date isn’t with a girl.”

“Are you seeing my dad?”

“No, Someone else.”

“Who?”

“None of your business.”

“I’d tell you who I’m going out with.”

“Do you want me to tell other people that I’m going out with you?”

“No!”

“I thought not.”

“You could tell me who it is, though.” But David laughs to show that he doesn’t mean it. “Can you come over tomorrow night? I can’t go out on school nights and, if you don’t come, I wont get to see you until next Friday.”

I end up promising to go over there about seven. Then we split up, because he lives out on the Neck, which isn’t where I’m going. I only get a little ways, when I look back and notice that a car has stopped to give him a ride.

When I get home there is a letter for me lying on the table. Murray must have brought it down. It’s from Alan.

I don’t tell Walter about my letter from Alan. Instead, I ask him what he thinks of David’s wanting to play this game of pretend struggle. What Walter tells me is fantastic.

He says that there are many people who play this game. It is called S and M, which stands for sadism and masochism or slave and master, except that the slave is the masochist and the master is the sadist, so the S, in S and M, stand for opposite things, which is confusing. He says that David was playing the master, a person who enjoys controlling another person. The slave enjoys being dominated, and some slaves want to be disciplined, even punished, humiliated, tied up, all sorts of things. But it is the slave who is really in control. There are signals that the slave uses to get the master to be rougher or less rough or to stop the game for a while. If the master doesn’t obey these signals, then the slave wont play the game with him any more, so the master must comply. The signals are never obvious things like, “stop,” or, “don’t do that,” because they want to be able to use those words as part of the fantasy. There is a lot more to it, but I don’t remember it all.

I ask Walter if these people are sick. He asks me if David and I are sick. I don’t think that we are, but we don’t do most of the kinds of things Walter described. Walter says that it is only a matter of degree. If we wanted to do a little more, would we be sick then, he asks. Walter thinks that most people play fantasy games and don’t even know it. It is OK as long as the people are willing participants and no one is seriously injured or permanently damaged. He says that there are some people who are sick and you need to watch out for them. The ones, who don’t think that they are playing a game, can be the most dangerous, he says.

Walter asks me if I would like to play the same game with him, that I played with David. I tell him that I don’t think so. He seems a little disappointed. I tell him that I like what we already do together. “Don’t you ever want to try anything different?” he asks. I tell him that I don’t want to do any of the things that he told me about today.

Walter seems a little out of sorts, so I leave early, a good thing because I would like a little time to myself at my own apartment, before I go to the Nashes’ house. While I am lying on my bed thinking, I realize that I may have been playing the game with Walter all along, The way I stay naked and run errands for him could be viewed like that. I also realize that I may be selfish, too, wanting to have sex with practically every man who will have me, without any thought for Alan’s feelings. I think about these things for so long that I end up not knowing what is selfish and what isn’t, what is fantasy and what isn’t.

I am glad to leave and go to see David, and I will see Mr. Nash/Will/Dad too, I suppose. It is about a four mile walk to their house, because it is on the other side of the harbor. I have to go down past Ned’s and the Catholic Church, and then over the causeway to the Neck, that is like a little island, except for the narrow causeway, with the ocean on both sides. This is also where the only public beach is. At the end of that road, I bear left and take the second right up the hill. The Nash house is the third on the left.

It is Will who opens the door. He is startled to see me. “Is anything wrong, Bobby?” he asks me. I tell him that there isn’t, that David asked me to come over. I can see that he is relieved. “I’m glad that you have become friends, when did this happen?” he wants to know.

“The morning I stayed over here. You sent him to wake me up. We got talking, then,” I tell him. He says that he had hoped that something like that would happen, but had thought that it hadn’t.

Then Dad calls upstairs, “David, you have company!”

David comes to the head of the stairs and part way down. When he sees that it is me, he stops and says, “Come on up.” I smile sheepishly at Will-Dad and go up.

We go to David’s room and he closes the door behind us. This makes me nervous, because I think that he might try to do something, when either of his parents could come into the room at any moment. But, instead, he shows me the homework he is doing and for a while he pretends that we are studying together. Then he says that he wishes that I would go back to school so that we could see more of each other. I remind him that we wouldn’t have any classes together, because I would be a junior.

