____________________________ | | /)| KRISTEN'S BOOKSHELF |(\ / )| DIRECTORIES |( \ __( (|____________________________|) )__ ((( \ \ > /_) ( \ < / / ))) (\\\ \ \_/ / \ \_/ / ///) \ / \ / \ _/ \_ / / / \ \ o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o The Bookshelf Directories offer a very wide variety of stories. o o They have been submitted by people from all over the world. Also o o from alt.sex.stories (Newsgroups). There is no particular order o o other than offering them to you in alphabetical directories. o o o o All works are copyrighted to the author and may not be used for o o profit without obtaining the author's permission in advance. o o o o Lest we forget!!! This story was produced as adult entertainment o o and should not be read by minors. o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o Camp Lester (MM, coming of age) Copyright (c) 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza Chapter One They Never Should'a... There is a mindset that you get in university that leads you to believe that just because you have attained enlightenment, the rest of the world will want it as well. It is the theory that causes us to think that man is a noble creation, when in reality he was a sort of an after thought by a god who had had a very busy week. We know this because right after he created man, God had to put his feet up and take the day off. I imagine that if Adam was anything like Carlisle, God already had a migraine from dealing with his grievances. That is probably why he inflicted Adam with Eve... to get even. Granted the place they lived was pretty nice and they shouldn't have had a lot of trouble with the neighbors... not having any... but by the end of the next week, Eve had done exactly what God had told Adam not to do, and they were looking for new digs. They ended up raising the average family... two kids, one named Cain, the other named Abel... and like any other average family, there was a little sibling rivalry. Now after Cain slew Abel... which is a fancy way of saying he offed him... about half of the available gene pool was wiped out. The half that survived was not the better half either, so I guess that accounts for the present state of humanity which has been going steadily downhill ever since. Mind you, there must have been some in-breeding to begin with, since the only way the human race could have got going is if Cain did it with his old lady. Either that or old Adam was pressed into service to produce more offspring... a process known as begatting... which would also have violated a few current laws, since then, his children would be doing it together. Those first family reunions must have been embarrassing affairs. Now I didn't want to get into a theological discussion of the origins of life... I just wanted everybody to be aware that there is probably a good reason for people like Carlisle... and me. My name is Rick... Richard Malboeuf... and that's the last time you'll see that, if I have any say in the matter! My last name translates to "Bad Beef" in English, and that's the only French I know. The name is the only thing French that survived the move to Northern Ontario, which is where I come from. For you international readers, Ontario is a province in Canada, and Northern Ontario is in the northern part of it. I told you the gene pool was getting diluted by the time I got my share, didn't I? If you think I am bad, you should meet Carlisle... and you will if you keep reading. Carlisle makes me look like a saint, which I am not. I am a pretty good way from being a saint, which in itself is a good thing, since in order to be a saint, you have to be dead. I met Carlisle at a place called Camp Lester, which is not exactly a reform school, but it has aspirations... at least, a lot of its counsellors do. Camp Lester is located in the wilderness between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario on a lake that nobody ever heard of except the mosquitoes. People send their problem children to Camp Lester for the rehabilitation program... and to be eaten alive. All of the counsellors at Camp Lester are enlightened. This would not be bad in and of itself, except that they are recently enlightened... some of them being still in the process of becoming enlightened... and they are the worst kind. These people all come from good Christian backgrounds... except Schwarz, of course... and they also believe that religion is something that should not be argued about... from the bottom up... which is where Carlisle and I are. They point out that religion is a top down process, and that effectively cuts out all arguing. I suppose that's easy to understand if you are on the top. I'm still trying to get a definitive answer to my Adam and Eve thesis, but the only response I usually get is an order to shut up and stop being a fool. So last winter I stopped being a fool and decided to be gay. I figured that would really piss them off, and I was one hundred percent right. I began being gay with a guy I noticed in the showers at school. I had the hots for him and a stiffy to prove it. I had to hit the cold tap awful hard to get rid of it, but I figured that was a pretty good indication of the way I felt about the guy, so I went over to see him the next Saturday. He said he was glad to see me and all, so I went up to his room with him and he let me suck him off. I guess he had noticed me getting a boner in the shower. Well, he came pretty good down my throat, and I had never swallowed anything that had come out of another guy's dick before, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be... in fact, it tasted pretty good. So I decided that I should let him have a little taste and I dropped my pants too. Well, instead of sucking me off, he turned me around and bent me over the bed and rammed his seven inch thing into my ass. That had definitely not happened before and I'm sure he did some damage back there... I never looked... before he finally managed to ram it all the way in. I was biting his duvet so I wouldn't scream, and I figured that I would have my chance as soon as he was done, but when he finished with me he pulled up his pants and told me I'd have to leave. I asked him, "What about me?" He said, "What about you?" "Ain't you gonna do me?" He sort of laughed and said he wasn't that kind of a boy. This made me wonder two things... what kind of a boy he was... and what kind of a boy that made me. I found out the next week in school. He must have taken out an ad or something, but the word was out and I was branded as a faggot. Everybody knew about what I'd done with him, but somehow that made him some sort of hero and me some sort of prostitute. Anyway, that's how I qualified for Camp Lester this year. The police report is still pretty vague about the reasons for my attack on one of the greatest athletes our school had ever produced, but you can ask any of the others that go to the school and they can pretty well fill in the blanks. There was one consolation, I was sure that Carlisle would be there too. Carlisle is what is known in police circles as a "Constant Fuck-up." But I think of him as one of my best friends. He is also a born leader, which puts him into more or less constant clashes with the people of this world who think they have authority over guys like Carlisle... and me. Like I said before, most of them work at Camp Lester in the summer and go to universities all over Ontario in the winter. They have a sad habit of greeting you when you arrive and introducing you to both themselves and their moral values. These little pep talks usually last in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes and lead the new arrival to the basic understanding that he will probably be a murderer by the end of the summer. All the while they talk to you, one of them is going through your gear and relieving you of anything that might make the summer bearable. This usually includes cigarettes, alcohol, any magazine that does not espouse moral ideas, jack knives, switch blades, brass knuckles, prescription medicines, non prescription medicines, and medicines for which no prescription will ever be written except if you live in California and have somehow managed to contract glaucoma. The contraband is deposited into a garbage bag and no one ever sees it again. I have given up trying to get anything past these border cops, but I knew that Carlisle never would. So it came as a bit of a shock when he arrived and the Knowledge Nazis couldn't find a thing on him. Chapter Two Carlisle I was not the only one who could not believe that Carlisle had arrived empty-handed. The counselors from the previous years knew him too well to believe that he had not somehow fortified himself for the summer. They ordered him to strip down to his underwear. Now this was bound to be trouble. There were two things that I knew about Carlisle. The first thing was that he was not about to be ordered around without a fight. It did not matter who was doing the ordering, he was not about to comply willingly. I braced myself for the explosion. But it didn't come. Instead, Carlisle pulled off his shirt, kicked out of his tennis shoes and unhitched his pants. I had been wrong about the first thing, but I was right about the second, because it was common knowledge that Carlisle never wore underwear. In the year since I'd seen him last, something about Carlisle had changed. It was something physical, I knew, but it was so subtle I found it hard to put a finger on it. I suppose my own discovery about my own sexuality had something to do with it, but I had seen Carlisle naked before and until now, I had never been affected by it. Perhaps, I thought, it was the way he dropped trou that I found stimulating. He did it like it was the most natural thing in the world, and he did not try to cover anything important. He let everybody look who wanted to look. I wanted to look, and I found myself staring at him as he stood there with his arms folded across his chest and let it all hang out. This intimidated the counselors who had not expected him to comply in the first place and had been looking for a reason to segregate him right off the bat. Instead, they found themselves going through his pockets and trying to figure out if they had done anything wrong. It was a lead pipe cinch that, if they had, they would hear about it very soon. None of them touched him. They handed his clothes back to him and he pulled on first his shoes, then his shirt and finally his pants, like he had decided that they should all have to look at his equipment as long as he could force them to do it. I was sporting a chub by the time he zipped up. I had also realized what it was about Carlisle that was different... he was a man. His body hair had become a man's body hair, covering the places where hair first sprouted with a dark luxuriant growth that had only been whispiness last year. He had also developed a bit of a gut... nothing that hung over his belt, mind you... but a gut nonetheless. His navel, which had been surface mounted last year, was now counter-sunk a quarter of an inch. Carlisle had not attempted to conceal his gut, but displayed it proudly. I'm not sure if he was aware of the effect it would have on anyone who saw it, but if I knew Carlisle, he probably had previewed his stance in a full-length mirror somewhere. That's the thing about Carlisle... he is usually aware of what is going on around him. I suppose that's what makes him such a good leader. He smirked at me when he finally finished dressing. I grinned back and looped my thumbs into the waistband of my pants. That was our code for "Way to go, dude!" Carlisle smirked again when he saw me do that. They marched us down to our cabin and introduced us to the rules and regulations, which had not changed from last year. The schedule was still the same as far as meals went and there was a full range of activities that we would probably figure a way out of, just as soon as we got around to hating them... which would not be long. Finally, they left us alone and went about their business... whatever that was. "Hey, man! Some striptease!" I complimented Carlisle. "Yah, I figured they would pull something like that. I guess I made 'em sweat a little. Did ya see the new guy?" Carlisle was referring to the newest camp counselor, a short weasel looking guy with glasses and a nervous tick that made him hitch his head every five minutes or so. "Yah, I saw him! I think he had a chub on when you dropped your jeans and showed him that big old cock of yours!" "Hey, man, it ain't that old! It just turned nineteen last month!" "I don't turn nineteen until November," I told him. "But I couldn't believe you didn't try to bring anything in with you." "Of course I brought something with me," he answered. "You did? How come they didn't find it?" "Cause they're stupid, that's why. Here give me a hand, will you?" Carlisle was taking his pants off again. I didn't know what he expected me to do until he bent over the bed and spread his ass cheeks. There was a little bit of plastic sticking out of his asshole. "Pull it out real slow, man," he ordered me. "No sudden jerks, understand?" Well you could have knocked me over right there and then. Carlisle had himself one sweet-looking ass and I was about to get to play with it. I had no idea what I was about to pull out of there, but I did notice that Carlisle was beginning to stiffen up the way I had when he'd stripped off in front of the counselors... the way I was beginning to stiffen right now. I could just barely get a hold of the plastic, but I couldn't do it without touching the membrane of Carlisle's ass. This was all right with me. But the plastic was slippery and so was Carlisle's ass. I hoped it wasn't shit. I hoped this out loud. "No way, man! It's just a little KY! Don't worry, you can lick your fingers off after you finish!" "I can't get it started," I complained. "It keeps slipping through my fingers." "You're gonna hafta dig for it," Carlisle informed me. "You'll find more inside, but whatever you do, don't push the can up any further. This is not something I want to see the doctor about!" "The can? What the hell have you got in there?" "You'll see. Just stick your fingers up there and spread the hole open a little." "Won't that hurt?" "Of course it will, you goof! But it'll be worth it to get that damned thing out of there!" I stuck a finger into his ass and pushed it past the muscle that squeezes off the turds when you take a shit. I felt it sort of grab me and I felt good about that, so I jammed another finger in while I held onto the plastic with my other hand. It did not take too much probing to find the can that Carlisle had told me about. When I did locate it, I felt around the lid of the thing and was amazed at how big around it was. "That thing isn't going to fit through your asshole," I told him. "Sure it will!" he answered right back. "I got it in there didn't I?" Well, there was no doubt about that. But if I was going to get the thing out, I would have to open him up a lot more than two fingers worth, so I forced another one in... and then another. With each added finger I felt Carlisle squirm a little under me, and strangely enough, I felt him push back against my intrusion, like he was trying to get me to go deeper and open him wider. He was also sporting a raging hard on, which I found difficult to ignore, it being just there on the edge of the bed. Finally I had him open far enough for the lid of the plastic can to squeeze its way through. I could now pull the package out by the plastic bag it was wrapped in, but to my amazement, when I finally got the can out, there was still a piece of plastic sticking out of his asshole. "You didn't get them both, did you?" Carlisle asked. "There seems to be another bag of something up there," I told him. "Well pull it out then," he ordered and I reached in again and went for the second bag. It was easier to extract, being smaller than the can I had removed on my first exploration. It was filled with small packages that were individually wrapped. "Man, that is a relief!" Carlisle told me as he turned over and sat on the edge of the bed. He surveyed the booty and grinned proudly as he opened the can and extracted two cigarettes. He gave me one and stuck the other between his lips. In spite of where it had come from, I put my cigarette between my lips too. I got one of the stick matches that is kept in the cabins for lighting the fire in the wood stove and we lit up. It was heaven to suck in that first lung full of smoke and I noticed that Carlisle had still not bothered to pull up his pants. His boner was now at half staff though, and I supposed he was waiting for it to go all the way down before he put it away. I didn't mind. I had become quite fascinated with the thing, and I was showing hard beneath my own jeans. Carlisle withdrew five more of the cigarettes and stuffed them into my shirt pocket. "That's for helping me," he said. "But you have to make them last until Tuesday." "Why Tuesday?" "Because Tuesday's when they turn the heat off. It's also our first unscheduled day. I plan to take a hike on Tuesday. You can come with me if you like." "Where to?" "You'll see." That was Carlisle for you. He knew what he was doing, but everybody else got information on a need-to-know basis. "Things are gonna be a little different around here this year," he told me. "Remember Dalgliesh?" It was hard not to remember Edgar Dalgliesh. He had been to Camp Lester the year before. He was a bit of a nerd who had gotten into trouble for breaking into his school's computer and upping the grades of the entire school by twelve percent. "He invented a virus this year and dumped it onto the same school system they caught him on last year. I figure we'll put him in the top bunk by the window." "You can't do that... He gets nose bleeds..." "Okay then, bottom bunk... We'll put Boom Boom in the top bunk." I had expected Boom Boom to be back. He was a chemistry whiz who seemed to specialize in knowing which chemicals were violently incompatible. "He's asked us all to start saving our urine," Carlisle informed me, as if acceding to such a request would be the most natural thing in the world. "What about Lopez?" I asked. "Dunno," he answered. "I think he got federal time and got sent to Kingston. But I can't be sure." "Skeeter?" I asked. "Yah, he'll be back... broke up with his girl friend the hard way." "Robbie?" "Uh-huh... Robbie will always show up. There's too much money in his family and this place is one of the conditions in his grandfather's will." Still Carlisle had not moved to pull up his pants. I'm sure he had caught me glancing at him too. Then we heard voices and we knew that there was another group coming in. We hurried to stash the stash and Carlisle finally pulled his pants up... just as the screen door opened and the new counselor walked in with Skeeter and Boom Boom. "Who's been smoking in here?" the counselor demanded. "It was the counselor who brought us down, sir," Carlisle lied. "I think he wanted to get us in trouble." "None of the counselors are allowed to smoke," the new counselor informed us. "And besides, there are two butts on the floor. "Yes, sir, he seems to be a chain smoker. We pointed out the rules to him. He told us to go and fuck ourselves. I was just finishing up when you guys got here. But Rick here still hasn't done it yet..." For effect, Carlisle pulled the zipper of his pants up. The new counselor glared at him and then launched into the rules and regulations that he had learned by heart as part of his training. He did a good job too and we only had to prompt him once and correct him twice. He left with two things... a realization that the job was not going to be the piece of cake he had anticipated... and a hate on for Carlisle. We greeted the new arrivals and showed them to their bunks. It was accepted that Carlisle allocated the bunks. He had a reason for wanting people where he put them. Usually his reasoning was good. Sometimes it had to do with keeping people in their place, but mostly it was to keep a sharp-eyed guy who was a light sleeper near the window, in case there was a surprise visit in the night. I noticed that Carlisle did not display his stash for the new arrivals. Nor did he drop his pants for them. I felt good about having been there for both events. Boom Boom Bouvier unpacked at the window end of the room by dumping his duffel bag's contents into the foot locker beside the bed. Then he came down to where Carlisle and I were commiserating with Skeeter about his unfortunate romance and the seventeen stitches it had taken to close the knife wound inflicted on his upper torso by Carla's brother's switchblade. "I warned you about hanging around those Italian chicks," Carlisle reminded him, "and especially the ones with brothers." "That's right," Boom Boom contributed, "they're strictly bad news. But that is definitely gonna be one real neat scar!" "Scars ain't neat," Skeeter complained. "They break up the symmetry of my physique. So how did you get the cigarettes in, Carlisle?" "Just a little trick I know," Carlisle answered and left it at that. "Are they the same price as last year?" Boom Boom asked. "Of course..." Carlisle smiled. "Only this year, yah gotta swallow!" Skeeter grimaced and pulled his shirt back on, but I noticed that Boom Boom was weighing his options. "I'll let you have five for a fuck," Carlisle added and I found myself wishing that he had not been so generous with me. I would gladly pay the price... even if I didn't smoke. "Lemme get back to ya..." Boom Boom said and returned to his bunk for a quick nap. There was no doubt that Boom Boom would get back to Carlisle... but he wouldn't do it in public. The transaction would probably take place in the toilets, while the pay-off would happen in the forest. I had eschewed involvement in the barter in the two previous summers that I had spent at Camp Lester, but my awakening body had overpowered my senses during the past year, and I had come to camp this year fully ready to deal and to use my body as currency. I patted the cigarettes in my pocket and wished that they were not there. Then it suddenly dawned on me, as Boom Boom hoisted himself to his bunk and flopped onto his side peering out through the window, that I could probably unload them with little difficulty myself and thereby experience sexual fulfillment twice, once with my cock up Boom Boom's ass and again with Carlisle's cock up my ass. Of course I didn't mention this to anybody... right away. Edgar Dalgliesh was the next to arrive. They brought him down in the truck because he had brought his entire collection of books with him. I could imagine the counselors going through them one at a time in the hopes of finding a hint of contraband that would have meant that they could have confiscated the lot. It took Edgar his whole fifteen minutes of orientation to off-load the cardboard boxes and pile them in the corner. Naturally, none of us helped. That would have showed weakness, and nobody wanted to be the first to be labeled as a sucker. Edgar understood. He didn't expect anything different. They brought in a new guy next. His name was Adrian, but he made it known right up front that he expected us to use his last name whenever we addressed him. This was his mistake. He was not tough enough to make such a demand stick. We all knew what he was. He was an Adrian... and that is all he ever would be called as far as we were concerned. He had a nice ass though, and I found myself debating which of my room mates would be permitted to buy my cigarettes. For the first time, I found myself wishing that I had more. Then I realized that I could get more real easy... and it would be a whole lot of fun too! Chapter Three The Middle Man or The Law of Diminishing Returns Robbie arrived late that afternoon. Carlisle greeted him warmly... almost as warmly as he had greeted me and I felt a little jealous about that. Then I realized that Robbie stood to inherit a small fortune, and I thought I had detected the real reason for his friendliness. Still, I was a little put off seeing them enjoying what Carlisle and I had been enjoying up till then. I went for a walk. It wasn't long before the new guy joined me. He had seen me leave, and I guess he had been hoping to get somebody alone to find out what the score was in private. Anyway, I'm half-way to the lake when I hear the guy yell, "Wait up!" Now, that was the wrong thing for him to say, so I called back over my shoulder, "Catch up!" and I kept walking. This forces him to follow me if he wants to talk to me, and lets him know how much weight his orders carry around Camp Lester... about two grams. Sorry about the metric system, but you guys in the States will just have to get out your metric converters or do the math. The