On Archimedes Street (10 page)

This was the first cock he had ever held, except his own. His semierection hardened to stone. Dominic was hard too, and he had worked his cock out of the cowboy pajamas so that it sprang boy-fragrant into the bedroom air. Frenchy looked at it with hunger and tentatively fingered his friend’s shaft. Dominic in turn began to wank Frenchy expertly under the astronaut fabric.

Dominic stopped in surprise. “Jeez, Frenchy! How big is it?” He leapt out of bed and started rooting around in his backpack, finally withdrawing a ruler.

“Er—I don’t know,” said Frenchy truthfully. He had never thought about size. He had figured cocks were all about the same. And now he wanted to get his hand back on Dominic’s cock, regardless of its size. He wanted it in his mouth. Manny was forgotten.

Dominic withdrew the astronaut-trapped dick and brought the end of the ruler to the base of Frenchy’s cock. “Jeez, Frenchy, you’re over eight inches! And you’re such a little guy! You must be King Root in our whole grade!” Then Dominic measured from below, putting the end of the ruler where balls adjoined cock. “It’s shorter this way, so I think you’re supposed to measure from above,” said Dominic ruminatively. “Now measure me.” He handed it to Dominic.

Frenchy took the ruler with a trembling hand and softly fingered Dominic’s cock. “I dunno.” He looked at the ruler. “A little over six, I guess.” He stroked Dominic’s shaft lovingly.

“It would be longer if it didn’t curve to the left like it does.” Dominic, frowning, took the ruler, swatted Frenchy’s hand, and squeezed his cock to the right, trying to straighten it out and remeasure it to better effect. He shrugged and tossed the ruler. “Do you think that I’m bending myself that way by jacking off?” he asked worriedly. “I always jack with my right hand, so it makes sense that it would curve to the left. Been trying to do it with my left, to see if I can straighten it back out. But it takes so long with the left, and it doesn’t feel right. I get too impatient, and finally I switch back to the right hand to make myself come.”

“I don’t know,” said Frenchy. “Doesn’t seem like you could bend your cock just by beating off. And it bends just a little.” He looked at it. Bent or not, Frenchy thought, it was just beautiful. He wanted to kiss it.

Dominic lay back on the bed and motioned for Frenchy to move beside him. They resumed the
X
. Frenchy was practically in a swoon, but Dominic seemed determined to recall him from it at every opportunity. “How many times a day do you jack it?” asked Dominic.

“A
day
?” asked Frenchy, in disbelief.

“I do it at least three. Feels so fuckin’
good
. I can’t wait to lock myself up in the bathroom. Or go to bed.” Dominic resumed his expert fingering of Frenchy’s cock. From the clumsy way Frenchy was yanking him, Dominic figured maybe Frenchy didn’t beat off so much. Frenchy could feel his balls tightening and simmering up for a boil.

“When did you find out?”

“Find out?” Once more Dominic intruded into the ecstasy he had created.

“Yeah. When did you learn about yanking? And when did it first come out of the head of your dick?” Dominic whispered. He’d stopped fingering Frenchy, and he’d scooched his groin away from Frenchy’s grasp. Frenchy looked at Dominic, who seemed genuinely curious.

“It was in Boys’ Choir. I went into the bathroom, and there were four boys in a circle. Kinda what we’re doing now, but in a circle. Couldn’t figure out what they were doing.” Frenchy remembered with irritation that Dutch Abbott, skinny as a stick but towering above the other boys, had been in that circle. Probably organized it, Frenchy now realized.

“Couldn’t figure it out? You’re kidding. And you’ve never been in a circle jerk?” Dominic was incredulous.

“No, I’m not kidding. In fact, you’re my first cock.”

Dominic looked nervously at Frenchy. “Er—I’m not
your
cock.”

Frenchy was crestfallen. “I mean, I haven’t ever touched anyone but myself.” Frenchy’s prick, though still aroused, was no longer rock-hard. “Anyway, I knew that rubbing myself against my sheets felt good, but I didn’t know why. When I got home from Boys’ Choir that day, I stroked myself like they were doing in the circle. I got hard, and it felt good, and I thought that was it.” Suddenly self-conscious, he returned his cock to its astronaut refuge.

“When did you first cream it?” asked Dominic.

Frenchy was now almost soft. “Fifth grade. I’d taken to doing it a lot, until the feeling came. And then one day, when the feeling came, I felt something coming out. I panicked. Thought I was pissing all over the bed.”

“You clueless retard.” Dominic smirked.