“Those pants are too small for you,” he says, changing the subject. They are OK at the waist, but they are about two inches above my shoes, and my socks show. “I have some in my closet that I can’t wear anymore, let’s see if they fit you.”

“What if your father comes in?” I ask.

“We’re trying on pants.”

I can’t think of any come back to that one. He has several pair that are all right for length, but a little loose at the waist. They are OK with a belt, though. David puts them aside. I get my own pants back on and am relieved. I thought for sure, that he was going to grab me, but he didn’t. Then he gets out some shirts that he says he doesn’t want any more. “I’ll get a plastic bag from downstairs and you can take this stuff home,” he states. When he gets back he tells me to come downstairs. His mother has some dessert for us.

Mr. Nash is at the table in the kitchen, too. Mrs. Nash is tall, almost as tall as David. She is setting out plates with chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream on them. David and I sit down at the other side of the table from Mr. Nash.

“So you’re the boy Tom took to Boston the other day,” she says. I answer that I am. “Do I know your parents, dear?” she inquires. I tell her that I don’t think so. “Tom tells me that you are living by yourself.” I admit that. “That’s very unusual,” she asserts. I admit to that, also. “What does your father do for a living?” I confess that he is an accountant for a computer manufacturer. “You get your interest in insurance, honestly, then.”

After this remark that I don’t understand at all (what’s honest about it?), I am allowed to eat my cake and ice cream. David tells his parents that he is giving me some old clothes of his. Mr. Nash says that is a good idea. David says that it’s just like having a little brother, and he ruffles my hair, making me spill some ice cream on my chin, and then drip onto my shirt. “Hey, cut it out,” I say. David laughs. Mr. Nash-Will-Dad looks bemused. Mrs. Nash seems mildly shocked.

David and I go back to his room, where I watch him study. I look at his sports magazines. That reminds me that I have a suggestion to make to David about football. He misses opportunities, because he runs with his head down and can’t see them. He tells me that his coaches made him do that, because he used to run too high. I tell him to keep his head up until he is going to be hit and then quickly lower his head. I also suggest that he try to vary his speed more, sometimes to slow down and cut, other times to put on a burst, so that the tacklers have a harder time judging where he is going to be. David is surprised that I know anything about football. Then Dad comes in and says that he’ll give me a ride home. I guess that it must be time to go.

In the car, Will says again that he is pleased that David and I have become friends. Dad reminds me that he had thought it would be a good idea and that I hadn’t. Will says that he would like me to come in to Boston on Tuesday afternoon and plan to spend the night. He gives me the money for the bus fares. When we get to my place, Dad reminds me to take the bag of clothes that is on the back seat. Mr. Nash drives away, leaving me there alone.

*****

Monday night I have diner at the Polonises. Demitri goes back down cellar while Mary and I clean up. Mary asks me if I have ever been in a three-some. I don’t know what that is, and she explains that it is when three people go to bed together.

I am speechless. Mary sees this and doesn’t wait for me to say anything. “Maybe we could all be a family, then. You could come here to live,” she says. I ask her if she has discussed this with Demitri. She hasn’t.

Most men can’t come twice without a rather long rest in between, I tell her. One of us would be left out, except to watch, which might be worse. But Mary says that a woman can have two men without any wait.

I stare at her. I know that she is right; but for me to have sex with Mary, had never entered my head. I look at her, so cute, about my size, but with long black hair. I am surprised to feel a stirring in my pants. She kisses me on the cheek and says, “Think about it.”

That is what I do, when I get back to my place. I am lying on my bed thinking about what Mary said, and I am still shocked. Would Demitri like my fucking Mary? What would happen, if Mary got pregnant? My thoughts are interrupted when Alan calls.

We have a good talk. He tells me about his new job and his new apartment. Then he asks me if I will come to visit him. On the spur of the moment, I decide to go, but not on the coming weekend, because I have already told David that I will see him on Friday. Of course, I don’t tell Alan the reason, but Alan is glad, because the following weekend is a three day holiday. Columbus Day is on Monday. It is a beautiful time to be in Western Massachusetts, he says, because the fall colors are usually near their peak.