rest of the world knows what I'm talkin about. I kept going until I got to my spot... the spot where I like to go to be by myself... unfortunately about a million mosquitoes also know about my spot. I stopped there long enough to let Adrian catch up to me and to decide that my spot would be a whole lot better when the tuck shop opened up and I could buy me a can of insect repellant. "What's up Adrian?" "I asked you not to call me that..." "No, in point of fact, you told us not to call you that. If you had asked it would have been different." "You mean, if I had asked, you guys woulda done it?" "Probably not... But we would have had a whole lot more respect for you." "Well, then, it doesn't make any difference..." "No, it doesn't... What's on your mind?" "Nothing... I just wanted to talk to you." "Okay, so talk." "Why are you here?" he asked. "Why are you here?" I turned it back at him. "I asked first..." "But I was here first. If you want me to answer your question, you've got to answer mine... in twenty-five words or less would be good." "I was picked up for shoplifting." "How much money did you have on you?" "Fifty bucks..." "And what did you steal?" "A compact disk..." "Worth about?" "Worth about fifteen dollars..." "Then, I'd say you were pretty stupid." "It was a dare..." "That makes you twice as stupid as I thought you were before. Do you want to try for raving lunatic?" "No... I guess it was pretty stupid. So why are you here?" "None of your fucking business!" That pretty much established our respective positions. It was something the guy had to learn. You don't ask somebody why they got sent for rehab... you ask one of their friends. That takes the onus off everybody to have to explain their actions and admit that they are stupid. "What did you bring in with you?" I asked after the initial shock had worn off. "What do you mean?" "I mean, do you have anything worth bartering?" "Bartering? For what?" "For whatever you want... You know, cigarettes, liquor..." "I'd give my left nut for a cigarette!" "It won't be that expensive," I told him. "But you are on the right track." "What do you mean?" he asked again. Evidently Adrian had to have things spelled out for him. "The going rate for cigarettes around here is five for a fuck and one for a blowjob... but you've gotta swallow..." "No fucking way!" "I hope that was just an initial outraged response," I told him. "Why?" "Because, if it isn't, you aren't going to be smoking much this summer." "Who does a guy have to blow around here to get a cigarette?" "I'd go for the fuck if I was you..." "Why?" "Think about it, Adrian... If you blow somebody for one cigarette and then you smoke it, what have you got? Just a bad taste in your mouth and a smoker's cough." "If, on the other hand, you give up the booty, you get five cigarettes, which you can smoke, or trade. So by getting fucked once, you buy a ticket for five blowjobs, or you can smoke five times... or you can save up and go for what's behind door number three." "What's behind door number three?" "That all depends on what you're looking for. I know guys who have been fucked for five cigarettes who don't even smoke. Sometimes they do it because they want to corner the market. Then everybody who wants a cigarette has to come to them. They can pick and choose who they will sell to. Sometimes a guy who smokes can't find anybody who really wants to fuck him, so he ends up giving blow jobs all summer for a measley one or two cigarettes a day. He can usually work an arrangement though..." "What sort of arrangement?" "Well, maybe he has a friend with a popular booty, who don't mind giving it up. Maybe the friend really likes the guy who smokes and wants to fuck him. So even though he don't smoke, he trades his ass for five cigarettes and his buddy buys them from him... it's a form of currency." "So who do I have to fuck around here?" "I thought you'd never ask..." "You mean I gotta fuck you?" "You don't have to kiss me..." "No, I didn't mean..." "Do you want the cigarettes or don't you?" "Do you have them on you?" I patted my shirt pocket. "Can I smoke one first?" "No way! I want your ass before I give you anything." "Where?" "Here would be good. Why don't you drop your pants?" "Can anybody see us?" "Hey, man, I don't want an audience anymore than you do, but I can't guarantee that nobody will show up. If they do, though, you've gotta keep going, or you don't get nothing... understand?" Adrian looked around and slowly unhitched his pants. I had mine down before he got his shorts off. I took my shirt off too and hung it in the nearest tree where he could keep an eye on it and remember what it was that he was getting out of the deal. Adrian had himself a nice cock and a long set of balls to go with it. He was circumcised, though, which I find kind of pansy, if you know what I mean. I like the mystery of a cock that still has its skin on, but I would still suck his cock for him if he ever figured out the barter system and decided to sell any of the cigarettes. I turned him around and leaned him against the tree with my shirt on it, and then I spread his cheeks to get a better idea of where things were. Things were right where they were supposed to be, and I spit onto my cock to make it a little easier for the both of us. I needn't have bothered. Adrian was well excavated, and I found out a whole lot about his love life in my first tentative thrust. I weren't gettin' no virgin. "You've done this before." "Does that surprise you?" "Hell, no... I was just making an observation..." "I never promised you nothin'." "Could you squeeze a little... a little friction would be nice. I'd like to feel it going in." "You'd feel it going in if it was a little thicker." "Shit... just what I needed a size queen..." "Shut up and fuck me! I want to get this over with before dinner." I checked my watch. We had fifteen minutes. "What's your hurry?" "I'm hungry." "Maybe you should have given me the blow job then..." For some reason that started him laughing. I had to smile myself. I had expected my first time to be a little more magical. I hadn't expected to be trading quips while I had the guy. I started to lose my erection, and I had to grab a handfull of his balls to get it back. "That wasn't part of the bargain," he said. "Look man, a fuck is a fuck... everything is involved... why else do you think it's five times as expensive as a blowjob." I held onto him and he shut up after that. Eventually I got into the mood and he helped me out a little by flexing his ass cheeks. We got finished up with about four minutes to spare. I wiped myself off on his ass and left him to clean the mess up as best he could. It would not be a good idea for the two of us to be seen coming out of the trees together. I almost forgot to give him the cigarettes. I pulled them out of my pocket and tossed them in front of him. Then I high tailed it. The others were already on their way to the dining hall when I caught up to them. Carlisle was walking alongside Robbie, so I fell in with Boom Boom and Edgar. "Where's the new guy?" Boom Boom asked. "He's wiping his ass off," I told them, loud enough for everybody to hear. Carlisle looked back over his shoulder. "You don't waste any time, do you, Rick?" he grinned and beckoned for me to join Robbie and him. I trudged ahead and took the other side of Carlisle. "Somebody has to check out the new arrivals," I told him. "Does that mean you're out of cigarettes?" he asked me. "It does so... What are the chances of making a buy?" "See me in my office after dinner," Carlisle smiled and I got the feeling that he had been waiting for this as long as I had. Dinner brought all three cabins together in the same place at the same time. It was the time when we got to assess the younger crowd, and Carlisle was making notes about the current crop, some of whom were also first-timers. There was an elegant young man of about seventeen years who looked particularly skittish, and he had a right to. He was drop-dead gorgeous and tall to boot. You could tell that Carlisle would be hanging around his cabin a lot that summer. Carlisle liked new meat. The first dish of the year was a stew that Boom Boom pronounced to be left-overs and unfit for human consumption. That didn't stop us from scarfing down our share of it. Most of us had grown up on a diet of grease burgers and poutine... the original cholesterol cocktail. Poutine is a combination of french fries topped with cheese curds. The whole thing is then drowned in a ladle of gravy. This encourages the cheese curds to melt somewhat... just enough to form great globs of undigestible protein which we shoveled down on an almost daily basis. This type of diet is not recommended for anyone over the age of sixteen. After we had been slopped, we gathered on the front porch and listened to our food digest awhile as Carlisle scouted the remainder of the campers and made more mental notes about their different features and abilities. When the others had departed, Carlisle formed us into our ranks and we sidled off down the hill to our home away from home. "How are you fixed?" I asked as Carlisle pulled out his can of cigarettes. The others were all outside enjoying the evening breeze and swatting at mosquitoes. "I think we're all right," he responded. "I had forty to start with and now we're down to twenty-eight." He lit one up and offered me a drag, but I noted that he did not offer me a cigarette of my own. I would have to earn that. "You know the goons are actually making things more interesting around here by clamping down on the cigarettes," he observed. "How do you mean?" I asked. "Well, everybody who smokes wants a supply of cigarettes. The ones who don't have any are forced to get them from the ones who do. But each cigarette that is smoked is another blowjob out of circulation. It's sort of like the law of supply and demand... When the cigarettes get scarce, guys are going to be willing to do more for them." He puffed another puff and offered the cigarette to me once more. "Now, what can I do for you, Rick old boy..." "I'd like another five please." Carlisle's smile spread slowly across his face. "Was Adrian that good?" "Hell, no... Adrian is a whore. He says he was picked up for shoplifting, but I'd be willing to bet he was turning tricks. He's excavated for about a size fourteen." Carlisle laughed. "Not Adrian, huh? Lemme guess... Boom Boom?" "Yah, I figured I'd give him a go." "Me too... When were you planning to land him?" "As soon as I can... why, did you want him?" "No way, baby... not when I've got you." That sort of confirmed what I had suspected about Carlisle. He was not being my friend because of my brains or my money. He was after my ass... and I was ready to give it to him... cigarettes or no cigarettes. "Meet me in the canoe lean-to at midnight," he whispered in my ear. Then he surprised me. He kissed me right on the lips. Chapter Four Tippy Canoe and Carlisle Too There is a nightly assassination of mosquitoes that takes place along about dusk. The Camp Lester four by four is driven around through the swampy sections with a fogging machine on the back of it. The fog it produces is supposed to get rid of the mosquitoes, but most of us think that the mosquitoes have adapted to the fog and are actually thriving on their nightly dose. It doesn't seem to help much anyway. The only really measurable effect it has is to drive the campers into their cabins for about an hour. The stuff really stinks. Carlisle and I were listening to the radio when the others re-joined us. There was just the one station we could get out in the middle of nowhere like we were. I'm not saying that the reception was lousy... quite the contrary, we got so many stations up there that they were walking all over each other's signals. The only station that we could get with any clarity was one from Wheeling West Virginia, and we spent most of our time laughing at what they put on there. That and the inevitable whining for cigarettes, filled our evening until, finally, the lights flicked once and we all found our bunks. A minute later the lights went out along with the radio and anything else that ran on the camp electricity, and we laid there waiting for the goons to show up and count us. There was plenty of moonlight coming in the windows and I could see everybody plain enough after my eyes got used to the lack of incandescent bulbs. Silhouetted against the window as he was, Boom Boom naturally drew my attention, and especially when I noticed that he was moving his hands under his blanket in the general area where he kept his pecker and his balls. I thought at first that he might be just scratching them, but as I watched, I noticed that there was a definite up and down motion, that could only mean one thing... Boom Boom was living up to his name. The nickname Boom Boom is a popular one in Canada. It all started with a hockey player named Bernie who had a habit of body checking opposing players into the boards that surround the ice. But Boom Boom is also a popular expression to use when describing the sex act... as in making boom boom. It has even come to be a popular description of places where dancers take their clothes off, no doubt referring to the strong bass accompaniment to most of their music... hence, Boom Boom Rooms. Back to the issue at hand... Boom Boom was definitely whacking off. And he was getting into it pretty good when the goons showed up with their flashlights and did a bed check. That put an end to Boom Boom's little show. I closed my eyes along with everybody else when he gave the alert, and it wasn't too long before I saw through the thin skin of my eyelids, the light that they shone in each of our faces to make sure that we hadn't put a dummy in our bunk. They're really annoying when they want to be... and most of the time, they want to be. The light had already passed my face when I heard a gasp and a laugh and opened my eye a crack to see what the commotion was about. The two goons were down by Boom Boom's bunk and they had the flashlight shining on him... but not on his face. The were shining it on his crotch... at least on the spot where his dick stood up beneath the sheet that he had over him. Boom Boom had added about seven inches of elevation where his cock acted like a tent pole. I heard one of the counselors say, "I'll bet he's having one helluva dream!" The other counselor just cursed and allowed as how they should throw a bucket of cold water on the ignorant lowlife. The first counselor said something about wishing he was hung like that kid, and the other one told him to shut up. They left shortly after that and I heard a lot of snickering. Then I heard Carlisle. "Way to go, Boom Boom! You get a cigarette for that." Old Boom Boom hopped out of his bunk and trotted over to Carlisle to accept his trophy. He smoked it sitting on Carlisle's bunk, which was just under mine, and I saw a hand finish the job that Boom Boom had started in his bunk... but I can't be sure whose hand it was. All I can add to that is that I never saw Carlisle give anything away for free... until about one o'clock the next morning. Boom Boom cleaned up and went back to his bed a little while later. I kept an eye on my watch and shortly before midnight, I felt a kick from below my mattress. It was Carlisle, of course. That was my cue to head to the canoe lean-to. I slipped out of my bunk and pulled on my shoes. There was no use wearing anything else... I already was wearing my skivvies. If I was caught the jig was up anyway. I took the round about way, along the shore of the lake. There were night lights everywhere else. They illuminated the area to make it difficult for any one cabin to conduct a raid on any of the other cabins... a popular late night activity that could score you a lot of shit... or get you into an equal amount, depending on whether or not you were caught. That was why we had picked the canoe lean-to for our rendezvous. It was away from all of the main lights that made the rest of the camp almost like one of those stalags... or gulags... or whatever they call prison camps in Europe. There was still enough light, mind you, so you could see what or who you were doing, but there were also enough shadows so that you could hide the activity pretty easily from everybody else. There were also enough canoes to make the whole thing a little dangerous, since sometimes they were not racked up properly, and if you hit one just right in the throes of ecstasy, you could start a chain reaction that could bring them all down. I crouched there and waited for Carlisle. The night was quiet, but there was still a lot of noise from frogs and crickets and the like. We had water snakes too at Camp Lester, and you would sometimes find one where you least expected or hoped to find one, but they didn't make any noise. I just mentioned them so you'd understand the frame of mind I was in and why I acted the way I did later. I thought I heard a noise. This in and of itself was not earth-shaking. I have already told you that there was a lot of noise going on all around me. But this noise was a noise that didn't belong to the canoe lean-to at a quarter past twelve at night. It sounded like somebody sniffing... you know, a sudden intake of air through the nostrils, more designed to retrieve a glob of wayward snot than to test the air for odors. I froze where I was and whispered, "Carlisle?" I didn't hear the sniff again, but I also did not get an answer from Carlisle, until about a minute later, when I heard his voice from the other end of the lean-to. "Rick, where are you?" "Here..." I said and we squirmed towards each other taking care to keep as low as we could until we were both behind the lean-to. "Do you smell oranges?" he asked. I thought it was a peculiar question, even for Carlisle, until I sniffed and found that I could smell oranges, and the smell was pretty strong. "Do you suppose it's the shellac they use on the canoes?" I asked. "Probably..." he allowed. "Did you bring my cigarettes?" I asked, more to convince Carlisle that I still considered our eroticism as a business deal. A guy had to be careful about his reputation. It was okay to get fucked... as long as you got something out of the deal. "Of course," Carlisle answered. "Did you bring your asshole?" "I never leave home without it," I grinned back. "Well, then turn around here and let's get started." "What, no kiss?" "You can kiss my ass afterwards," he laughed and he unfastened the towel he had worn... more to keep the mosquitoes off his dick than anything else. "No way man! I ain't kissing that thing! I don't want to lose my head," I told him. "Do you have anything left up in there?" "Just a mouse trap, in case the wrong guy tries to take my booty," he came back at me. Then I felt his left hand on my tits, and I knew he was working himself up with the right. I squirmed around and pushed off my underwear, and his hand felt me down there too. He found me already hard with anticipation and I let him keep feeling me too, while I massaged a little goose grease into my asshole. Goose grease is what we call KY at the camp... it just seems a little more appropriate somehow... Carlisle mounted me and I felt the tip of his cock part my ass and search out the target. I reached around to guide him to it, and was amazed at how thick his pecker had become... and how long. It was like he was using one of those impossibly large dildoes you sometimes see in the sex stores in Toronto, or Montreal. I hoped he didn't split me from stern to stem. Just getting his knob past my shit muscle was excruciating, but Carlisle got bigger real quick and I felt my asshole burn as his shaft ripped me wide open. I let her rip. This was what I had been waiting for. I had been anticipating sex with Carlisle since my first fiasco had proved to me that assholes are very flexible things. Carlisle himself had shown me that afternoon just how wide one can be opened and still return to its normal condition. I did my best to relax, and that helped. Before much longer Carlisle was fucking me with long, deep thrusts and I was feeling how good it could feel to have one of your buddies jammed inside you while his hands sought out the more sensitive spots of my body and made them feel good too. We rocked back and forth for a long time before Carlisle came off... somewhere in the neighbourhood of my liver, I think. He laid forward on top of me and the two of us sort of collapsed under the canoes with his dick still up inside me. I had beat myself off long before he shot, so the spot where I landed was a little messy... but only a little... nothing that a handful of grass couldn't take care of later. We were both trying to get our normal breathing back and I was about to ask him where my cigarettes were, when I heard something move off to our right. It sort of slithered... remember me telling you about the snake? This is what I thought it sounded like. Well, I was on the bottom, and I did not want to be on the bottom, since that is essentially where snakes spend most of their time... Adam and Eve notwithstanding... and I sort of upped and bucked Carlisle up with me. The thing about that was Carlisle's prick was still buried deep inside of me... only not so deep as it was before, him having come down somewhat before I bucked him up. I believe I also said something at that point, although in my frame of mind it was probably nothing more than "Aieee!!!" I remember what Carlisle said, though. He said "Aaaah!!!" He said that because when I bucked up with him on my back, my asshole constricted and took hold of his now softening dick, so that even though Carlisle was in the process of sliding off of me, his dick wasn't. We clambered around there for a while and he finally got his thing out of my ass and I managed to back away from where I had heard the noise. It wasn't a snake. It was a tall, slender, devastatingly beautiful young man. And we had scared the shit out of him. He was trying to get away, until Carlisle noticed who the guy was and found his voice. "Wait..." he told him and the kid stopped at the other end of the lean-to and huddled in the shadows with his legs drawn up in front of him. He seemed to be hiding behind them. "Don't hurt me," he begged Carlisle. "I wouldn't dream of it," Carlisle told him. "Don't make me go back in there either," the kid pleaded. "Back in where?" Carlisle asked. "Back in my cabin..." "I'm not gonna make you do nothin'. What's your name?" "Charles." "Hi," Carlisle replied and inched over to where Charles was crouched. "My name is Anthony." I had forgotten that Carlisle had a first name. He inched a little closer and stuck his hand out. Charles took it and held it for a moment before releasing it. "You seem to have caught us with our pants down." I'm sure that he smiled after he said that. Everything that happened after that indicates that Carlisle was on the make, and when he's on the make, he smiles a lot. "I'm sorry," Charles apologized. "I was hiding in here and I thought you were looking for me... until you started... you know..." "Yes... I guess you saw quite a show," Anthony... er, Carlisle allowed. He sighed. It was a nice effect. "No, we weren't looking for you, Charles, but I'm glad we found you just the same." "Why?" Charles sounded a little anxious. "Don't worry," Carlisle told him, "We won't bite you. But why don't you want to sleep in your cabin?" "Because there are guys in there who told me they were going to do to me what you just did to..." "Rick," I said and waddled forward to shake Charles' hand. "Did they?" Carlisle mused. "Don't they know that I'm not going to allow that?" "I don't think they know too much," Charles answered. "But how could you stop them? You aren't even in the same cabin." "Details..." Carlisle dismissed the argument. "There are always ways..." "What ways?" Charles asked. "It's called intimidation," Carlisle mentioned as he rested his hand on Charles naked knee. Carlisle, himself, was still totally naked, by the way, and don't think that Charles wasn't noticing that fact. I guess he trembled a little then, because Carlisle took his hand away real quick like and his face got all apologetic. "I'm sorry," he told Charles. "I was just trying to reassure you." I almost believed I was going to lose my dinner... which wouldn't have been much of a loss. Most of it was now wending its way towards a bunch of very confused sperm cells that were desperately seeking anything that even remotely looked like an egg. Would you like to stay in our cabin tonight?" Carlisle was going for the gold, I was sure. "I can promise you that nothing will happen to you and tomorrow I'll straighten out those assholes at your cabin for you." "Wouldn't the counselors mind?" Charles asked. "They do a bed check in the morning." "There'll be somebody in your bed," Carlisle