“And then I saw it was white and stuff, and I thought I had hurt myself or something. Thought that maybe my insides were coming out.”

Dominic vented high-pitched, hiccupped laughter. “Shit! What a dweeb!”

“Down in there!” called Manny from two rooms away.

The boys hushed. Frenchy again felt the beginning of irritation. He decided not to mention that shortly after this incident Maman had given him “the book.” It had begun with flowers, pistil and stamen, and moved up to fish, the release of sperm and eggs in the water. The next chapter had been—what?—Frenchy couldn’t remember now, but it was some higher order of animal. Rooster and hen? With a sickening premonition, Frenchy had jumped directly to the last chapter—humans—and he remembered his disgust. Could Papa and Maman really have done
that
?

“What about you?” whispered Frenchy.

“Shit. Knew all about it from third grade,” Dominic whispered back. “Me and my buddies circle-jerked all the time. We had a bet on who would be the first to cream it. I just knew it would be me, ’cause I was the biggest,” Dominic recollected with a frown. He glanced with envy at Frenchy’s crotch. “But it was Bobby. When he told us, we made him do it so that we could see.” Dominic was still somehow miffed it hadn’t been him shooting off to the admiration of a circle of boys.

“Were any of them bent?” asked Frenchy.

Dominic realized with amazement that he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d only compared girth and length. And then he remembered that Bobby curved up, and Lenny had curved a little to the right. “Yeah!” he said. “Now that you mention it, some of them curved!”

“So I wouldn’t worry about bending it, if I were you,” said Frenchy. Dominic grinned, inwardly very relieved.

A silence ensued. Then Dominic hissed softly, “I got a magazine….”

Frenchy’s mind seesawed for what seemed like the tenth time.
Shit! It was Dominic after all! When had Dominic had the chance to take the magazine from the shop?

“Get off the bed,” whispered Dominic. He lifted the mattress and withdrew one of several magazines stashed between the mattress and box springs. “Primo stuff. Will you look at
that
?”

Down went the seesaw to the other side. Frenchy viewed the naked woman spread-eagled on artfully draped sheets, head thrown back and eyelids at half-mast. “Yeah,” said Frenchy unenthusiastically.

Dominic had decided that Frenchy wasn’t too good at wanking him. He could do better himself. “Let’s see who can shoot farthest. Here, come stand by me. No—exactly even. No cheating. Pull it out. Points for quickest, and points for distance.”

Frenchy stood next to Dominic and took out his dick in imitation of Dominic.

“Gentlemen, start your engines!” whispered Dominic, beginning to stroke himself off. Then he suddenly stopped. “No—wait! I have a better idea. Let’s get some shooting practice!” He rummaged around in his desk for a thumbtack, then pinned the centerfold to the wall separating his room from the screened back porch of the shotgun. “No need for me to tell you what the bull’s-eye is, is there Frenchy?” Dominic leered at him. “Okay— Gentlemen, start your engines for real this time.”

Dominic worked himself vigorously, and Frenchy tried to follow suit. Dominic’s gaze was glued to the centerfold, so he didn’t notice Frenchy’s was glued to Dominic’s fist-encircled cock. It didn’t take Dominic long.

“Unnnhhh!” He spat out a grunt just at the moment his cock spat out a gob that arced and fell directly on the lusted-after, unnaturally hairless target. The white jelly slithered down the glossy paper and dripped to the floor.

Frenchy watched Dominic arch up on the balls of his feet and saw the cum jet out of his friend’s cock. The sight made him come instantly, and stringy rivulets flowed over his hand, followed by softly pulsed, opalescent gouts.

“Bull’s-eye!” yelled Dominic.

“Keep it down in there!” shouted Manny from two rooms away.

Dominic suppressed giggles. “Here, wipe up with this.” He tossed Frenchy the underwear he’d worn that day. He looked disparagingly at the pool of semen Frenchy straddled. “Zero points for distance. You just drooled it out. But—points for volume.” The pool was impressive in size. The underwear would hardly mop it up. Frenchy wiped his dick with Dominic’s shorts. “You got an undershirt?” Dominic tossed him one, and Frenchy scrubbed at the floor.

Then Dominic used one of his discarded socks to softly blot the pinned-up glossy paper. “Don’t want the pages to stick together.” He leered at Frenchy. He deposited the spunk-soaked clothes in the hamper, never once thinking that, after the clothes dried, his father would notice the stiff mess they had made.