told him, and I knew right away that I was in trouble. "Who?" Charles asked. "Rick, here," Carlisle told him. "You don't mind, do you, Rick?" "I'll do it for ten cigarettes," I told him. I think Carlisle might have glared at me, but it did not do him any good. I got his IOU for ten cigarettes, and then I asked Charles which bunk he was in. I was well on my way before I realized I needed more information. I crept back to the lean-to and found Carlisle kissing Charles... or maybe it was Charles kissing Carlisle. Whatever... they were kissing when I leaned back in and asked Charles, "Which cabin are you in?" Chapter Five It's A Long Way To Tuesday Morning I crawled into Charles' bunk and noticed that his pillow smelled real nice. I hadn't expected that... well, who would at a place like Camp Lester. The next thing I noticed was the hand that reached up from the bottom bunk and grabbed at my ass. "Charlie baby, you came back to me..." "If you don't get your fucking hand off my ass, I'm coming down there and ramming it up yours..." It was a pretty good threat for a spur of the moment thing, but not up to Carlisle's quality. He would have made some allusion to the size of the guy's dick into the bargain and thereby got the rest of the guys in the cabin on his side. Moments later the guy in the bunk below was out his bed and staring into my face. "You're not Charlie..." "Thanks for pointing that out to me... and the name is Charles, not Charlie, not Chuck... Charles... got it?" I gave him one of those narrow steely-eyed stares that make it look like you either mean business, or you're myopic. The guy figured I meant business. "Who are you?" he inquired, and I like to think he did it with a good deal of respect. "I'm not Charles," I answered. "Go to bed... and keep your hands to yourself from now on." I rolled over and let him look at my back for a while. Then I heard his bunk squeak as he settled back into it. It sometimes pays to let the real assholes lose sleep wondering about things like that. The trouble is, if a guy's a real asshole, he doesn't worry too much about anything. The guy in the bunk beneath me was not a real asshole though... he was an amateur asshole. Sometime during the night they did another bunk check. I rolled over onto my side and buried my face into the pillow. I felt the flashlight in my one available eye, and there was no alarm, so I guess we passed the first test. I was kind of disappointed at the outcome of the evening, however. It had not gone the way I had anticipated that it would. But it had been an eventful day. I had fucked twice, once giving, once receiving, we had ruined the lives of two of the counselors... at least temporarily, we had straightened out two idiots who should have known better, Carlisle was down to twelve cigarettes from an initial supply of forty, while my stock was up to fifteen from a high of twenty and a low of absolute zero, and we still hadn't passed our first twenty-four hours at Camp Lester. One could only wonder what tomorrow might bring. Tomorrow started off with the realization that although I was in Charles' cabin, all of my clothes were in my cabin, and there was a five minute walk between the two shacks. I supposed that I could use some of Charles' clothes, but they were a little fancy for my liking and they smelled like his pillow. I decided that I would prefer the walk wrapped only in my skivvies and a towel. I could always pretend to be on my way to the lake for a swim. My bunk mate had circles under his eyes. He had not slept well. There could be many reasons for that, of course, but I preferred to think that I had had something to do with it. Everybody in the cabin was quiet when they saw me in Charles' spot. I imagined they had all heard my warning to their fellow camper in the night. I didn't need to press the matter, so I left it alone and borrowed a towel for my walk back to my cabin, where Carlisle waited for me with my fifteen cigarettes. On the way back I ran into Boom Boom. He was bringing me my shirt and my pants. There were fifteen cigarettes in the shirt pocket. I was grateful to Boom Boom for making the delivery, even though I figured he was doing it for Carlisle. I did not want him to kick the habit before I had my chance at him, so I invested one of the cigarettes in him. I could afford to be magnanimous. I expected a dividend cheque shortly. "Was there any trouble last night?" I asked him. "Naw, they weren't interested in who was in the bed as long as they found a body and it was breathing. How'd things go on your end?" "I had to straighten one guy out, but I didn't have any problems with the goons. Did Carlisle have his way with the kid?" "Carlisle was a perfect gentleman... and that kid is twenty years old." "What?!" "Yah... least, that's what he told Carlisle." "What the hell is he doing in the junior cabin then?" "He doesn't have the social skills to deal with us hardened criminals," Boom Boom laughed. "They put him in with the juniors to make sure he was all right. I guess they hadn't counted on Carlisle." "He don't seem like Camp Lester material. What did he do to deserve this?" "Nothing... His step-father sent him to toughen him up. He figured the place would be good for him. I guess old Charles has lived a somewhat sheltered life. He's studying the piano." "That figures..." We headed for the dining hall and our porridge-flavoured paste breakfast. When we got there, Carlisle was just arriving with Charles, who recognized me... even with my clothes on... and came over to thank me for trading places with him. "Don't mention it," I grinned. Carlisle winked at me when he passed and jerked his head as an invitation for me to join him for breakfast. I couldn't help wondering about what Boom Boom had told me about Carlisle being a perfect gentleman. I mean, my world was rocking on its foundations... Carlisle??? A gentleman??? Was nothing sacred? I watched them eating together. It was just like I had seen so many times in the school cafeteria when a guy would fall all over a girl he liked and not let her do anything for herself. Carlisle took care of Charles like that and Charles ate it up. When Carlisle lost a little of his oatmeal out of the side of his mouth, Charles took his napkin and cleaned it away. When Carlisle dribbled his milk down his chin, Charles mopped it up too. Then he spotted a smudge on Carlisle's face and licked the corner of his napkin before cleaning the smudge away... and Carlisle let him do it! It was enough to make you puke! So was breakfast... so at least I had an excuse if I did throw up. After breakfast everybody had to go back to their own cabin and get ready for church. There was no escaping it the first Sunday... everybody had to go. The chaplain used that first Sunday to set out the guidelines for our expected rehabilitation. We all crashed on our bunks and waited for the roundup that would herd us into the open air cathedral that had been set up with donations from a bunch of different churches. As I laid on my bunk and fingered my booty... the fourteen cigarettes in my pocket... not the other booty... I wondered how to go about asking Carlisle about Charles. I needn't have worried. He was just as anxious to tell me. "How'd it go in Charles' cabin last night?" Carlisle asked. "No sweat..." I told him. "I straightened out Mr. Molester right off the bat." "My man!" Carlisle all but cheered. "Do you think Charles will be safe over there now?" "Pretty much... as safe as he is over here anyway..." Carlisle's face appeared beside mine as he swung himself up out of his bunk. I thought I might have said something wrong. "You didn't mind taking care of that guy for me, did you, Rick?" "Hell, no!" I lied. "Always glad to help out!" Carlisle smiled. Then his voice got real quiet like and he leaned closer so that he was almost whispering. "You're the best friend a guy could ever have, Rick." I almost expected him to kiss me. Something strange had happened to Carlisle. It was like he had been hit on the head and developed amnesia, There was almost nothing left of the old Carlisle. This was a new Carlisle... or perhaps this incarnation was called Anthony. Again, my stomach felt uneasy. "Uhh... thanks..." I stammered. Anthony leaned closer and whispered into my ear. "I'm in love," he said. "Yah... I sort of figured that. Do you think it will last long?" "I hope it lasts forever," he answered. I now had absolutely no idea what to call him. So I didn't call him anything. I just laid there with him about a five centimeters from my ear, telling me how he had never known anybody quite like Charles, and how good it made him feel whenever he touched him. "He asked me if he could touch my thing," Carlisle confessed. I knew I didn't want to hear about this, but I was frozen there on my bunk with a kind of a freakish fascination... wondering how much I could listen to before I hurled. "We were down by the lake and the moon was on the water. There was a bit of a breeze so there weren't many mosquitoes and he asked me if I wasn't cold being naked the way I was. I told him I was a little chilly, so he put his arm around me and said he would try to warm me up." "Well, that started me growing and the next thing I know he spots my hard on and tells me that it is just about the most beautiful thing he's ever seen on a guy. I sort of apologized for not being able to control it, but he said that he thought that getting a hard on was the most honest way any guy could compliment another guy. He told me that he had one too." "'You're kidding!' I says, and he says, no he's not. 'Lemme feel it,' I ask him. But he's really shy and says no, but he wouldn't mind holding mine for a while. Well, there was no reason not to let him, so I did. He wrapped his long fingers around it then, and held it for a few minutes. He worked the skin back and forth, but it wasn't like he was jerking me off or anything... he was just feeling it. I felt so good, I did not want him to let it go. So I put my arm around him and pulled him a little closer to me." "I shouldn't have done that..." "Why not?" "Well, he had been complaining about those other guys threatening to fuck him and all, and there I was feeling his ass. I felt him get all tense and that's when he let go of my cock." I was sweating now. Carlisle was telling me things that I did not want to believe. He was telling me that he cared for somebody... other than himself... I wondered what he would come up with next. "I owe it all to you, Rick," he smiled and I smelled his tobacco breath even closer as he leaned over and kissed me right on the lips. I wanted to bash him over the head and cure him of the amnesia that had made him forget all the stuff that I respected the most about Carlisle. I wanted to scream and run. I wanted to take my chances in the wilderness... anything except to stay there at Camp Lester and listen to the guy I admired more than anybody else, spilling his guts about love and caring and relationships. I wondered if I should slap him... slap him like a woman and wake him up. Then I remembered that I was contemplating violence against Carlisle, and I knew that was not a good idea. What I ended up doing was saying, "That's nice, Carlisle..." Then the unthinkable happened. Carlisle smiled at me and said, "Please, Rick... call me Anthony." By now, the other guys were watching us and I could tell that they were worried too. Carlisle... or Anthony... or whoever the hell he was, slipped back down to his bunk. My eyes met Boom Boom's and he stared at me with his mouth hanging open. I couldn't bear having them all looking at me like that and I stared up at the ceiling until they rousted us out of there to go to church. I was almost tempted to pray. Then I figured that I didn't stand a chance of being heard over all the other caterwauling that would be going on during Sunday services, and I don't believe I have ever felt as totally alone as I did at that point in my young life. I found myself watching Carlisle a lot. He and Charles were sitting together in the natural amphitheatre that had been built at tremendous expense to focus our attention on religious things that were mysterious to the ancients, but were supposed to be accepted at face value by us. The only thing that I could hope for was a speedy arrival of Tuesday morning, when Carlisle and I had a date for a hike, and the campers in Charles' cabin were to take the canoes on an overnight trip. After church everybody was free until lunch. Carlisle and Charles... I had decided that I would not call Carlisle Anthony... had drifted off to the lake shore together to discuss the meaning of life or whatever else popped up and I found myself at loose ends walking back to the cabin with the rest of the guys. I was walking beside Edgar Dalgleish when Boom Boom called for me to wait up. Edgar kept going, but I stopped. I knew what Boom Boom wanted. He knew that I now owned the lion's share of the cigarettes. "How many do you want?" I asked. Boom Boom swallowed and said that he wanted to get five. I winked at him and told him to meet me behind the Tuck Shop in fifteen minutes... and to bring his asshole. Well, some things never change. Chapter Six Back To Normal... Whatever That Is... Boom Boom lived up to his reputation. He had earned his reputation the previous year... the year he had taken up smoking. Back then, I had been a bystander, anxiously interested in the sexual play that went on between the guys, but still stupid enough to think that I had a lifetime ahead of me as a Don Juan, as soon as I became sexually aroused by the women and a little less obsessed with the boys. I had left several billion sperm cells at Camp Lester the previous summer, but most of them had not made it any farther than the toilet paper in the latrine. The rest had soaked their way into my underwear. Finally, of course, I had realized that I was no more interested in the women than they were in me. I am not a bad looking guy, mind you... but there are a few peculiarities that stand in the way of calling me handsome. I also buy my clothes at the Goodwill, which has to make something of a fashion statement about me. My nose is the one thing that really sets me apart from the movie stars... all except the guy with the hat who used to be on TV and advertise for that credit card that always wanted to go everywhere you did. My nose isn't anywhere near like his, but it is prominent and looks like it wanted to take over control of my face. With all that going for me, it was little wonder that I stuck mostly with the guys, who realized that as goes the nose, so goes the hose. Yah, I'm hung... Boom Boom knew about my equipment before he made the deal. I think he was looking forward to trying me on for size too. Boom Boom has been around. He was still a lot tighter than Adrian, which surprised me, until I realized that Boom Boom was probably not out every night making a living with his shitter. Boom Boom had other interests as well. He was a straight A student, who just happened to be unable to keep out of trouble. Most of his depravities were confined to the classroom, which he managed to detonate with annoying frequency. Chemistry teachers were always wary of him. They never knew what he might have planned for them, and there was a rumour floating around that Boom Boom had obtained blueprints for a nuclear device and all he needed was a little plutonium. This rumour was started by the Physics teachers, I think. Anyway, the Tuck Shop is located in a neutral area, far enough from everything to be equally inconvenient to just about everybody. This makes it an ideal spot for illicit liaisons, especially when it's not open. We knew that it would not be open until Monday. We also knew that, if we were caught anywhere near it, we would be accused of attempting to break into it. This made the approach and the get-away extremely important. Now I already knew what Boom Boom looked like in the nude. I knew what everybody in our cabin looked like in the nude. The trick was not popping a boner, but if you did, not trying to hide it. This led to a lot of demonstrations like Boom Boom had made the previous night. After everybody was aware that you were liable to do anything, it came as less of a shock when you were caught with your pants down and your flag up. The idea was that you would wave it proudly, or make exaggerated sexual overtures to the guy who was the true object of your affections. He could then tell you to go and fuck yourself, and you could give it a damned good try without embarrassing anybody. Let me tell you about Boom Boom's ass. It is one of the sweetest things known to man... very few women being interested in it after they begin to admire his major equipment on the other side. Boom Boom's ass sticks out admirably and forms itself into two pear-shaped pairs that are the same brown tan as the rest of him. His ass is hairy as are his legs and there is even more hair between them. There is some debate about whether he combs his ass hair, but I think that it is just very well trained, because it all seems to grow in the same direction, and the only time you find any of it out of place is when you shove your dick in. There is a joke that goes around the cabin. It says that Boom Boom doesn't use goose grease... he uses mousse. Well, I didn't say that it was a good joke... I parted Boom Boom's hair on the picnic table behind the Tuck Shop. This enabled me to fuck him face to face, which is always a lot nicer... unless one or the other of the fuckers is embarrassed about what is going on. Neither Boom Boom nor I were embarrassed. We were both looking forward to it. First encounters are always kind of special. When I arrived, Boom Boom was already there and he had lowered his shorts in preparation. All he had to do was lay back on the picnic table, and kick off the shorts. It didn't take me long to step up to home plate, I dropped my pants and worked up my old feller and Boom Boom lathered it with the grease. Then I placed the head against his upturned brown hole and pushed. Boom Boom grunted. I knew he wasn't putting on an act. I had felt the resistance and the slow, almost imperceptible way it gave way to my erection. This was Boom Boom's opening day of the new season, and it took a little effort to bring him back to his game condition. I went slow, which is always the best way to go when you start fucking someone. It was the closest that Boom Boom and I had ever been and I took advantage of the closeness to breath in his aroma, which was all natural and kind of funky, but nice. Boom Boom smelled like a man. He had a hint of perspiration about him that had not been covered by deodorant let alone the orange scented cologne that Charles liked to wear. I grabbed Boom Boom's cock and that surprised him a little, so I pretended that I was using it as a handle to pull myself deeper into him. I figured that I had better let go of the thing once I had managed to seat myself, but when I released my grip, Boom Boom said "No, man, work it for me, will ya?" I figured it was okay, seeing as how he asked, so I grabbed it again and started to masturbate him while I matched the movements my hands were making by thrusting my cock into and out of him at the same pace. Boom Boom fell back onto the picnic table and pulled his shirt over his head, exposing his big brown nipples, and the light hairing of his chest and the heavier hairing of his arm pits. He was really getting off on my ministrations, and he started to groan and pinch those tits of his real hard. His stomach was sticking out and arching into the air so that his belly button, which was counter sunk like Carlisle's was stretched and almost sticking out. I rubbed one hand along his gut from his pecker, up past his belly to his chest and he grabbed my hand and held it over his right tit. The next thing I knew I was pinching the thing myself and then he sort of pulls me down on top of him and grabs my head and forces it to find his nipple with my mouth. At the same time, I feel something wet and hot shoot out of his cock and splash between his belly and my chest. I heard him say, "Bite it! Bite it hard!" So I bit his nipple. I bit his nipple really hard... so hard that I thought I was going to bite it off. But this seems to cause him to shoot even harder and I feel him shooting off at least three times more... soaking my shirt pretty good and causing me to feel that old tingling down in what are biblically referred to as my loins. Pretty soon I am dumping my DNA up his ass in quantities that would make it impossible for me to avoid prosecution if the case were ever taken to court. I let go of his tit, which now has my teeth marks in it, and I straighten up to shoot off the final drops. My legs are about to buckle beneath me, so I collapse onto him again, and breath in that perfect odor of perspiration and man sex, as I catch my breath and enjoy the softness of his perfect skin against my cheek. Evidently Boom Boom is into the rough stuff. I know that I can accommodate him, and I am already hoping that he will turn out to be a chain smoker. We laid like that for a long time, me on him and him not making any move to push me off. We might have been there to this day, if we hadn't heard the voices coming towards the Tuck Shop, and realized that they were the voices of two of the counselors. We scrambled for our clothes and jumped behind the stack of picnic tables that were piled there, waiting to be distributed to the different cabins. They were waiting for a work crew to be formed... a work crew to be made up of the first guys to fuck up and need discipline. I don't suppose it ever occurred to any of them to hire somebody to move those things where they wanted them... or do it themselves. Boom Boom and I were just as happy that the tables were still there, since it gave us something to hide behind... there being little natural cover in the area. I finished dressing quickly and paid Boom Boom off as we crouched there. But I could see from the distracted look on his face that he was listening to what the counselors were talking about as they rounded the corner of the building and opened the locked door of the Tuck Shop. I heard them too of course, but it was not something that I found particularly interesting until much later. I wanted to get ourselves out of there as quickly as I could. I didn't care about inventories or computers or telephone hooks-up. I wanted to be gone. But Boom Boom restrained me as he listened to the third year counselor explaining the operation of the Tuck Shop to the weasel who had accused Carlisle and I of smoking. Eventually Boom Boom seemed to have heard enough, and he motioned that now would be a good time to high-tail it and find a nice quiet spot for a smoke. We crept out of there and I left Boom Boom to find a toilet where he could get rid of what I had left inside him while I raced down to the lake to wash the cum out of my shirt. When I saw Boom Boom enter the latrine, though, I admit that I did take the shirt and suck some of that stuff out of there. But that's just between us... understand? I eventually did wash my shirt and then I found a nice sunny patch of shoreline where I could lie down and sleep away my weariness. I guess I dozed off. When I awoke there was a shadow between me and the sun. "I suppose you're out of cigarettes," the shadow said. "No way!" I answered. "But if you want to sell me some more, I'll be glad to take whatever you've got." I couldn't believe my luck! My prayers had been answered... and I hadn't even bothered to pray them. Carlisle was back... and he seemed to be back to normal... whatever that was. "You've only been here a day, Rick! Slow down, son... I don't want you to drop dead on me." Well, I couldn't think of a better place to drop dead, unless it was with my cock up inside Boom Boom Bouvier, but I didn't mention any of this to Carlisle. Nor did I inquire about the love of his life. I figured that was one sleeping dog that would have to wake up all by itself. "You missed lunch, you know," Carlisle told me. "I didn't miss it at all..." I answered. "I had a Boom Boom burger." "Yah, I know... with cheese." I didn't ask him how he knew. We expected Carlisle to know. He was the leader. I glanced at my watch. It was two thirty. I pulled myself to my feet and realized that I was going to have a nice sunburn and I would probably be peeling soon. But it would mean a deeper tan for me that summer, and I look pretty sharp when I have a nice deep tan. This year, I had decided, I was going to go for a nice all over tan. I dusted myself off and Carlisle led the way back to the cabin. When we got there Boom Boom was smoking like crazy while he talked to Edgar Dalgleish and told him everything he had heard at the Tuck Shop. Edgar was listening to him too. He said something over and over again that made me feel a little anxious. "That's our money, man! They can't do that!" Eventually Boom Boom finished describing the inside of the Tuck Shop to Edgar and they both turned to Carlisle... well, Edgar turned to Carlisle... Boom Boom was looking at me and sucking as hard as he could on that cigarette of his. "Carlisle," Edgar complained, "they're ripping us off..." Chapter Seven My Brother's Keeper The conversation that Boom Boom and I had overheard behind the Tuck Shop meant nothing to me, but it had obviously upset the rest of our cabin when they heard the details. The counselors had rigged the computer that had been installed there to keep two sets of figures. This meant that they could charge us an inflated price for items that we needed to buy, and every sale would have a corresponding profit which would be tracked into a slush fund for their own personal use. Carlisle, in his own typical manner, solved the problem with a single order. Nobody was to buy anything at all from the Tuck Shop for a week. He checked with Edgar. "A week should be enough time, shouldn't it, Edgar?" Edgar agreed. Skeeter and Robbie were dispatched to tell the other cabins of the scam and our plan to counteract it. It was about midnight that the door of the cabin opened and a tall slim figure crossed the room to Carlisle's bunk. There was a whispered conference and then Carlisle's face appeared in front of me. "I hate to have to ask you to do this..." "What now?" "It's the same guy..." Carlisle told me. "Evidently everybody in the cabin was making fun of him after you left this morning and he decided that he'd show them he wasn't afraid of you. He made another pass at Charles. Could you rectify the situation?" "Yah, sure..." "I'd go myself, except..." "Yah, I know... Charles needs you." "Thanks for understanding, Rick." "Yah..." I stumbled from my bed and pulled on my clothes. I guess I cast a longing glance at Boom Boom's bunk when I left. I felt sort of like a chump always being the one who had to do Carlisle's bidding. It was especially hard when I was being called upon to straighten out the mess his boyfriend had gotten himself into. I kept all of that to myself though. If I was anything, I was a good Lieutenant. Carlisle was the boss after all, and it made me feel good to know that he trusted me to deliver his message. I pushed the screen door open and trudged out into the night. I had made about half of the distance to the other cabin when I became aware that I was being followed. I slipped behind a tree. I didn't need any counselors grabbing me and hauling me back to my cabin. Failure was not something that would make me look good in Carlisle's eyes. I waited for my tail to catch up. A body passed my spot in the darkness. It was calling my name softly. "What are you doing here, Boom Boom?" "I ran out of cigarettes," he answered. "You smoke too much," I told him. He laughed. "I really came along because I thought you might need some back-up." "Shit, I thought I was going to get another crack at your crack!" "You will... later. There's too many mosquitoes here. What are you going to do to Charles' boyfriend?" "I dunno, but it had better be good. I don't want to sleep in Charles' bunk every night. It smells too good." Boom Boom laughed. That made me feel better. "Have you got any ideas?" I asked him. "That all depends on how much trouble you want to get into." "Hey, man, it's still early. Let's keep the trouble down to a minimum." "All right then, we'll just make his night a living hell." Boom Boom extracted a small container from his pocket. "You hold him, I'll fill his shorts with this." "What's that?" "Itching powder..." "Boom Boom, you're beautiful!" "Yes... I know..." "We probably won't be able to stick around after we dose him..." "I was counting on that." "Why, what have you got in mind?" "You'll see... c'mon..." I was beginning to think that everybody had a plan... but me. We hurried to the cabin where I had passed the previous night in a bed that smelled like oranges. I crept in and tiptoed to the bunk. It was empty. "Looking for somebody, asshole?" Of course I had suspected that the guy would be ready for me. I hadn't expected him to be waiting behind the door, though. I turned in time to see him step out of the shadows. He was a lot taller than I remembered... or perhaps that was just the way the light did not shine on him. Things look a lot bigger and seem to loom a lot more in the dark. "I thought I straightened you out last night," I told him. "But I guess you're a whole lot stupider than I thought you were." That's when he showed me the baseball bat. "You are a whole lot stupider than I thought you were..." I told him. Then as an after thought I added "Tiny..." "All right, smart-ass, we'll see who's stupid..." He lifted the bat and took a swing. I didn't have any trouble avoiding it. All I had to do was sit down on his bunk. The son of a bitch was going for my head. If he had aimed lower I would have had more trouble getting out of the way. He raised the bat over his head to club me where I sat, but that was when Boom Boom's hand grabbed the bat as his foot caught the idiot's nuts. I took the bat from Boom Boom and we proceeded with our plan to contaminate his shorts while he writhed about in agony on the wooden cabin floor. We took care of the task in a few seconds and then stepped back to watch what happened. The guy was still favoring his nuts and calling us every name in the book, but then, all of a sudden, an entirely new interest grabbed him and he stumbled to his feet. "You dirty bastards! I'm gonna kill you!" He ripped his shorts off and grabbed for a towel. He rubbed at himself, but only managed to make matters worse. Now the powder was being forced into the pores of his skin and onto the head of his dick as well. There was a clump of it forming in the sweat between his ass cheeks and it was not long before he managed to work it into the membrane of his asshole. Suddenly the beach seemed like a good idea to him, at least we assumed that thought had crossed his mind from the way he ran to it. The last we saw of him that night was when he dove into the water that had so recently been ice. We imagined that he found the water stimulating, but we did not stick around to find out. "C'mon," Boom Boom urged, and led me to the equipment shed. "What did you have in mind?" I inquired as I entered the dark shack. Boom Boom pointed out that there would probably not be a bed check that night. The usual routine was to pull surprise head counts the first night, just to establish the fact that they were liable to happen at any time. After that, the counselors figured that we would tremble in our bunks rather than take the chance of being caught out and about, which would have meant an early demerit and a spot on the labor gang. Naturally, we did not pay any attention to their rules. We were used to taking chances. "You got any cigarettes?" Boom Boom asked. "Sure," I nodded, not realizing that he couldn't see me. I pulled one out and handed it to him. Then I lit it for him. "Thanks," he said. "I'll pay you later..." He sucked in the first grateful lung full of smoke and sounded like he was approaching nirvana when he finally exhaled. "Forget it," I answered. "I owe you." "What's the matter? Don't you like my ass?" "Of course I like your ass! You're the best fuck I've ever had." "I'm glad to hear that..." "Did you enjoy what we did this afternoon?" I asked. It was suddenly important to me to know if my own performance had been adequate. "Did I look like I was enjoying it?" "Yah..." "Well, then..." "What?" "Do you want to try it again?" "I don't have that many cigarettes." "Would you like to buy some?" "Why? Do you have five?" "Shit, Rick... figure it out. If I fuck you and then you fuck me, neither of us owe the other guy anything." I had overlooked this. But it was true. I had taken Carlisle's IOU the night before. Why couldn't I take Boom Boom's... and especially if he would be buying it back right afterwards by letting me fuck him. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the night I started to understand economics. The only trouble with the concept was it meant that we were getting away from the idea that you were trading a fuck for something material. Reciprocal sex meant that we were coming dangerously close to what amounted to a relationship. But I supposed that if Boom Boom didn't mind, why should I? Boom Boom didn't mind. He sucked on his cigarette like it was a cock and five minutes later he stubbed out the butt in a little pool of gas that had leaked out of the lawnmower. I was a little scared when he did that, but he told me he knew what he was doing. "So?" he said. The cigarette was finished. The conversation was too. This was the moment we had both been waiting for. "So, did I leave a permanent mark on your nipple today?" I asked. "Here, check for yourself," he offered and he pulled off his T-shirt. I lit a match and examined the nipple closely. It had returned to its normal condition. Boom Boom took my hand and brought it up to his chest. I took that to mean that he wanted me to touch the thing. I did. I pinched it between my thumb and index finger. "Hold onto it. It will give you a starting point," he said and he blew out the match. The next thing I knew his tongue was in my mouth. Sometimes I have enough trouble with the one I've already got in there. It gets me in a lot of trouble. Now there were two of them, and I was sure I was getting in over my head. When he broke the kiss I felt drool all over my chin. The surprising thing was, I didn't mind... even though it was Boom Boom's drool. "Why don't you take your clothes off?" he said. "I can't..." "Why not?" "Cause I can't let go of your tit." Boom Boom laughed. "Here," he said, removing my fingers from his nipple, "I'll save your place. Get undressed." We both quickly stripped and tossed our clothes out of the shack. We didn't want to get them greasy. "Where were we?" I asked when we were both naked. Boom Boom felt for me in the darkness and sought out my head. He pulled me to him and the next thing I knew I had his tit in my mouth. The nipple was erect and as I moved closer to him I found out that a few other things were also pretty stiff. I felt his hand grab my cock, so I grabbed his too. There was no smell of oranges in the shed. The overpowering smell was gasoline which almost masked the odor of Boom Boom's breath, which smelled of tobacco. My proximity to his arm pits also allowed me to smell his perspiration, which was a little stronger now that we had passed another twelve hours without being able to shower. I didn't mind though. This was how sex between men was supposed to smell... and besides, I was no rose myself. He pulled my head off his tit and kissed me again. While he was doing that, I felt his fingers reach around and find my asshole. I was anxious for more than his fingers to be up there, but I let him take control and do things his way. We found a bench that they used to try to fix things and Boom Boom cleared it off before he lifted me up onto it. I was happy that he didn't just bend me over it. I wanted to do this face to face, even though we couldn't see each other. I felt him lubricate my ass. "What are you putting on me?" I asked. "Axle grease..." "Is that stuff okay?" I trusted Boom Boom. He was the Chemistry genius after all. But there was still something worrisome about having yourself lubricated with stuff they use on semis. Boom Boom laughed. "Don't worry, Rick. It's goose grease. I never leave home without it." That made me feel better. But what made me feel really good was when Boom Boom pushed the head of his dick up against my hole and I felt him slide into me. There was hardly any pain. It was the most natural feeling fuck I had ever had. It was my third time, and I knew that it was something I could get used to... especially with Boom Boom. This was reinforced when Boom Boom took my cock in his hand and slowly began to massage it. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Eventually I took over, while Boom Boom played with my tits. I brought myself to climax a couple of minutes before Boom Boom shot his load up my ass. He licked the jism off his fingers that I had sprayed there when I came. Of course, this meant that he owed me a fuck, but I was unable to collect. He mentioned this to me. "There's always tomorrow night," I told him. I figured I had better pace myself. "Same time... same place..." he agreed. We stepped nakedly out into the night and found our clothes. I fished another cigarette out of my pocket and lit it up. We shared that one, as we sat there in the nude and looked at about a billion stars in the clear deep northern sky. Boom Boom told me a lot of their names, and we focused on the big dipper. We watched as it crawled an eighth of the way around the sky, and then the sun made them all disappear. That's when Boom Boom noticed that I had a sunburn and apologized for having been a little rough with his hands. It hadn't bothered me, but I felt good that it had bothered him. I knew then that, in spite of his reputation, Boom Boom was a nice guy. We got back to the cabin when everybody else was getting up. "We had a visitor last night, guys," Carlisle said. Then he corrected himself. "Well, actually, he was here to see you." "Was he a little damp?" Boom Boom inquired. "And a little naked..." Carlisle confirmed. "He said he wanted to talk to you two, but I thought he wanted to do more than talk." "He wanted to kill you," Edgar contributed. "Of course Carlisle pointed out that that would not be satisfactory," Robbie added. "And then Skeeter persuaded the gentleman to remove himself from our abode," Carlisle finished. "But not until you had made it clear that he was to leave me alone," Charles piped in. He was talking to Carlisle and gazing into his eyes. I felt my dinner take a U-turn, until I remembered the kissing that had gone on in the storage shed a few hours earlier. That made me wonder about what was happening to myself as well as Carlisle. I threw myself onto my bunk. My damned pillow smelled like oranges. Chapter Eight Take A Hike Monday night Boom Boom and I found the door of the equipment shed locked. That forced a change in our plans. We were forced to use the picnic table behind the Tuck Shop again. Naturally Charles was in Carlisle's bed again. The next day he was to go on an overnight canoe trip with his cabin. He was distraught about being separated from Carlisle, his protector, even though Carlisle had yet to lift a finger to help him, other than to point out the direction I was to take to rectify matters. I made it known that I did not intend to take Charles' place in the canoe. "Of course not," Carlisle had said when I told him. "There's no way we could pull that off." I guessed that he had already considered it. But instead of sending me over to fill Charles' bunk that night, Carlisle had sent Adrian. He did not want to be responsible for my dead body being found in the lake the next day, but he figured that nobody would miss Adrian. much in common. He stayed with Edgar, while I hung with Robbie, Skeeter and Carlisle... whenever Carlisle wasn't busy with Charles. Skeeter was our muscle man. He had devoted his life to the pursuit of the perfect physique... his own, developing each of his sets of muscles in a desperate attempt to make the entire package a little larger. Being at least a head and a half shorter than anyone else with no expectations of any increase, his fanaticism might be excused as over-compensation. Skeeter had another problem that kept him returning to Camp Lester every year. He had to have a girlfriend fawning over him whenever he went out in public. It caused him no end of trouble and none of us was even sure that he ever had sex with any of these babes. He just seemed to feel the need to prove that he could attract them. Naturally this led to some dramatic restrictions in any conversation with Skeeter. In fact the only safe topic was how great his muscles looked. Every other topic invariably led to a misunderstanding and a perceived slight and Skeeter's standard response, "What did you mean by that?" Even though I hung with Skeeter, we didn't talk to each other much and even mentioning here that he had the smallest dick of anybody in the cabin... Charles included... causes me to glance over my shoulder to make sure that Skeeter is not around. Of course there is no reason to think that he might be. He comes from Toronto and is probably doing time in the Don jail right now, but there is always the off-chance that he suspects that someone is talking about him, and that is something he would not abide. Robbie was different from the rest of us. He didn't have a care in the world. He was going to be rich and there was nothing anybody could do about it. It wasn't that he was bad... he just had to attend Camp Lester because his mother's father recognized that when Robbie had been born the acorn had fallen far from the oak. Not only had it fallen far from the oak, it had rolled down a hill and been picked up by some pretty unsavory squirrels. Of course, if you were Robbie, you couldn't have pleased his grandfather if you tried, since he was really angry with Robbie's mother, who had gone and got herself pregnant and neglected to inquire if Robbie's father had a name or an address. The old man was making sure that in spite of whatever low life had donated his DNA to the family, it would be whipped out of the boy before he ascended to the stewardship of the family fortune. Carlisle was just as adamant that Robbie's grandfather deserved what he got and thought it would be really neat if Robbie decided to liquidate the assets and put the money to a really good use... like the Anthony Carlisle Benevolent Fund. Of course he hadn't mentioned anything about that to Robbie... yet. Monday had been interesting mostly for what didn't happen. The Tuck Shop didn't sell a thing. This confused the counselors, who had believed that we would all be there to load up on chocolate bars and soda. I believe that they deliberately made the meals lousy to encourage the campers to stock up at the Tuck Shop, which opened in the evening, right after dinner. They could thereby save a little on the camp food bill and make a substantial profit off our need for something decent to eat. It was a win/win situation... for them. Of course, when nobody showed up, they smelled a conspiracy right off the bat, and of course they were right, and whenever the subject of a conspiracy came up, so did Carlisle's name, and of course they were right again. There was nothing they could do about it though, except lock the place up and try again on Tuesday. Tuesday found Carlisle back to his normal self after bidding Charles farewell at the docks where the five canoes pulled out. He had watched them go until they disappeared around the point. Then he shook himself a little and rejoined the world that we knew best. Tuesday also found Adrian counting his cigarettes. He had, evidently, cleaned up at the other cabin, after a somewhat rocky start. He said that he had been fucked all night, but the rest of us believed that it was probably an evening of oral sex. For one thing, he didn't have all that many cigarettes and for another thing, you couldn't get a decent fuck out of Adrian unless you went in two at a time. Either way, though, Adrian wasn't buying on Tuesday, which was all right with us, since the only ones who would sell to him were pretty whacked out anyway. My date with Boom Boom on Monday night had been another night in heaven. The more I saw of Boom Boom's body, the more I believed that I was falling in love with it. His mind was pretty interesting too. There was always something on it. Usually it was not something that you would think of as being a subject for anybody to think about, but Boom Boom would have some thoughts on just about any subject you could name. Mostly we talked about astronomy. This was because we spent most of our time together under a star-filled sky. He told me on Monday night that the closest star to the earth was our sun, and it took the light from the sun over eight minutes to travel to the earth. He also told me that it was traveling at the fastest speed known to man, the speed of light. I asked him how fast that was and he told me a strange thing. Calculating light speed was not so easy to understand since it was based on distance calculations that normally involved the amount of distance that could be traveled in a year at the speed of light, and that space and time are essentially the same thing. He told me that the only reason we have time is because the universe is expanding... sort of like a balloon without any skin. If it ever reached the limit of its expansion and started to collapse, time would start to go backwards. I told him I just didn't believe that. He told me that he had a lot of trouble with it too, but that one of his physics teachers had told him that was the hypothesis... shortly before he had been committed. It sort of made you think... but after it got too confusing, I suggested that we just go ahead and fuck, and Boom Boom said he was all for that too. I undressed and so did Boom Boom, and I leaned him back onto the table and greased him good. He was hanging onto my thing and I was playing with his tits again, and everything was just great. I stepped between his legs and lifted one to each of my shoulders. I was as hard as I'd ever been and he was still the best fuck on the planet. There was nothing else that even came close to doing it with Boom Boom and I lost myself in the feeling. I leaned over his belly and started sucking on his right nipple again. He laid there with his eyes closed and moaned softly. And neither one of us heard Edgar arrive. "Don't mind me," Edgar said. But it was too late for not minding. "What are you doing here?" I asked. I had pulled out of Boom Boom and was in the process of looking for my pants. "Carlisle sent me to check out the Tuck Shop," Edgar told us. "Keep doing what you were doing... I don't mind!" "Edgar, it isn't you that should mind," I snapped back. "Oh... sorry... was I disturbing you guys?" "It's all right Edgar," Boom Boom tried to smooth over the situation. "What are you checking on precisely?" "The telephone line..." Edgar answered distractedly. He had a small flashlight that he used to follow the wire that disappeared into the Tuck Shop under the soffit along the top of the exterior wall. "I didn't know they had a phone in there," I interjected. "They don't," Boom Boom answered. "That line goes to the modem in their computer." "Which is hooked up to both of the other computers in here over the local telephone lines." Edgar told us. "They didn't install a LAN, I'm sure of that. That would have been overkill, so I guess we can get access to their files, and without too much of an alteration, to the internet as well. I figure the only thing we'll need will be some software." "Speaking of software," Boom Boom remarked, "Rick seems to have some right there between his legs." I glanced down at my flaccid member. "I don't do too well when I'm interrupted," I told them. "Well, I think I've got all the information I need," Edgar advised us. "I'll let you guys get back to whatever it was you were doing." "Thanks, Edgar," Boom Boom grinned. Edgar disappeared into the shadows, but for the rest of the time that Boom Boom and I were locked in our embrace, I couldn't get over the feeling that somebody was watching us. It was not one of my more inspired performances. We got back to our bunks about one thirty and Boom Boom and I slept in while Carlisle and the others went first to breakfast and then to see the canoes off. They brought us a doggy bag of toast and a couple of containers of warm milk which we choked down gratefully. Then Carlisle and I set out for the hike he had told me about on the first day of our arrival. It took us deep into the bush through terrain that was difficult at best. We had been walking... stumbling would be more like it... for about an hour when we came across a dirt road that seemed to have been cut through the middle of nowhere. We walked along the road a while to a culvert that passed underneath it and Carlisle stopped and asked me to give him a hand getting down the steep embankment. He had brought a rope which I was to hold while he lowered himself to the other end of it. I braced myself and down he went. Carlisle disappeared into the culvert and then a few minutes later I heard him yell for me to haul the rope back up. It had his back pack attached to it, and it was kind of heavy. He told me to send my pack down, so I unhooked his and lowered mine. It came up a few minutes later. Then I sent the rope back down for Carlisle. He came up with a big grin on his face and a lit cigarette in his mouth. "The