M
ANNY
TRIED
to tamp down a mounting uneasiness. He should never have agreed to this overnight. He’d reassured the lady with the refined accent that Frenchy would be safe in his care. But Manny also knew his son. You couldn’t find a more hormone-addled sexpot in three states, he thought grimly. Dominic had probably already fished Frenchy’s cock out of those astronaut pajamas. And he knew Dominic’s trick of blaring the movie soundtrack to cover up sounds. He’d asked them to turn it down, but it seemed to Manny it had just now been turned up a little louder.

Manny thought back to his own adolescence with agitation. Dominic himself had been the result of Manny’s teenaged inability to keep his cock in his pants. He’d been a father at seventeen. And the girl—he had been so horny he’d stick it in anywhere, despite the fact that even then he knew he preferred boys—had wanted to put Dominic up for adoption so she could finish school and go on to college. His very strict Catholic parents had scotched abortion and counseled against adoption, and now Manny was largely happy with that decision and single fatherhood. Except at moments like these.

Surely Dominic wouldn’t force the boy, fuck him? No, no, he remembered the mature concern Dominic had shown for the boy
—He throws like a girl, Dad. Don’t humiliate him this way. He needs a
dad,
Dad—
and then he worried even more. That hint of effeminacy that together they’d roughhoused out of the boy—was that the attraction for Dominic? And was Dominic even now subjecting Frenchy to the treatment Manny knew his son wanted to deal out to the so-far unavailable girls? Manny groaned. Girls. When would
that
happen? It wouldn’t be long now.

No question that Dominic could overpower the boy. And no question that Dominic had absolutely no fucking idea of what he was doing or the damage he could cause. Manny imagined a torn, bleeding Frenchy. A lawsuit! Dominic in Juvenile Hall! His heart raced.
I’m blowing this way out of proportion.
They’re probably wanking each other off.

Had Dominic just now turned up the volume? He couldn’t take this anymore. He got out of bed and tiptoed through the kitchen to the door of Dominic’s room. He listened. Whispers. Did he hear distress? Surely Frenchy would call out. Or maybe not, out of shame. Feeling like an idiot, he placed a kitchen chair in front of the door, and then stood on it so he could peer through the glass transom over the door. He sagged in relief.

Of course. Given that it was Dominic, there was bound to be cock play. But it looked innocent enough. They were jacking off together over one of those pinups he’d found wedged under Dominic’s mattress. Silently he dismounted and replaced the chair.

When Dominic shouted “Bulls-eye!” he grinned to himself and growled out, “Keep it down in there!” He knew currently it was up but would go down soon enough.

He switched off the lamp next to the bed and prepared to give himself over to sleep. But the image of Frenchy’s unexpectedly large and beautifully shaped cock swam into his brain. He didn’t remember even registering Frenchy’s cock in his relief that it was only horseplay.

He was disgusted with himself.
I’m a voyeur. A fucking pervert.

Chapter 14

M
ANNY
WAS
not surprised that Frenchy jumped at his offer of an after-school job in the shop. Frenchy would become an able carpenter, Manny believed. He would become an even better one, he reflected, if Dominic wasn’t always pestering and interrupting, trying to get him to leave off work and hang out or play ball. Not that Manny minded. He would have been glad to see Frenchy not take the work so seriously, have some fun with Dominic. But Frenchy was almost grimly conscientious, dogging Manny’s steps, always watching, tracking him, absorbing every word and instruction. Manny supposed this was rooted in need: need of money, need of stability that for some reason he couldn’t find at home. The mother was a widow, Frenchy had told him. The poor kid lost his dad when he was twelve. Manny knew for sure the extra income was very welcome to the Saint-Paix family. He nurtured the hope that he could turn over the business to Frenchy when he retired, or, hell, maybe he could even sell it to Frenchy by then.

That other hope—that Dominic would suddenly develop an interest in carpentry and carry on the family business—was as idle as Dominic himself. Talk about polar opposites. It was a wonder Frenchy and Dominic were friends.
If only Dominic could be more like Frenchy.
I spoil that boy rotten.

Manny and Frenchy fell into an easy routine. Manny realized he looked forward to the hours from four to six, and weekends. The kid was growing on him every day, even as he was growing up. Once in a while Manny let his gaze travel to Frenchy’s crotch. How did the kid not show a box when Manny knew just what lay behind his flat-front trousers? Maybe he wore a jock? He stifled this line of speculation when it arose, which, he comfortably ruminated, was seldom enough. The kid was beginning to feel like a second son.