drought is over!" he announced proudly, as he slipped a full pack of cigarettes into my shirt pocket. "There's three more cartons of these in your back pack... along with some other stuff..." "What stuff?" I asked. "This is all the stuff I couldn't get up my ass," he grinned. "I told you that this summer was going to be different, didn't I?" "It sure is heavy enough!" I told him. "Yah, well, most of the heavy stuff is Edgar's. But I brought along a few toys too. Oh... and if I do get picked up and put into solitary, remember where this spot is, okay? There'll be a delivery every other week." I couldn't get over Carlisle's infectious grin. It was like he was really enjoying Camp Lester this year. There was one thing that bothered me however and I decided that now might be a good time to mention it. "Won't you be flooding the market with cigarettes?" "Look at it this way, Rick, old boy," he said, "We now have the market cornered. You'll be able to get any ass in the place." Carlisle set off down the road, hitching his back pack on as he went. I followed him. I was pretty sure that he knew what he was doing, but I couldn't get over the feeling that the cigarettes would not do me any good. After Monday night behind the Tuck Shop, I was pretty sure that the only ass I wanted belonged to Boom Boom. Chapter Nine Carlisle Takes Charge In addition to the three cartons of cigarettes, our back packs contained a treasure trove of forbidden fruit... yah, I know, I have this thing about Adam and Eve. The heavy stuff that belonged to Edgar consisted of a portable computer and about a hundred floppy disks, along with packets of connectors and spools of wire that would enable him to hook into just about any computer system known to man, and a few known only to Bill Gates. Carlisle apologized that he had only been able to get him a used machine, but Edgar switched it on and checked out the components and pronounced it to be more than adequate for their needs. I was still wondering what needs these were. Boom Boom accepted his parcels and stashed them in his foot locker. There was no doubt in my mind what the parcels contained. I hoped that they had been well wrapped. I imagined that most of the powders and liquids contained in them would be violently incompatible with each other... that was Boom Boom's specialty after all. Carlisle had a few toys of his own to play with, including a complete set of restraint equipment. I wondered if Charles was into bondage in a big way. There was also a ring of keys, which I figured must be skeleton keys, because, other than the handcuffs in Carlisle's toy box, there was nothing around with a lock on it that we were allowed to have access to... until now. There was a bottle of rye whiskey that Carlisle hid along with the cigarettes without telling anybody where he put them. I guess he knew that if the liquor got out, it wouldn't be long before the counselors would be all over us like a bad rash. There is nothing like a bunch of drunk campers to raise the suspicions of the righteous... and confirm their already low opinions of us. Carlisle and I recovered from our hike on our bunks while the rest of the guys gathered around Edgar to see if he had any really neat video games. Edgar sneered at the thought. Computers, he told them, were not toys. This came as a major revelation to just about everybody else in the cabin except Boom Boom. I found myself watching Boom Boom almost exclusively. There did not seem to be anything about him that I did not like. His attitude... his bearing... his laugh... everything about him was right... but right for what? I wondered if I was falling in love. I wondered if Boom Boom shared the feeling. And I wondered if there was any way of finding out short of asking him. The night before, we had returned to the cabin almost immediately after we had sex. There had been no lingering under the stars and talking about stuff that sort of wandered around the subjects I really wanted to discuss. I had known that I had to take the hike with Carlisle, while he had probably been equally anxious to catch up some of the sleep he had missed the night before. The walk back to the cabin had been quiet too. You had to be quiet, because sound carries well at night, and voices at one o'clock in the morning were bound to spark an investigation. I guess that's when I decided that I would try to invade Boom Boom's and Edgar's daytime world. There was one way to do that... I had to develop an interest in computers, the thing that both of them seemed unable to do without. I borrowed some of Edgar's books. They helped me fall asleep. I awoke at dinner time. Edgar and Boom Boom were still at the computer and everybody else was getting ready to chow down. We imagined that dinner would be particularly lousy that night since a third of us were not there for it, and the remaining counselors would want to see if they could break the boycott of the Tuck Shop by starving us into submission. We were right about dinner... but they were right about breaking the boycott... Some of the fat kids from the other cabin couldn't take it any more and sneaked over to load up on candy and chips. I guess it didn't matter to them that the counselors were ripping them off. They needed something to eat. Nobody from our cabin broke under the pressure. Carlisle assured us that it would be just a matter of time before we could buy anything our hearts desired. I couldn't help glancing at Boom Boom when he said that. I was surprised to see that Boom Boom was looking at me too. We both looked away real quick. Boom Boom and I stayed in our bunks that night. Carlisle and Edgar disappeared though. They had an appointment at the Tuck Shop. They had no trouble getting into it. The lock on the door was a pretty simple affair for anybody who possessed the keys that Carlisle did. Once in the Tuck Shop they tried to switch on the computer, but found that it too was powered by the camp electricity... which was off. This was a bit of a problem, but not an insurmountable one. They would have to come back the next night before lights out, or rig an outlet from the floodlights that lit the place at night. Carlisle went to the power house to see what he could figure, while Edgar proceed ed with Plan "B", hooking on to the internet with the battery operated computer. He used his own internet hookup, which just happened to be in Windsor, Ontario, and a long way from Camp Lester. The likelihood of anyone becoming suspicious was slim. The camp bills would be late arriving, and if the counselors did figure out that the phone bill was unusually high, it would probably be the end of summer before they figured out that it was not one of them who was surreptitiously running up the long distance charges to their girl friend every night. Edgar picked up his e-mail and sent a few messages for Carlisle. He also downloaded a few photos from his favorite newsgroups before signing off. Carlisle discovered a powered outlet in the power house. He also found an extension cord that might make it from the Power House to the Tuck Shop. All in all, it was a productive night. The next day there were even more desertions from our ranks as the food got worse in the dining hall and the temptation of the Tuck Shop got even stronger. You could almost feel the counselors gloating, but still the boycott held among those of us who knew what was happening. Edgar still needed a couple of days to download the programs from the Tuck Shop computer to his own machine, figure out the code, break it, write new code and load it all back to the Tuck Shop machine. The canoes arrived back that evening, and Carlisle was there on the docks when they did. The canoeists were a pretty somber looking bunch and one of them, Charles' bunkmate, was the sorriest looking one of the lot. "Carlisle, get over here!" the head counselor ordered. Carlisle would probably have told him to go and fuck himself if Charles had not been there. Instead he lifted himself slowly to his feet and went where he was called. "I've got a new camper for your cabin," the counselor told him. "And I'm telling you straight out, that I don't want any problems. Take Charles here and move his stuff down to your cabin. You're also to keep an eye on him and make sure nobody bothers him, understand?" "Yes sir..." "It's your ass if anybody touches a hair on his head, Carlisle." "You can count on me sir..." "Why do I doubt that?" Carlisle picked up Charles' back pack and carried it to his cabin. "What was that all about?" he asked. "Adam got caught threatening me," Charles explained. Carlisle stopped in his tracks. "Who's Adam?" "The guy I've been having all the trouble with. He told me he was going to get even with me for the things Rick and Boom Boom did to him." "I'll kill the son of a bitch!" Charles grabbed Carlisle and turned him back towards the cabin. "Don't worry about him. They know about him now. He won't be able to move without permission signed in triplicate. Anyway, I got what I wanted. I got to move to your cabin." "I'm still gonna kill him if he makes another move." "Don't worry, Anthony, he won't... How's the boycott going?" "It's falling apart, but we think we'll have things fixed in the next couple of days. Why? Do you need anything?" "Just a bath. You know, one with hot water..." "Sorry... all we have at our cabin is a shower. But they did get that working today. As long as you get washed before the power goes off, you should have plenty of hot water." "Good!" Charles sighed. "Will you wash my back for me?" Carlisle was aghast. Charles had always been extremely shy about his body. "Are you sure you want me to?" he asked. "Absolutely... I have missed you so much, Anthony, and I know I haven't been fair to you. But you showed me that you are a gentleman and I want to have sex with you because... well, because I know that I don't have to do it. Please tell me that you want to have sex with me too, I don't think I could bear it if you didn't." "Of course I do," Carlisle answered. But when he said that he suddenly realized that if he did, he would probably never be able to think of Charles in the same way he had before. Carnal knowledge does not always reveal what we hope it will, while other times it opens vast vistas of new areas of growth. Then, of course, Carlisle shook himself and realized that it was only a fuck. They moved Charles' belongings to our cabin, and shortly after eight we heard the shower water running. Charles and Carlisle were in there together, of that there was no doubt. But none of us wanted to peek. There were just some things that we did not want to see. After they had finished and had wrapped themselves in towels, Carlisle called Boom Boom and I outside for a conference. He told us that he could not go with Edgar that night and asked us to serve as his watchdogs while he copied the computer files. As soon as the headcount had been done, we gathered together our equipment and slipped out into the night... but not before all three of us had noticed Charles slip into Carlisle's bunk and pull the blanket of my bunk down so that no one could see what they were doing. Boom Boom shrugged and we set out for the Tuck Shop. I ran the wire from the Power House down to the Tuck Shop while Boom Boom and Edgar set up the connections. We plugged everything in and both computers lit up. Edgar began the transfer program. Boom Boom and I went outside to wait and watch. While we were watching we couldn't help observing that Charles had brought a tremendous change over Carlisle. I admitted that it was one I did not approve of. "It's love, Rick," Boom Boom told me. "Haven't you ever been in love?" "I don't know," I confessed. "I don't know what love feels like." "Well, it's confusing all right," Boom Boom told me. "You feel like you aren't sure of things that you thought you knew for sure only the day before. You're afraid because you've never felt that way before. You think that you might be going a little crazy... and I guess you are." "That's love?" "Those are some of the symptoms. Do any of them apply to you?" "Yah... some..." I didn't want to tell him that he was describing the way I felt down to the last detail." "It suddenly becomes more important what the other person thinks than anything else. You only want to be with them. You find yourself thinking only about them when they aren't there. Things about them that you would normally hate in a person suddenly become wonderful because it's them." "What sorts of things?" "Oh... things like a big nose or a funny accent... you know... imperfections..." "Or a lot of body hair?" "I suppose so." "Yah I guess I know what you mean. But what happens if the other person isn't in love too?" "Then they rip your heart out and tromp it into the dirt! I never said love was pretty." "Are you in love, Boom Boom?" "I have been..." "Didn't it work out?" "Dunno... I never had the guts to tell him." "Me neither..." I took the pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket and slipped it into his. "What's that for?" he asked. "I've decided to quit smoking." "Does this mean you don't want to fuck anymore?" "I never said that. I just don't want to think of it as something I'm buying." "Does this mean what I think it means?" "If you think that it means that I love you... yah..." There was a sudden silence between us. The longer it lasted the more I became absolutely convinced that I had done the wrong thing. "I don't have that much body hair, do I?" Boom Boom asked. "I love your body hair." "And I love your nose..." "Wait... that was me you were talking about? I don't have an accent!" "Yes you do..." "It's you that has the accent... Boom Boom!" "Are we having a lover's fight?" "Yah, I suppose so... if you love me too." "Yes, I love you, Rick... you and your nose." He kissed my nose. I decided that one good turn deserves another, so I kissed him back. After that we didn't talk much. Chapter Ten What Goes Around... Edgar didn't have any trouble breaking the code. He had about as much trouble as he'd had with the password, which had proved to be no trouble at all. He'd simply looked on the piece of paper jutting out from under the computer. There it was, waiting for him just like he'd known it would be. That is the beauty of systems that are operated by many users. If they don't bother to put in multiple passwords, somebody is bound to forget. Since they are going to forget when they turn the computer on, the password has to be kept in a handy spot. Since they assumed that the Tuck Shop was invulnerable, they assumed that the computer was too. As far as I know they went on believing that all summer... or at least until they printed out their total sales and found themselves about a thousand dollars in the hole. Edgar was of the opinion that since the counselors were raising the prices in their favor, it was only fair that he discount them by the same percentage. Carlisle concurred. We set up the new system the following night and the next day we went over and bought the place out. Nobody in our cabin went to dinner for the next three days. The counselors seemed rather smug about busting our boycott. We let them think what they wanted. Boom Boom and I put on our mosquito repellent and disappeared into the woods. We found enough time each day to spend out there mostly talking to each other. Boom Boom told me about his hopes and dreams. He wanted to be a pharmacist... eventually, but in the meantime the things he enjoyed the most were playing hockey and figuring out how to make a bigger explosion. He liked his explosions bright and sparkly too. I guess I sort of laughed at that and he got a little defensive. He told me that there were a lot of guys who made a good living blowing things up. "Yah, right!" I told him. "But you ain't Irish!" "No, man, I mean in Hollywood," he told me. "They're special effects guys. They make those explosions you see in the movies." "I thought that was done by the guys doing the fighting," "Hell, no, Rick. How do you think they shoot guys and show the blood spurting out of them? You ain't gonna get volunteers for things like that!" "You mean that's phony too?" Of course I knew it was phony, but I liked hearing the way Boom Boom explained things. "Of course it's phony, only every one of those spurts of blood is caused by an explosion in the clothes the actor is wearing. It's almost as bad as being shot, and they aren't acting when you see the looks they get on their faces. They're just as surprised as the audience is." "So what have you got planned for us in the near future?" It was a question that had to be asked. I didn't expect a straight answer. Boom Boom was a man who liked surprises, and advertising a surprise in advance is not a good way of keeping the surprise a surprise. "I'll only tell you this much," he leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. "Don't sit too close to the campfire this Sunday night." "Won't I be sitting with you?" "Yah, I suppose you will." There didn't seem to be anything to add to that so I kissed him. He liked being kissed. You could see it by the way he licked his lips and got a smirk on his face right after you did it. "Tell me about you, Rick," he said. "There's nothing to tell," I told him. "Sure there is. Tell me about what you're studying in school." "Just the usual shit. I play football, but that's only to get out of late classes on game days." "You going to college?" To tell the truth, I hadn't thought about that until Boom Boom asked me. I had to say something though, and from the way he was talking, it seemed like he wanted to hear me say yes. "Probably... Community College..." "And..." "And what?" "What courses are you going to take?" More questions... I had to think quick. "Probably Auto Mechanics..." "No way..." "Why?" "You can't earn shit as an auto mechanic." "What else is there?" "Computers, man... You should take a good Electronics and Computers course." "All right, then, I will," "What? Just like that?" "Sure... why not?" Why not indeed. It seemed to be something that Boom Boom approved of, and I was suddenly feeling that Boom Boom's approval was a very important thing for me. "Aren't you going to think about it?" "Nope. If you think I should do it, that's good enough for me." "You sure know how to hang the responsibility on a guy." "It ain't that, Boom Boom... The thing is, nobody's ever made any suggestions about what I should do. I thought of Auto Mechanics because my brother is one. You're the first person who's ever shown an interest in my future, so I figure that you care. I can try computers. If it works, I owe you. If it don't, I'll try something else. Where should I enroll?" "They've got a good course at the college where I live." "Then I'll move there," I decided. Hell, I was making decisions left, right and center. I had suddenly found something to base them on... something I had not had before. "Only I won't be there," Boom Boom told me. "I'll probably be in Kingston." "What? Are you facing federal time?" "No way, man! It isn't just penitentiaries. They've got a university there... a damned good one! Come to think of it, they've got a college there too!" "Then I'll move to Kingston too." Boom Boom's face looked hopeful. I really began to think that we were building something together. It was a good feeling that he seemed to feel the same way. "We can get an apartment together," he suggested. "Can you cook?" I asked. "Ten times better than the assholes they have working here." "Well, that will have to do, I guess." Boom Boom laughed and then he kissed me. After he kissed me, I kissed him. After that it was a toss up who was kissing who... make that who was kissing whom. I'm going to go to college after all. And I owed it all to Boom Boom. That made our love something special. I knew that he cared about what happened to me. Suddenly I cared about what happened to me too. We didn't have sex or anything, but it was the closest I had ever felt to another person in my life. I put my head on his chest and felt him stroke my hair. I wrapped an arm about his waist and felt the softness of his body. Then I felt his face on the top of my head and his lips kissed my hair. I was so happy I could have cried. I probably did... a little. All too soon it was time to go back for another Camp Lester activity. Organized activities at Camp Lester amounted to showing up for meals, if you wanted to eat, taking a hobbycraft, if you weren't already into something of equal or more importance, participating in sports, volleyball on the beach in the late afternoon, and swimming once the lake warmed up to the point where you didn't turn blue in two minutes flat. They had experimented with archery and a rifle range in the first year I had been at camp, but ruled them out as activities that were a little too dangerous to trust us with. They had a computer shack at Camp Lester. Like everything else there it was locked up when not in use. There was no need to lock up those computers. Nobody was interested in stealing a 286 anymore. But the computer shack was a legitimate hobby and so Boom Boom and I enrolled in it to avoid woodworking. It also gave me my introduction to the machines and the programs that make them work. I wrote a program my first day there, with Boom Boom's help of course. It didn't do much except convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, but it proved something to me. I could handle these things, and with a little work, I could make them do what I wanted them to do. Edgar's books started to make more sense, and I started looking for programs that I could type in. That kept me busy even on the days when it rained. I found myself waiting at the computer shack door with Boom Boom. Some days we were the only ones there. Those were the best days. The best night was Sunday. That was the first campfire. Everybody was supposed to dress up like an Indian... the North American kind, not the Convenience Store kind... and march to the spot in the forest where the logs were piled up. Dressing up like an Indian meant wearing as little as possible and painting yourself with water based finger paints that were guaranteed to wash off easily. This meant that the mosquitoes would actually stick to you long enough for you to kill them. Feathers were a definite plus and the head counselor wore an ornate headdress that had been donated by one of the Indian Nations for the purpose of making the head counselor look like a white fool. The assembly took place at eight o'clock and was supposed to last about an hour. This was to allow the counselors to get back to their quarters in time to see Married... With Children. They had a satellite dish. We all arrived at the appointed hour and the counselors started the show with a prayer to the spirits of the woods to provide them with fire, the element that would protect them from the night. This was something they did every time. It was supposed to make what happened next look supernatural. Unfortunately, what happened next scared the shit out of half the campers and all of the counselors, especially the one with the headdress, which caught on fire in the explosion. Evidently some of the spirits of the woods were a little pissed off with the collection of delinquents that had been brought out that year. Logs went everywhere. Even Boom Boom was surprised when one just missed us. He told me on the race back to the cabin that he might have made a teensy miscalculation. Nobody was killed, but the counselor with the headdress wore a hat everywhere he went for a couple of weeks afterwards. They were still dousing the flames well into the next day and at one point they were about to call in a water bomber from the forest ranger station. That was called off after the rain started and more or less brought things under control. The trees that were still standing stopped burning anyway. They couldn't pin it on Boom Boom because they had been fooling with chemicals themselves. If they called in the Fire Marshall, they would have had a lot of explaining to do. So they just looked at him funny and knew in their heart of hearts that he had beat them at their own stupid game. Anyway, that was the first and the last campfire of the season at Camp Lester. Carlisle started to look a little worried about a week after Charles moved in. Boom Boom suggested to me that it was the result of getting all of his wishes. His dream had come true, and now it was turning into a nightmare. Carlisle, Boom Boom pointed out, had never been a monogamist. He was a traveler in the night, a bee flitting from flower to flower, and so far he had been stuck with Charles, while Robbie waited temptingly within reach... like an untouched daisy. I asked Boom Boom if that would happen to us too. He told me that there was always a chance, but that it wouldn't be him who drifted out of love. He told me that he only ever had wanted one person... me. He said that he had been with other guys... he'd been with Carlisle the last year... but that all the time he was wishing that I would get involved in trading for cigarettes. That made me feel good, of course, but I still had to wonder how I would get through a whole school year before I would be able to be with Boom Boom. I worried about not being able to resist the temptation to get myself fucked... especially if Carlisle went back into circulation. None of us was even sure that Carlisle was getting anything other than an occasional blow job from Charles. This was confirmed when it came time for the second pick-up and Carlisle and I set off as we had two weeks previously to retrieve the supplies. In addition to the regular supplies of cigarettes and alcohol there was a case of condoms... Carlisle sized condoms... and I knew what the problem had been all along. Charles was into safe sex. I only hoped that he was into a lot of it. There was no doubt in my mind that Carlisle would want to make up for lost time. And there were a gross of condoms in the case he had tucked into his back pack. Chapter Eleven Things That Go Bump In The Night We heard a lot of strange sounds coming from Carlisle's bunk that night. Most of them sounded like they were coming from Charles. I imagined that Carlisle found this annoying. He liked to keep his sex quiet. He didn't like a screamer... not that Charles was one of those faggoty faggots, mind you... but there was little doubt about his virginity... at least until he stopped screaming. Boom Boom and I did not wait around to find out how long that might take. We rarely stayed long past lights out and the first head check. We had better things to do. It was the end of June and although we had been in camp for almost three weeks, it suddenly dawned on me that I had not tasted Boom Boom's juice. I realized this when I realized that tonight was the first time Carlisle was getting his from behind. Up until then, he had been feeding Charles, and probably drinking a little creme de Charles to boot. But I, myself had yet to taste a cock cocktail, other than the one that had led to the restriction of my summer vacation options, and the ruination of my reputation as a macho stud. The more I thought about it, the more I longed to drink Boom Boom. We had been hitting the picnic tables almost every night of late, taking turns at each other and pumping each others' holes full of the slime. Tonight was to have been a night of petting under the stars... we threw those in on occasion so that our performance would not be jeopardized by too much ejaculation... and if the truth were known, we enjoyed those touchy feely nights almost as much. Arousal was almost always guaranteed, but it was understood that the only cock you touched was your own. Every other inch of the other guy's body was fair game. Boom Boom liked his nipples sucked. He liked them bitten too. You could twist them and pull them and even tie them together with a little length of rawhide that he kept in his pockets... whenever he wore pants. Nights when he didn't wear pants, he wore the rawhide about his neck like a necklace. When you tied his tits together, you had to wrap the nipples a special way and cinch them off real good. Then Boom Boom was at your mercy and you could feel him anywhere you wanted, while his attention was directed to how much his nipples hurt. He would roll around in the grass and flop all over the place when you pulled that rawhide just right. Sometimes I got scared when I saw him lying there, but he would always whisper something to me like, "Squeeze my balls too..." and I would do it for him. Well, let's face it, I would do just about anything for Boom Boom... except eat his shit. A fellow has to draw the line somewhere. That night, Boom Boom gave me his rawhide again. I knew what was expected of me. He already had his underwear off and I could see those lovely tits of his waiting to be tied up. He had been anticipating it for most of the day. I knew because he told me. But I was now focused just as much on getting a drink out of him. I felt his nipples for him, but he could tell that my heart wasn't in it. "What's the matter, Rick?" "I don't know how to tell you," I said. "Is there something wrong?" he asked. "No, of course not... it's just that I've been thinking about something I'd like to do to you." "Well what is it?" "Do you promise you won't laugh at me?" "Of course I won't laugh at you." "Was that a promise?" "Yes it was. What do you want to do to me?" "I want to suck you off." Boom Boom laughed. "You said you wouldn't laugh!" "I'm sorry..." I thought it would be a little more... sinister." "I've never tasted you..." "I licked some of yours off my hands, but I don't think I've ever blown you either. I know it isn't all that bad, Rick." "Yah, I've done it to another guy... I just never did it to you. I want to try sucking you off." "We could do each other..." "You don't have to do me," I told him. "I'm not going to make you or anything." "You don't have to make me," he answered. "I don't mind at all." "You don't?" "Hell no! I like it!" "So, you'll do it?" "Sure, I'll do it... if you tie my tits up..." I did an especially good job and it sort of felt good to have him in my control that way again. It started my cock aching just to feel his nipples so hard and so vulnerable... and so much in my control. I really pulled him around that night, and when I went down on him he was standing straight out. You could have used him for a diving board he was that hard. I knew I would have no difficulty milking him. Of course I didn't do it right away. I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to feel his hard cock in my mouth. I wanted to savor its flavor... to smell its funky aroma... the private man's odor that first escapes from the underwear when you encounter a dick up close. The smell that makes you think twice about putting that thing into your mouth, because that's where the piss comes out, and there might be some in there. And then you think, what the hell, a little piss never hurt anybody. Some people actually drink the stuff, and other than a little breath problem... Well, Boom Boom's cock is pretty clean, but it does have its foreskin, or would have had it if it hadn't been skinned back by the force of his erection. I don't smell anything bad about Boom Boom's cock, so I force my nose down around his balls and give them a good sniff. I licked them too while I was in the neighborhood. That makes Boom Boom feel good, and the first thing you know, he's straddling my face. My tongue is behind his balls and licking the seam that runs between his ass cheeks. I know what's coming next. He sort of works me back to it... the thing I swore I'd never touch... the place where my cock has been spending so much time lately. I find it with my finger to try to gauge the distance. I'm still not too anxious to go all the way, but I am definitely getting an odor of it. I feel my finger sinking into it, and I pull it out. I jam another finger in while the first one goes to my nose to carry the scent. The scent is mild. It is clean. Boom Boom has been showering daily since they fixed the plumbing. Without thinking, I lick my finger. I pull the other one out and lick it too. My head is now between Boom Boo m's legs and I force my tongue up... up through the hairs that glisten with his sweat... up past the membrane that puckers and grabs at it... up into Boom Boom... and I keep going until I can't get in any further without cutting him a new asshole with my teeth. I begin the excavation... nibbling at his bung as I force my face flat against his ass. He's spreading the cheeks for me, doing all he can to get me deeper... and I realize that there is absolutely nothing that I don't like about Boom Boom... although, I'm still going to brush my teeth as soon as I get back to the cabin. That's when Boom Boom begins to moan, "I'm cumming, Rick... hurry!" I'm about to ask him how, since he has not touched himself, and I have been otherwise occupied, but I decide that it is not a good time for a conversation, and I pull my tongue out of his ass and bring my head out from between his legs in time to get the first shot in the eye. But not another drop escaped. I drained Boom Boom that night. Then later on, I did it again. He wanted to do it to me too, but I had him by the tits and I wouldn't let him. I was saving my juice for the next night. I would let him think about which end he wanted me to shoot it into. It didn't matter to me. I planned to hit them both anyway. I untied his tits about two thirty and I sucked the feeling back into them for him, while he sucks a cigarette down to the filter. He was really wasted by then, and I had to help him back into his bunk when we finally made it into the cabin. I climbed to my own perch with no problem and laid there looking at Boom Boom. He seemed to be moving in that sort of dizzy way that things get after you've spun around about thirty thousand times and fall down. You know that you've stopped, but your brain keeps everything jiggling for a while. I couldn't recall anything that might have made me feel dizzy. Then I realized that it wasn't me. It was my bunk. I realize this when the frame hits the wall. Of course the first thing I think of is an earthquake. They aren't common, but we've had them. I get myself up on my elbow and I'm all set to jump down, when I hear a moan underneath me. I check Charles' bunk and I see that it's empty. Then I also notice everybody else in the cabin is looking at me... or just beneath me... all except Boom Boom, who's looking right at me. I lay back down and stare back at Boom Boom, until Carlisle and Charles finally rock me to sleep. Canada Day is a celebration that the government insisted we celebrate. We had no particular argument with it other than the fact that it was compulsory. If it hadn't been rammed down our throats, it might have been more fun. But we could not be relied upon to create our own good time, so the activities were doubled for the first day of July and everybody was expected to participate. We decided a boycott would be non-productive, since the plans included a barbecue and it was rumored that they had obtained real meat in honor of the country's birthday. This made the canoe jousting and baseball game almost bearable. Since we were... deep down inside... true blue Canadians, those among us of an amorous nature planned some unscheduled night time activities that were bound to rival the fireworks display that would take place at dusk. Boom Boom and I had already roped off the picnic table behind the Tuck Shop for our own extravaganza. He was well aware of the implications of the evening. We seemed to have finally found our relative positions. During the day he was my instructor... my mentor. I acceded to him in all matters of a practical nature. If he told me to take a computer apart, I would do it, satisfied that he would not tell me to do something that I could not then undo. It gave me confidence just being with him. But when the night took over from the day, I rose to the dominant position. It was like I had a secret identity, and so did he. He longed to serve me, and I yearned to possess him. I called the shots when the lights went out. Before anybody misunderstands, I must clarify that there was nothing nasty about what we did. We each recognized the other's abilities, and our own inadequacies, and we fit together so beautifully that there was never any coercion... none at all. We simply fulfilled the roles that we wanted each other to play. Nothing ever pre-empted our love for each other. It had been growing ever since our first embrace. It was the most valuable part of our relationship and we never forgot that. When Boom Boom was naked I made him lie on the picnic bench while I finished undressing. I wanted to look at him while I slowly revealed myself to him. There was plenty of light being reflected behind the Tuck Shop, so that once your eyes adjusted, you could see the other guy in pretty good detail. I let my hand wander along his body from his chin down to his asshole. I fingered it again and then I licked my finger, showing him that I would do it, and that I savored the flavor of his bung. That got him hard... almost as hard as I was. I massaged his cock for him and then I felt down between his ass cheeks again. My hand was still in there when I climbed onto the picnic table and lowered my crotch into his face. My lips found his sweet hard meat again as I felt his mouth swallow me. It was all I could do to prevent myself from unloading. I felt the tip of his cock hit the back of my throat at the same time that mine was finding its way down his gullet. Between times his tongue lapped at me and occasionally he would pull off and swallow my nuts... at least it felt like he was swallowing them. I had a finger into him all the way and his ass clutched it, unwilling to give it back and yet anxious for it to be my cock. I felt my own ass being invaded and was mildly surprised to find that it was his tongue that was doing the invasion. I felt the same anxiety that he had felt the night before and I knew that I was about to discharge. I let a groan escape me and he understood, abandoning my ass and swallowing my cock once more as the first ejaculant splashed through the slit and down the back of his throat. He choked a little but did not pull off. He swallowed all I had to give him, and when the last spasms had shaken me, he unloaded into my mouth without so much as a "May I?" We laid there a while, then I turned around and we laid side by side, kissing each other and fondling anything within reach. It didn't take me long to recharge and when I found that I was once again erect, we moved to the end of the table and I lifted one of Boom Boom's legs onto each of my shoulders. I greased him up, and moved the head of my cock into his ass. I probed carefully as I saw his chest arch, those beautiful brown nipples pointing at the sky... begging to be nibbled. I was about to lean over and nibble them when there was a flash of light. For a moment I thought that it might have been lightning, but Boom Boom was twisting about beneath me, turning towards the direction the light had come. His legs came down from my shoulders and I became aware that he was trying to extricate himself from me. Then I knew what had happened... I knew it as well as Boom Boom did. Some asshole had taken a picture of us. Chapter Twelve The Other Shoe Drops Of course we chased the son of a bitch... after we found enough clothes to cover ourselves. And of course the son of a bitch got away. We couldn't find a trace of anybody... anywhere. We had our suspicions of who it might be. Of course we did. Charles' friend Adam was the most likely candidate. He hated us... and with good reason. We had been on his case ever since day one... granted, mostly at Carlisle's request... but Adam yearned to get even with us, both for his perceived injuries, and for the two weeks he had spent on the work gang for pressing his attentions on Charles. But we couldn't go busting into his cabin two hours after lights out and accuse him of outsmarting us, could we? That, we decided, would be sure to raise a stink... and a few counselors. No... we needed a plan... and when a plan was needed, there was only one person you could trust to formulate one that would be effective enough... and sneaky enough. "Carlisle!" We had spoken as one, when the trail had grown cold. We hurried first to the Tuck Shop to retrieve the rest of our clothes, and then to our cabin, where in spite of the lateness of the hour, my bunk was beating itself against the wall. Naturally we waited until it stopped before approaching. We did not raise the curtain, but called through it, "Carlisle, can we see you outside?" We waited for him on the porch. "What's up?" he asked as he stepped out still wrapping a towel around himself. "We've got a little problem," I informed him as Boom Boom lit his cigarette for him. "Somebody took a picture of Boom Boom and me behind the Tuck Shop." "Congratulations! You got me out of bed for that?" "We were fucking at the time," Boom Boom added. "Oh... Did you see who it was?" "Naw... and by the time we got our shorts on, he was gone." "See, that was your mistake," Carlisle observed. In his usual manner, he had gone straight to the root of the problem. "You shouldn't have waited to get dressed. You lost a lot of valuable time." "We think we know who it was," Boom Boom told him. "Who? Adam the Turd?" "Yah..." Boom Boom answered, a little in awe of Carlisle's powers of perception. "Did you inquire if he did it?" "No," I supplied, "we didn't think it would look too good if we went in there and woke everybody up." "What won't look too good is if somebody shows that picture around." "Maybe it won't turn out..." Boom Boom suggested. Carlisle looked a little annoyed with him. "Of course it will turn out," he told us. "The thing is... you gotta make sure that it don't get out. There's absolutely no way you can tell whose camera it was, so the only thing to do is round them all up." "What? All of them?" "There aren't that many," Carlisle pointed out. "There's only two cabins to go through. You know the camera didn't come from here. Do it tomorrow morning when everybody is eating breakfast." "Do what?" Boom Boom asked. "Steal their cameras?" "No, man! Just their film!" "Oh, yah... right..." "You'll have to be quick about it," he told us. "Breakfast is not the biggest meal of the day around here. But when you've got them, bring them over here. We'll expose them all and deep six them in the lake." "They'll probably have them locked in their lockers," I mentioned. "Then, you'd better take the keys with you," Carlisle said. "Get them from Edgar in the morning. He'll need them back tomorrow night though. He's got to go on-line for me. I need a few things." We thanked Carlisle for his help and found our way to our bunks. I was just getting settled in when I felt the unmistakable rhythm begin again. It wasn't too long before the frame of the bed was once again banging against the wall. I shoved my jeans into the space between the bed frame and the wall... the next time it opened up. At least that cushioned the noise a little. There was nothing I could do about the moaning. We did not miss breakfast. We did not eat breakfast... But we did not miss it. Boom Boom and I went through those other two cabins like a dose of salts. We hit every locker and removed the film from every camera. There were seven altogether. Not many of the campers wanted to record their memories of Camp Lester. Mostly, they wanted to forget the place existed. Still, there was an uproar the next day, when the first couple of guys noticed that their film was no longer where they had left it. Of course, none of them could say when they had last used their camera, other than a vague reference to Canada Day. The counselors visited each cabin a couple of days later and did an investigation. They took the names of each of the campers who claimed to have lost a film. When they got to our cabin they discovered that no one had been victimized. They thought that was very revealing. "How can we lose something we don't have?" Carlisle asked the weasel. "The only reason any of us would have to bring a camera to a dump like this is to get a picture of you... and that we can get from your high school year book." There was a lot of snickering after Carlisle said that, but, surprisingly, none from the weasel. We did get a look at the list of names, though. The weasel carried a clipboard. Weasel's always carry clipboards. They think it makes them look important. But the thing about clipboards is that they are very public ways of carrying paper. That's why police carry little notebooks that will fit into their shirt pockets... they can control access to it. Edgar, who is very data conscious, found a way to look over the guy's shoulder and mark down the monikers while Carlisle kept the guy talking. Edgar marked the names in his notebook, and slipped the notebook back into his shirt pocket. "There were seven rolls of film taken," the weasel mentioned. "You guys wouldn't know anything about what happened to them, would you?" "Sure," Carlisle snapped back, "I drove in to K-Mart last night and dropped them off. The pictures should be back by next Tuesday." The weasel made a note on his clipboard which Edgar later told us read, "Carlisle did it!!!" Then he left. I guess it was too smoky for him in our cabin. Edgar gave the list of names to Carlisle. "Are you sure?" Carlisle asked when he'd read it. "Positive..." Edgar answered. Carlisle's reaction interested Boom Boom and I. "What's up?" Boom Boom asked. "Your buddy Adam..." Carlisle responded. "...he ain't on the list." "No, we didn't find a camera in his locker," Boom Boom told him. "So, you think he was using somebody else's camera?" Carlisle asked. "That's the way it looks," I said. "He probably borrowed somebody else's for a few shots on Canada Day, and then figured he'd catch us before he gave it back." "I suppose that's possible... Charles, do you remember Adam ever having a camera?" Charles searched his memory. Then he seemed to remember something important. "I know for a fact that he didn't have one. All the time we were paddling the first day of the canoe trip, he was asking other guys to take his picture. I never saw him use a camera." "Well, that must be it, then," Carlisle said. But he didn't look satisfied somehow. Boom Boom and I were, though. We had been over every inch of those other cabins, and we knew for a fact that there were only seven cameras. We knew as well that the seven films had all been partially exposed. There was no way that the film could have been removed from any of the cameras and new films exposed by the time we had confiscated them. I felt a tremendous load had been lifted from my shoulders... not that I mind having people seeing me naked... that wasn't it at all. I was worried about what might have happened to Boom Boom's reputation if a picture like that had made it back to his school. It could have made grade thirteen a living hell for him. But now, it was the fourth of July, the films were at the bottom of the lake, nobody was any the wiser, and for the first time in days I had a real chub on. We had been very careful about not having sex after the picture was taken. We had been so careful that I was now discovering that I did not have what it takes to enter the priesthood... at least judging by the old standards. There was only one thing that could satisfy my cravings, and that thing was drooling over in the bunk by the window. We had Edgar unlock the equipment shed on his way to his nightly hookup with the internet at the Tuck Shop. I had borrowed some candles from Carlisle... part of his second shipment... along with the condoms... and I proceeded to wedge them into any available opening I could find... the candles, not the condoms. Tonight I wanted to see Boom Boom, and I wanted to see him by the most romantic light available. He smiled as the light lit the little shack. We slid the door shut, to hide our light both from the counselors and the moths. I pulled Boom Boom's T-shirt off and noticed for the first time just how elegantly bronzed his body was. His dark brown nipples stood out against the surrounding flesh, distinguishable both by their color and their size. There was an expectant look on his face... a sort of a half-smile mixed with a look of wonder... and he watched me to see what I would do. I gathered each of those nipples between the thumb and index finger of my hands and pinched them. Boom Boom's expression did not change, so I untied the rawhide from around his neck and bound his nipples, licking and sucking them once they were imprisoned. I pulled the rawhide to me and eventually Boom Boom was pulled forward, but not until those nipples of his had stretched themselves farther from his chest than I thought possible. When he arrived in front of me, I kissed him... kissed him deeply and took away his breath, until we were forced to either break the kiss or collapse from lack of oxygen. I dropped the rawhide and loosened Boom Boom's pants. That's when he started licking my face... which was a new sensation for me, but one I could definitely get used to. My only regret was that he had thought of it first. In response I took the rawhide in my mouth and sucked his perspiration from it. I pulled off my own T-shirt and let it hang from the rawhide while I dropped my drawers and kicked out of them. I lifted Boom Boom to the bench where he had fucked me so many days before, and I leaned him back against the wall while my teeth still clenched the rawhide and his tits stretched painfully away from his chest. Eventually I let the thing go, but not until I had given him a good workout. His asshole waited for me and I was planning to do a lot of things to it that night, but first I lifted his big clunky shoes up to my chest and loosened the laces. I pulled them off one at a time and forbid Boom Boom to let his naked feet fall. He looked at me peculiarly as I stroked him behind his heels. The soles of his feet rested against my chest and ribcage where I surveyed his toes and breathed in the odor of them. It was not that bad. I knew my own were probably worse because I wore socks while Boom Boom did not. He tried to take his feet away again when he became a little embarrassed by my survey, but I caught them and placed them back against my chest. At least I did with the left one. The right one I raised to my lips and kissed the instep. Boom Boom winced... not from pain, but from the realization that I was actually touching his foot with my lips. When I licked along the inside of the foot to the tip of his big toe he became concerned. When I wrapped my lips around his big toe and its neighbor, I heard him suck in an involuntary gasp... but he let me do it. There wasn't anything now that we had not explored, I figured. There was nothing that I couldn't do to him. He permitted my love and he loved me back. There were no restrictions on our love... nor were there any preconditions. I raised his feet to my shoulders and felt them slipping down my back as I lowered my face to his waiting hole and shoved my tongue inside it. God, he was good! He forced his ass against my mouth, entreating me to plow him deeper. I moistened him thoroughly and then I raised myself and spit onto my throbbing cock. Boom Boom moaned as I entered him. He went absolutely berserk when I grabbed his tether again and pulled at his nipples the way I would the harness of a horse. He was being ridden, and there was nothing that he wanted more at that point in his life. I swore my undying love for him and I promised that I would never leave his side again... so powerful was my adoration of Boom Boom... When I had burst within him, I pulled my cock from his ass and lowered my face to his anxious member. The thing was still rock hard and I had difficulty pulling it away from his belly. I lifted Boom Boom from the bench and turned him to the side, the better to be able to swallow his cock. I sucked at him and licked the thing and played with his balls until the first shot of semen thickened my saliva. Again and again he blew into my mouth. Again and again I swallowed him down, until finally there was only the saliva and the cock in my mouth and I could feel that he was softening. I wiped it with my lips as I pulled off him. And then I kissed him boldly on his lips and caressed his reddening tits with my finger tips. We had burned the candles about half-way down and Boom Boom was beginning to wonder how the hot wax would feel dribbling onto his naked skin, when there was a soft call from outside the door. Edgar wanted in. We pulled on our shorts and I opened the door. Edgar scooted in and I pulled the door shut. I turned to find Edgar staring at Boom Boom's tits. "Anything interesting on the internet tonight?" I asked. "No..." he answered distractedly as Boom Boom unfastened his rawhide and wrapped it once again about his neck. "I just came over to let you guys know..." "What is it, Edgar?" Boom Boom asked. "We have a problem," Edgar said. "We'd better tell Carlisle." Chapter Thirteen By The Short And Curlies... "I'm pretty sure Rick and Boom Boom didn't get the right film," Edgar revealed after we had turned Carlisle out of his bed and summoned him to the porch again. "Elaborate a little, will you?" Carlisle requested. He was clearly a little miffed about having had his night time activities disturbed a second time. "And try to edit out the dramatic parts, eh..." he added. "I noticed that they sell single use cameras in the Tuck Shop," Edgar told us. "I got looking at one because of what we'd just been through. They come with a mailer up here because the drug stores are kind of far apart." "So?" Carlisle prompted. "So, I figured that they would probably buy the things in a lots... probably in multiples of three, which is sort of the usual way of selling things. They had five on the shelf and I didn't think they would be able to buy five... three, yes... six, certainly... but nobody sells in lots of five. So I checked the inventory records, and sure enough there were six originally purchased." "I and the others are delighted that they are careful to economize by purchasing in bulk," Carlisle commented. "It makes it even more profitable for them when they over-price the items. But I believe I asked you to get to the point..." "That got me interested," Edgar continued, "so I took a look in the sales journal and they sold one on June 27th. I took a look in the accounts and guess who bought the thing?" "Adam the Turd..." Carlisle sighed. "Adam Broderick..." Edgar confirmed. "I'm really sorry about this guys, but if you didn't find that camera there can be only one explanation." "The son of a bitch mailed it out!" Boom Boom spat. I looked at him. Poor Boom Boom looked like his world had caved in and landed right on his shoulders. He sank to the steps and buried his head in his hands. Carlisle looked at Boom Boom too. Carlisle didn't like what he saw. He didn't like it when his friends displayed weakness. I guess it made him believe that he might be vulnerable too. "So, we know the thing has probably be sent out," he spoke as much to get the idea straight in his own head as to supply us with information. Carlisle was thinking out loud now... thinking on his feet... the thing he seemed best suited for. "But it hasn't come back yet." Boom Boom lit a cigarette. Carlisle reached down and took it from between his lips. He stuck it in his own mouth and sucked in a lung full of smoke. Then he wandered away across the porch and seemed to be thinking. Boom Boom lit another cigarette. "Mail call is on Wednesdays and Saturdays," Carlisle said and I began to see what he was thinking about. "The turn around time will probably be about a week, so we'll just have to make sure that somebody is there when Adam picks it up." Boom Boom didn't look quite so desolate when he heard Carlisle say that. "Until that bunch of pictures comes back," Carlisle said, "you guys are gonna ride shotgun on old Adam when he goes to pick up his mail, understand?" "Right!" Boom Boom yelped almost loud enough to wake the entire cabin. "He hasn't beat us yet! And he probably guessed why all the other films were disappearing, so he probably thinks that we think that we got the film. He won't be expecting us to be onto him. We've got him by the short and curlies!" Boom Boom leapt to his feet. "Thanks, Carlisle... You're great!" "Yah, don't I keep telling you guys that? Do you mind if I get back to bed now?" Carlisle flicked his cigarette in the general vicinity of the lake, but it fell well short. The lake was at least a hundred meters away. I sat down on the steps and Boom Boom sat down beside me. I took a drag from his cigarette as Carlisle and Edgar disappeared into the cabin. "You okay, Boom Boom?" "Yah, sure, Rick... But would you mind calling me Michel?" "Sure, Boom... Michel. I like that name, but why the switch?" "I just want you to know me by my real name," he told me. "The other one is not me. I just realized that tonight." "When tonight?" "When you were sucking my toes..." "Shhh..." "I'm sorry. It was very sensual. It made me realize that we had something very special." "That's how I feel too..." "I want you to know that the picture disturbs me because of what we were caught doing... not because it was you that I was caught with." "I know that. I feel the same way. Of course, my reputation couldn't get much worse, so I don't worry as much about it. In fact, I'm sort of proud that it was you I was with and somebody realized that what we had was good enough to try to ruin it... That didn't come out right, did it?" "I know exactly what you mean," Boom Boom told me. "And your reputation is only as important as the people it means something too. I seem to be having the same trouble you were having. That didn't make any sense at all." "Maybe we should get some sleep," I smiled. "You're right, Rick... Mail call is right after breakfast." I kissed Boom Boom goodnight and walked him to his bunk. Then I climbed into mine, which was once again in motion and about to start whacking the wall again. I padded the thing and drifted off to sleep, content in the knowledge that what I had with Boom Boom was better than any relationship I had ever had with anybody else in my life... and at least as good as whatever Carlisle had going with Charles. Mail call brought the usual line up for the usual packages from home. But Adam was not among either the campers waiting expectantly, or among the lucky recipients. Boom Boom and I waited at the table where the letters were laid out and the names were called out, until we were certain that all the packages had been accounted for. We guessed that Adam had not expected the pictures to show up this early. It was only a little over a week since the picture had been taken, and the mail had probably not been taken into town until the following pickup day. Add to that the time it would take to have the film processed and there was probably another week to wait. Just to be sure, though, we attended the next mail call as well. Still there was no Adam in attendance. There was no mail for him either. We knew for sure that the next mail call would be different. We were in northern Ontario, but it wasn't Siberia, after all... although most of the year it felt like it. The mail delivery was pretty good... considering. Boom Boom and I even got back into an occasional night in the equipment shed. We thought of it as our special spot, and we even felt safe in it. Edgar was on the internet every night, and he reported to us every night that there had been no more cameras sold from the Tuck Shop. We were careful to keep the door closed, however. Carlisle took his regular bi-weekly hike for provisions and toys the day before the next mail was due... the one when we were expecting to hear Adam's name called. But I had decided to let Carlisle go alone this time. I was busy in the Computer Shack. Boom Boom and I were writing a program. I was really getting into programming. When I begged off, Carlisle told me not to worry about it. He assured me that the delivery would be light that week. There was only the regular cigarette shipment and a couple of new gadgets for Edgar to be picked up. He trudged off into the forest as Boom Boom and I headed for our appointment with the debugging program. Boom Boom was proud of my progress. I had gone beyond anything the counselor who ran the Computer Shack knew and I was getting into an examination of how the things worked, in addition to writing programs. I had one good personal gauge of my progress. I was starting to understand Edgar. Edgar was so far ahead of me that I had no reasonable hope of every catching up to him in knowledge of the systems and their legitimate... and not so legitimate uses. But I had the feeling that I was covering a lot of ground and doing it pretty quickly too with Boom Boom as my teacher. We had some very intricate programs doing what we wanted them to do, and I had taken to carrying a bunch of disks with me, just in case Edgar tired of the laptop and gave me a chance to work on some of my own projects at the cabin. Edgar had even showed me around the internet on a couple of occasions. I was very impressed with that. I had begun to see a purpose for my life, and especially when Boom Boom, Edgar and I would pass an occasional evening on the porch discussing the future and the direction that computing would take... seemingly all directions... at the same time! There didn't seem to be anything holding a guy back who wanted to take advantage of these unique machines that were designed to do everything. I thought that my life had found both a direction and a rudder. Computers were the direction. Boom Boom was the rudder. I could not now imagine life without Boom Boom, and so it came as quite a shock when that's exactly the prospect I was faced with shortly after the next mail call. We had drifted to the mail table immediately after the breakfast was finished. There were even fewer that morning than usual, and still no Adam. We could not understand that. He must have been waiting for the pictures. God only knew what he would do with them if he got them. We wanted to make sure that only God did know. Being near the beginning of the alphabet, Adam Broderick was one of the first names called. The counselor looked around and paused a moment before setting the envelope back onto the table and going on to the next camper's letter. When they had been through the names once, he picked up the no-shows and called them again. A couple of late-comers showed up and got their mail. In the end there were two unclaimed letters. Adam's was one of them. Boom Boom decided to go for the bundle. He approached the table and asked if there was anything for him. The counselor looked at his two remaining pieces of mail and shook his head. Boom Boom looked too. The one for Adam was only a magazine... a video game magazine. Boom Boom shrugged his shoulders and slouched away. "I can't understand it," he complained as he rejoined me. "The son of a bitch didn't even show up for mail call! It's like he knows we're onto him. Do you suppose he had the pictures sent to his home?" "It wouldn't make sense, would it?" I asked. "If he went to the trouble to take a picture that could ruin our lives, why wouldn't he want to get it so he could use it?" "I don't know," Boom Boom frowned. "I just don't know!" We headed back to the cabin. When we got there, the Camp Lester four by four was parked outside the door. We both had a sinking sensation in the pits of our stomachs. We figured we had better face the music sooner than later and we opened the cabin door to find three counselors waiting inside. The head counselor called my name. Boom Boom waited quietly for his name to be added. But nobody mentioned the name Bouvier... only mine. "Pack your things," the head counselor told me. "You're moving up to the lodge for a while." "What's this about?" I asked. "You will be told when you get to the lodge..." "That's not fair!" Carlisle challenged. "He has a right to know why he's being moved!" For the first time that I could remember, somebody actually ignored one of Carlisle's outbursts. "You can pack your things, or we can do it for you," the counselor told me. "Only if we do it, we're going to go through it with a fine tooth comb. You have your options. Which will it be?" I looked at Boom Boom. He looked scared. I looked at Carlisle. He looked helpless. I opened my locker and dumped all of my stuff into my duffel bag. Then they escorted me to the main lodge and put me in a room behind the kitchen. It had a camera in the hallway outside the door, so I knew that there was no chance of getting out unseen. I sat on my bed and looked blankly at the duffel bag that contained my worldly possessions. I guess that was when I realized that as a traveler in the world, I was doing the trip remarkably light. Then I fingered the computer disks in my pocket and realized that like them, my life was sort of portable. I wasn't really afraid of what was going to happen to me. Believe it or not, I was more worried about Boom Boom. And I was concerned that I might have seen him for the last time. But I hadn't counted on Carlisle. Chapter Fourteen It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn I spent a lot of that first afternoon in custody lying on my bed and examining my feelings about life, the universe, religion, the grand scheme of things, and a lot of other useless crap that suddenly seems ponderable when you are faced with a situation that offers you little hope and absolutely no information. They hadn't told me a thing. It was their way of seeing if I would break under the pressure. But they didn't realize that the pressure was now off. I knew what had happened to the film. Adam "the Turd" Broderick had sent it out in its prepaid mailer all right, but the return address had brought it back to the head counselor, Mr. Schwarz. That was why Adam did not show up for mail call. He'd known that the pictures would not be coming back to him. Now that I realized what had happened, I sort of wanted to see the picture. I wanted to know how much it had shown, and I kind of had a freaky sort of curiosity to know if I looked good "doing it." I know that Boom Boom did. I wondered what they had done to him. But I didn't wonder enough to ask. That was the code... never ask a question that could give them more information, and don't give them anything about anybody else. Make them find out on their own. I waited. I knew that I would be told soon enough what was going on, and until they questioned me, I would be kept in isolation. I knew as well, that Carlisle would find a way of letting me know what was happening, but I had no idea how he would do it, until I bit down on a mouthful of the stew they served me for dinner that night, and almost broke a tooth. I spit out a rock... a small rock... well, a piece of gravel. It was wrapped in plastic, and inside the plastic I found a small piece of paper wrapped around the stone. The message read, "They don't seem to know who you were with. Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking. Eat me." I popped the paper into my mouth and swallowed it with the next fork full of stew. I didn't need a hand-writing expert to know that the note was from Carlisle. I wondered what he had in mind. I found out after dinner. The answer came by telephone. I was called from my room and escorted to the dining hall to take the call. A voice on the other end asked me if I could see if anybody was listening in. I told him that I did not see anybody other than my escort, and he was about three meters away. "Good," Carlisle answered in his normal voice. "I told them I was your lawyer." "How did you..." "Don't talk! Listen! They don't know who the other guy in the picture is, so you have to keep quiet. The only thing you can do is demand to see me. Tell them that you want me there as a witness. They don't have the right to keep you locked up unless they charge you with something. Demand your right to a hearing and demand that I be there to make sure that everything is done fair. If they try to push you around, tell them you want to talk to your lawyer. I'll give you a number to have them call. Do you have anything to write with?" "There's a pen and a pad of paper here." "Okay, copy this number down. And be sure to press hard. We want them to be able to make it out when they examine the note pad." Carlisle dictated a telephone number to me. From the area code I could tell that the number was in Toronto. "Now, write the name Finklemann underneath it." "How do you spell Finklemann?" I asked. When I asked I noticed that my escort's head jerked around. "Good! You said it! Did you get any response?" "Yes, I believe so..." "That should start something." I wondered who Finklemann was. Carlisle spelled the name for me and I copied it down. "Now hang up the phone and... oh yah... Boom Boom says he's all right." "Can I speak to him?" "No! You tell that goof there with you that you want a hearing and you want it right now." The line went dead. I set the receiver down and turned to my escort. "I wanna see Schwarz! I wanna see him right now!" I ripped the top piece of paper from the note pad and stuffed it into my pocket. "You'll see Schwarz when he wants to see you." "He'll see me right now, or I'll close this dump down. You have no right to keep me without charging me with something. I demand to know what is going on and I demand to have Anthony Carlisle here with me. My lawyer says that I have that right. If you want a summer job next year, college boy, you'll get Schwarz out here right now and tell me what's going on." "I told you that you would see Schwarz when he's good and rea..." "Look, college boy... I don't think you want to be named in an obstruction of justice suit, but just for the record, can you tell me your full name?" That's when he ordered me back to my room. But the ruse worked. An hour later I was dragged back to the dining hall. All of the counselor’s were there and so was Carlisle. They had set up two tables facing each other. All of the counselors sat behind the one table. Carlisle sat behind the other. When I entered the room, Carlisle was the only one who stood up. He came to me and led me to the chair beside his. "How are they treating you, Rick?" he asked. "The food's still lousy and they won't let me out of my room except when I want to take a shit." "If you two will kindly sit down," Schwarz began, "we will be able to begin." "You began already," Carlisle warned him. "Every one of your Nazi tactics has been recorded and is now on its way to Rick's lawyer. You had better have a damned good reason for what you've done, or Uncle Sol is going to turn this dump into a logging camp." "That's not entirely true, is it, Mr. Carlisle?" It was the weasel who was talking. He had a lot of nerve for a first year man. "The mail will not be going out until Saturday." "Who said anything about mail?" Carlisle sneered back at him. "Be very careful about your allegations. You also might want to join the twentieth century. There's only a few more years left in it." "Are you saying that you have access to electronic communications, Mr. Carlisle?" Schwarz inquired. "Did you hear me say that?" "I heard you make a threat..." "You heard me make a statement. Please try to get that straight. Now, what is this all about?" Carlisle had done it. He had turned their kangaroo court into an inquiry, and we were the ones doing the inquiring. Schwarz realized it too. He had dealt with Carlisle before. He did not know if what he said was true, but he did know that Carlisle was capable of just about anything. "We... I received some photographs this morning," Schwarz told us. "They were brought to me by the police. The photographs caused me a great deal of embarrassment, Mr. Carlisle, explaining to the police that they were not mine. The police believed me, but they also wondered what sort of an operation I was running here. I intend to make sure that this disgrace is punished. That is why you are here. That is why we removed Rick from your cabin." "What pictures?" Carlisle asked. "Nobody in our cabin has taken any pictures. We already told you that!" "The identifiable subjects of all twelve of the photographs are all campers from your cabin, Mr. Carlisle," Schwarz contended. "How do you explain that?" "We're very popular guys," Carlisle snapped back. "But unless I see the pictures, I can't tell you anything about them." "I hesitate to show you the pictures," Schwarz confided. "Some of them contain nudity..." "Mr. Schwarz," Carlisle countered. "Am I to understand that you are charging my friend Rick with a crime for which he will undoubtedly be punished by you, but you are declining to allow him to see the evidence against him? I believe it is time to phone Uncle Sol." "Sol Finklemann is your uncle?" Shwartz asked. "We call him uncle, but he's not really related to us... just very close to my mother." Carlisle neglected to point out that the reason he was close to his mother was because his mother was Sol Finkelmann's legal assistant and worked in the next office to him. Schwarz looked at Carlisle, then he looked at the envelope in front of him. He opened it and leafed through the photos inside. He hesitated before extracting them, and even then he removed one and returned it to the envelope. Schwarz summoned the weasel and motioned for him to deliver the photos to us. Carlisle smiled sweetly at him when the goof laid the pictures in front of us... face down. Carlisle turned the stack of photographs over and whistled. The first one showed Skeeter. He was naked and lying on the flat rock in front of our cabin down by the lake. Skeeter was working on his tan. He always sunbathed in the nude. We all knew that, and after our first trip down to peek at him, we usually did not bother him anymore. It was just something he did everyday. There were four photographs of him, one lying on his back, two on his front and one very provocative one of him lying on his side showing all. Adam had evidently stayed for the whole show. Photograph five was Boom Boom and I. We had gone skinny dipping and were coming out of the water. What you could see of us was flaccid... well, the lake was still very cold. Numbers six through nine were of Carlisle and Charles. They were sitting side by side at the lake shore. They were fully dressed, but they were very close to each other, and Carlisle's arm was around Charles' waist in the first shot. By the fourth shot, Charles' head was on Carlisle's lap, and Carlisle was leaning back on his elbows. It would have been all fitting and very proper by today's societal standards... if one or the other of them had only been a girl. Edgar and Robbie were the next victims. They had both gone skinny dipping too, and Adam had been there to record each of them for posterity. Schwarz was looking at us, when we finished reviewing the photos. Carlisle looked back at him. "Well?" Schwarz prompted. "You are right," Carlisle told him. "There is some nudity. But I can't see what that has to do with us. If I was you I would be talking to the guy who took those pictures." "Unfortunately, the only address on the mailer was mine," Schwarz confided. "But there's still no reason to hold Rick," Carlisle argued. We had both done the arithmetic. We knew that we had only seen eleven of the photos. The only one we had known about had not made it to our table yet. "There is one other photo," Schwarz informed us. "But I hesitate to show it to both of you. I will give it to Rick, and let him decide whether he wants you to see it or not, Mr. Carlisle." Again Schwarz summoned the weasel. Again the weasel made the delivery... this time the photo was in the envelope. Again Carlisle smiled at him. I pulled the photo out of the envelope and laid it on the table between Carlisle and me. We both looked at it. It showed me as large as life and in the throes of ecstasy, but the only pecker I could see was Boom Boom's, and it was clutched in his hand. But that was all you could see of Boom Boom, just his pecker and his legs, which were on my shoulders. That was why he had not also been picked up. They did not know who I had been with... and I was not about to tell them. But it still surprised me a little when Carlisle whistled again. I was absolutely unprepared for what he said next. "Ouch!" Carlisle exclaimed. "That Broderick kid is hung!" Schwarz’s eyes opened wide. "You know the other boy in the photograph, Mr. Carlisle?" "You mean, you don't?" Carlisle looked surprised. He also looked very nervous. "Are you telling me that Adam Broderick is the boy..." Schwarz seemed to be having trouble sorting out his words. "Yah, he's the wide receiver," I told them. "You mean, you really didn't know? You were going to try to pin the whole thing on me?" "Then you admit that you and Broderick were having sex?" "He never said anything of the sort!" Carlisle countered, but the look he shot me told me that my attempt to save Boom Boom's reputation had been unnecessary and had probably prejudiced our case. "It looks more to me like they were fighting," Carlisle tried to repair the damage. "Rick came across this Broderick dude lying naked on the picnic table. He comes over to him to tell him to put his bathing suit back on, but the guy gets pissed off and wraps his legs around Rick's neck, pulling him close enough to him so that you can't see that Rick has his bathing suit on. Then one of Broderick's buddies takes a picture that appears to show Rick ramming the meat up Broderick's shit hole. It was all a frame up." "We have eyes, Mr. Carlisle," Schwarz rebuked. "And I would appreciate it if you would be more careful about your choice of language." "Still, it will go easier with you, Rick, now that you have identified the other individual for us. I will allow you to return to you cabin in the morning. But you are to report to the work gang every morning after breakfast for a period of three weeks, and I am also placing a caveat on your release back to your cabin. You will visit the chaplain for counseling about your problem. I will arrange for him to see you this Sunday after church. Is that understood?" Carlisle and I both nodded. I was going to ask Schwarz to better define the problem that he thought I had, but I figured I had gotten off easy... considering... and we had also been able to get even with Adam... but not, as I would eventually find out, to Carlisle's total satisfaction. That night I dreamed of Boom Boom and I dreamed of him from the neck up. I awoke the next morning with the realization that I loved him, and I would do anything for him. When I got back to the cabin I found him waiting for me. He helped me unpack my duffel bag and we lingered there until everybody else had gone to breakfast. Then he kissed me and told me that Carlisle had told him everything. He thanked me for protecting him, and he told me that I was the most important person in his life. That made me feel good. I kissed him back, and we went to breakfast together. From that day on, we were never apart, except of course when I was doing forced labor for four hours each day. Boom Boom did not accompany me to my interview with the chaplain either. It was a pity too, because he would have enjoyed the discussion, which started off with the evils of homosexuality, but quickly degenerated into a discussion of the likelihood that Adam and Eve had been guilty of incest at best and promoting delinquency in minors at worst. I took pity on the chaplain and did not inquire if Eve, being created from one of Adam's ribs, had not in fact been the first incidence of cloning. I wanted to point out that, if it had been true, it might put a whole new light on the current arguments about the Scottish sheep and its implications for humanity... but by then, the chaplain had had enough, and I didn't want to shake his faith too much. Chapter Fifteen Snakes And Ladders Adam Broderick was surprisingly compliant with the counselor's when they came to get him at breakfast the morning of my release. This probably had something to do with a visit he received during the night. Our entire cabin gathered around his bunk and impressed upon him their disappointment in his actions. Then Carlisle informed him that he had been positively identified by witnesses as the guy on the picnic table in a photograph that had incriminated Carlisle's friend Rick. Adam is purported to have protested his innocence at that point, to which Carlisle answered that he did not have to convince us, it was the counselor's that he would have to reckon with. Adam told them that he could not have possibly been on the table and he could prove it. He pointed out that he would prove it too, when given the opportunity. "Well, you see," Carlisle responded, "I'm sure that they will be happy to find out why you couldn't possibly be the other guy on the table. There is only one person in the whole camp who can prove that he was not the guy on the table, and that would be the guy who had taken the picture. He was the only person who could not have been in the photograph. Everyone else is a suspect." Carlisle made to leave at that point, but then he seemed to think of something else. He sat down onto Adam's bunk again. "There is just one thing that the counselor's told me..." he confided to Adam. "They're looking for the guy who took the pictures too. It seems that when they find him, they're going to turn him over to the police, since it is a crime to deal in pornography... although, Rick, who was not aware that his picture was going to be taken, is, in essence a victim of the pornographer. He will be testifying in court... a real court... not the kangaroo court they run here... that he wants damages for the mental anguish and suffering he has been forced to endure." "And in case you are thinking of just showing them your undersized cock and telling them that you are completely innocent, we have proof that you bought the only camera that was sold this year at the Tuck Shop. Did you know that there are serial numbers on those things, Adam. They need them to match the film to the mailer. But it also means that every one of those things is traceable. I doubt that Schwarz knows that... but we'd be happy to tell him for you." "Oh, yes..." Carlisle went on, seemingly remembering detail after detail, "...that reminds me. Schwarz is a little pissed too. It seems that the police thought that he was the guy taking the pictures. I guess they got that idea because Schwarz's name was the name on the return address. The police paid him a little visit yesterday morning, and he is not at all happy about that. But you go ahead and prove that it wasn't you on the picnic table, Adam, old boy. I'm sure you will probably get out of jail in time for the new millennium." Carlisle patted Adam's reddening cheeks for him and lifted himself from his bed. "Sorry we woke you up. Pleasant dreams..." I wish that I had been there. I would have enjoyed that performance, but as Carlisle later told me, I would probably not have been able to resist the urge to clean Adam's clock for him. Carlisle told me not to worry. He said that old Adam the Turd had not heard the end of us. I finished my three week stint on the work gang about the beginning of August. I got a lot of painting done during those three weeks, and I was almost starting to take pride in the job, when suddenly it was finished. I had had the chance to work on my tan while I painted the outside of the lodge... and quite a bit of myself... a lovely bright white. Boom Boom showered with me every afternoon to help me clean it off, and since I did not spill on myself in the same spot every day, my tan was unaffected by the splotches. My ladder did not fare so well. In fact, I figured I would just finish the job I had accidentally started, and on my last day of servitude, I painted the ladder. After our daily shower together, Boom Boom... he had given up wanting to be called Michel after he heard it a couple of times... and I would head for the computer shack. He devoted his entire summer to teaching me everything he knew about computers and a few things he knew about explosives too. I realized that I was not as stupid as I had thought I was. I was more than just a pretty face... well, when you discount the nose... and a good fuck. I was becoming a student. Boom Boom had instilled in me some good study habits and we had absolutely decided that I would move to his school in the fall. There I would be able to get a fresh start with a clean slate and no whispering about my sexual orientation... unless they caught Boom Boom and me together. Boom Boom arranged for his folks to let me have the room over the garage at his house, when they came out to the camp and met me, on Civic Holiday, the first Monday in August... of course being from Southern Ontario they called it Simcoe Day, but I let that pass. They offered to get my transcripts moved to Boom Boom's school for me, and Mrs. Bouvier even kissed me when she and Mr. Bouvier finally had to go. Carlisle and I drifted farther and farther apart. I still admired him and all, but his life was different from mine in most respects. I was glad he was around to control things the way he did, but I, myself did not feel the urge to control the fortunes of everybody else any more. I was happy that Carlisle had Charles, and I did not mind being rocked to sleep by their lovemaking any more. It became an accepted part of the night, like the crickets and the frogs and Edgar beating off in the bunk beneath Boom Boom. Robbie started to hang with Boom Boom and me in August too. He approached Boom Boom to buy some cigarettes one day, but when Boom Boom told him he didn't have any to sell, Robbie confessed that he didn't really smoke anyway, and he was just a little horny and wanted to be fucked. He was kind of surprised when Boom Boom told him that he was sort of exclusively engaged. This caused Robbie to feel a little rejected, and that made Boom Boom feel bad, so he approached me about it and we decided that our love could survive a little variety as long as we did not cheat on each other. We cornered Robbie after lunch the next day and inquired if he would be interested in a three-way in the equipment shed that night. He told us that I was going to be the next guy he approached, as soon as he got over having his ass rejected by Boom Boom. As it turned out, Robbie was a virgin. We had assumed differently. We had thought that he was probably one of the studs in Carlisle's corral. But he assured us that Carlisle seemed to treat him as an untouchable. This was understandable to everyone but Robbie. Carlisle was afraid of alienating his soon to be rich friend. He thought of himself more as Robbie's protector. And of course there was always Charles... Robbie had spent a lot of time in the past two years at Camp Lester watching the play and the players and wondering why nobody was interested in exploring his equipment. He wondered what it was about himself that was not good enough. Actually, everything about Robbie was pretty good. He had a nice smell and a nice flavor, and he definitely had enough juice to go around. Boom Boom and I both had a Robbie cocktail that night, and the guy still had enough left to ream both of our asses the following night as well. That only seemed fair, since we had both explored his shitter that first night. Boom Boom had the honor of confiscating Robbie's virginity, and supplanting it with something a little more useful... in a larger size. Robbie was making up for lost time, and taking us on, on a regular basis. Of course I saved my love for Boom Boom and he did the same with me. But it was kind of neat to be able to kiss Boom Boom and feel his cock hard against my own as Robbie slobbered all over them in an attempt to swallow them both at once. Did I mention that Robbie has one of those big deep mouths? In time, however, Robbie drifted out of our sex lives. He recognized that he was the third man, and he could never be anything else. We noticed that he had started hanging with Skeeter more and more, and one day we saw the two of them sunbathing together on Skeeter's flat rock. We guessed that Robbie had found another fuck buddy, and one day our suspicions were confirmed when we came across the two of them in the woods. I guess that's really the big difference. Love lasts... sex doesn't... not even when it's the only thing in the relationship. I thanked whatever god wanted to take credit for it that Boom Boom and I had a whole lot more than sex going for us. Evidently, so did Carlisle and Charles. There was no denying Charles' beauty. He was an elegant young man, tall and tanned and perfectly formed with long fingers and toes to match. This predicted a satisfactory endowment, and Carlisle sort of confirmed that. But no one else had ever seen Charles naked. That was the way that both he and Carlisle wanted it. We had seen pieces of him, but the whole package remained a mystery. He did start to come around towards the end of August when the final days of camp were upon us, and he even participated in the squaring of matters with Adam. I had almost forgotten that Carlisle had promised a retribution when he finally got around to calling a meeting to discuss it. I guess that was the beauty of it. Adam had probably forgiven himself and let his defenses down long before the middle of August. When nothing happened, he probably considered himself safe. "He hates snakes," Charles informed us when Carlisle called for ideas. "Who doesn't?" Boom Boom shivered. "Snakes won't hurt you," Charles told us. "As long as you don't mess with them. Then, about all they do is hiss and puke and piss all over you." "Water snakes will bite," Edgar advised us. He probably got that information off the internet. "But they aren't poisonous," Charles reminded him. "Snakes are good," Carlisle mused as his brain absorbed the information and tried to work it into a usable plot. He probably liked the idea because it had been Charles who suggested it. "We could fill his bed with snakes," I suggested. "They wouldn't stay there," Robbie told me. "Besides, I don't think you'd be able to round up many snakes this time of year. They've all pretty much abandoned the camp. You'll be lucky to find any." "I know where to find one," Carlisle told us. "There's a ton of them in a culvert I know about." "What are you going to do with it?" I asked. "Tie it around his neck?" "No," Carlisle smiled. When Carlisle smiled that meant that somebody was in trouble. A plan was formulating itself in his devious mind. When that happened, just about anything was possible. "I thought we would play a little game of snakes and ladders. How about the last night of camp? Will that give you enough time to get something on the internet, Edgar?" "I have a friend in Holland who is very cooperative," Edgar answered. "What are we going to send him?" "I think we should send him a nude picture of Adam. With any luck at all we should be able to get one of the counselor's to pull down his underwear for him..." Carlisle was grinning from ear to ear now. "And the beauty of it is, Adam is gonna beg him to do it!" That was all we were told. Remember I told you that Carlisle only told you what was going on if you really had to know? I'm glad I didn't know what he had planned for Adam, because I would have been tempted to back out. Even after what he had done to me, I didn't hate the guy that much. Chapter Sixteen Labor Day Week End Eventually all good things must come to an end. Mercifully so did our stay at Camp Lester. I cannot say that I minded the summer this year. I guess I can even say that I enjoyed it, but Camp Lester is no Garden of Eden. For one thing, there are no apple trees. I have a lot of good memories of Camp Lester this year... the canoe trip we didn't go on... the time Adrian decided to sunbathe in the nude in the poison ivy... my talks with the chaplain... they assure me that I had nothing whatsoever to do with his decision to open a snow mobile dealership and abandon the ministry. But the one memory that will live on and is burned into my mind forever is the last night in camp, when Adam finally got what was coming to him. I still cringe when I think about it. Of course, Carlisle planned the whole thing, and he only told us our individual pieces of the plan on a need to know basis. But we all knew there was something decidedly felonious about it when he handed out the balaclavas. I got a blue one. Boom Boom got red. Each one of them was a different color to enable us to tell each other apart, even though, to our victim, we would all be faceless and interchangeable. Carlisle told us there was to be no talking... nothing to be able to identify us when we grabbed Adam. The snatch went relatively well. We were able to gag him before he could raise an alarm, and we hauled him out of his bunk exactly at the stroke of midnight. Carlisle and Charles were waiting outside with the ladder I had used to paint the lodge. We handcuffed Adam to it and tied his feet to it as well. Naturally the only thing he had on was his jockey shorts. We were grateful that he did not sleep in the nude. Once secured to the ladder, we carried it and him to the front steps of the verandah that spread across the front of the lodge. There were still a few lights on, so we had to be careful. We did not want anything to spoil our plans... well, Carlisle's plans... for Adam. I knew it had something to do with a water snake. Carlisle had obtained a one meter long specimen from his culvert out along the road where we had picked up our supplies. The beast had spent the day in a wet burlap bag and was not too enchanted with the human race by the time Carlisle hauled him out. We propped the ladder against the verandah roof with Adam dangling from it like a crucified Christian and Carlisle motioned for us to find a place to hide. I was considering Liberia when I saw Carlisle dangle the snake in front of Adam, who was squirming and twisting and doing anything he could to get himself away from the thing. So was the snake. What happened next goes down in the annals of history as one of the most truly disgusting things that one man can do to another. Carlisle pulled Adam's jockeys open and shoved the snake in. Then, when he was sure that everybody had had a chance to get away from the seen of the crime, Carlisle removed the gag. Adam screams like a girl. He also cries like one... or he did that night. It was enough to wake the dead and to cause the living to believe that one more of their number was about to be added to the ranks of the deceased. I was mesmerized. From my hiding spot at the end of the verandah I noticed first the lights of the lodge, which started coming on about fifteen seconds after Adam began screaming. The first counselor to make it to the front door switched on the porch lights and surveyed the scene. It was the weasel. He slept in boxers and a T-shirt. When he saw Adam on the ladder, it didn't register right away that there was no way that Adam could go either up or down. The weasel thought that there was a burglary in progress and ordered Adam to come down and stop screaming. Adam replied that he wanted the counselor to pull down his shorts. The weasel soon received backup. Schwarz was the next one to hit the verandah. He was a little more familiar with unanticipated situations and quickly realized that Adam was a victim, not a perpetrator. "My shorts!" Adam screamed. "Pull down my shorts!!!" "Do it!" Schwarz ordered the weasel. Schwarz had enough good sense not to do it himself. Whoever stripped a camper would need a lot of backing when the family and their lawyers showed up. Schwarz preferred to be the witness. It also meant that he could keep an eye open for whatever booby trap Carlisle might have set. There was no doubt in Schwarz's mind that it was Carlisle who had designed this latest outrage. He had been waiting for something just like this all summer. It was therefore not a surprise to Schwarz when the weasel pulled Adam's shorts to his knees and a long black water snake flopped down at the foot of the ladder, hissing and pissing and snapping at anything in sight. And it wasn't much of a surprise when the flash of the camera lit up the verandah, once... twice... and then again. Naturally the rest of the campers descended on the scene. This allowed us to stash our balaclavas and join the throng. We all commiserated with Adam, who had dissolved into a heaving shuddering hulk on the ladder. The counselors lowered the ladder to the ground and untied his feet. But they had to get a saw and saw through the ladder to release Adam's wrists, which were still cuffed... and would remain that way until the police arrived. The investigation would begin the next day, but it was already too late to stop the images of Adam that were attached to two e-mail messages... one that Edgar sent to his own address, and the other that he sent to a site somewhere in Amsterdam. The digital camera he used was at the bottom of the lake along with the portable computer and a cellular telephone. They escorted Carlisle to the lodge the next morning before breakfast. He asked for and received a private audience with Schwarz. The whole thing took only forty minutes, and Schwarz emerged with a smile on his face and a hand on Carlisle's shoulder. Adam could not identify his abductors of course. He also realized that, were he to name Carlisle, Boom Boom or I as the perpetrators, he could probably expect the rest of his life to be a living hell, never knowing where or when he would run into another snake. He was quietly removed by the police, who also packed his bags for him. We asked Carlisle what he had talked to Schwarz about, but all he would say is that he had told Schwarz that Adam was his man as well, and we had delivered him. Evidently Schwarz had put two and two together and had got the right answer. I did not go back to Camp Lester last year. Boom Boom and I opened a computer repair shop in the room over his garage. We made enough money to get a really nice apartment in Kingston. That, and our student loans and grants should see us through our first year of post secondary education. We both like Kingston, and we have even got on Lopez's visiting list at one of the area prisons. He appreciates us keeping him up to date on the exploits of our friends. Skeeter, Edgar and Robbie were at camp last summer, but they were the only ones. Carlisle and Charles are now living together in Toronto, where they are both attending university. Charles is still studying piano and plays occasionally in one of the gay bars. Carlisle is studying law... yah, go figure... God only knows where Adam is. Boom Boom and I are still very much in love with each other and we are soon going to open our own site on the internet. None of the pictures we took of Adam will be on the site, so don't even ask. Well, that's the end of the story. Sixteen chapters in this one... and finished in sixteen days. That's a chapter a day and all written during a bout with the flu. I hope that some of this made sense. Thanks for reading... and have a nice Spring! As always, drop me a line at heap@aracnet.net and let me know how you feel about it. Ricardo