My Story, 22

Len came back and he was laughing, (the bastard!)

“Whoah. What a ride! Almost worth losing my car for. Okay are you, Virgin? Come on, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

“What??” I flared, but Joel, gently and firmly, pushed me aside.

“Wait,” he said, and he turned around and punched Crowe in the face. (My hero!) He sprawled on his back and looked up at Joel’s livid face.

“Kill yourself if you want to,” Joel roared at him. “But do it on your own! You come anywhere near this boy again and I’ll fucking kill you. Come on, Virgil, I will take you home.”

It was a miracle that no-one was hurt and we both walked away. You shouldn’t leave the scene of an accident, but we did. Blame Joel, he led me away. His father’s car sat in the middle of the road with the driver’s door open. He put me into the front seat, got in himself and drove away. We were going home.

A few k’s up the road, there was a turn-off where a side road went down to the river. I pointed to it.

“Stop there please, Joel.”

He stopped the car, turned the engine off and killed the lights. I sat there shivering and shaking. I was a mess and must’ve looked it. I swung around and faced him.

“Crowe’s an idiot,” I said. “He damm near killed the both of us. I was going to die. I was going to die and you saved me.”

“I guess I did. I’m just glad that I got there in time – very glad. If anything happened to you, Virgil, then I would die too, I know I would!”

“You said that you loved me.”

“I do love you. Took me a while to work it out, but I’ve always loved you.”

“Took me a while too, but I love you, Joel. I really, really love you.”

“You do?”

“I do. Kiss me.”

He did.

The Staffords have got a great old car. It’s old, but it’s a classic. You know the best thing about it? It’s big – very roomy on the inside. We climbed over to the back-seat where we could stretch out, Joel held me and we kissed and cuddled. It was great! I gave what was left of my virginity to Joel and he took me there. Yeah, I had a tube of lube in my pocket, don’t ask why.

Funny really, according to Mum, I was conceived on the back-seat of a Chevy. Guess what sort of car the Staffords had? Yeah, a Chevy. It’d be weird if it was the same one.

That was great. It was just about perfect actually. Joel was a wonderful lover; I could feel the love and I could see it in the tears on his moon-lit face. Damm, I loved that boy!

After we’d ‘done the deed’, we lay and cuddled and just loved quietly. After a few minutes, Joel said, “Virgil, make love to me.”

“Make love? We just did, didn’t we?”

“No. well, yes, but I want you to do it to me now.”

“You want me to fuck you?”

“No, I want you to make love to me. Please love me, Virgil.”

“Oh wow! I never thought you’d want me to do that. I thought I’d be the girl here.”

“There’s no girls here, My Love. There’s just us, two boys. Love me, Virgil.”

Oh, yeah! Was he great, or was he great? I loved him so much and I did make love to him. Awesome! We were equal partners and that’s the way it should be. Simply awesome.

He drove us home, to Tiroroa, and pulled-up outside my house.

“This is goodnight, then.”

“It is a good night – the best night of my life. Thank you, Joel. I love you.”

I kissed him.

“The best night so far. There’ll be many, many more.”

He kissed me.

“Woo-hoo! Do you want to come in and sleep with me?”

“I’d love to, but I’d better not. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“It’d be all right, Joel. Mum won’t mind, she likes you.”

“No, I’d better not. My father would mind. He’d mind a lot. Goodnight, Beautiful Boy. Sleep well.”

“I will. I’ll dream of you, I always do. G’night, Joel.”

And – what to say now? We lived happily ever after? That could work, if only it was true. We did live happily, no-one ever had it better, but it didn’t last forever. Nothing does. Dammit!

But, for a while, we had it good. Mum was perfectly aware of what was going on. She knew me too well not to. She didn’t mind a bit, which was great. Mum liked Joel and she never tired of telling me that he was good for me. Joel was “making me a man.”

(I thought that I already was!)

Mr. Stafford was a different story. He didn’t have a clue about what we were doing. He liked me, I think. He always made me welcome in their home. Sometimes I thought that he liked me more than he liked Joel. They had the strangest relationship.

When Joel was younger, he used to be beaten regularly. The smallest infraction of the many rules earned him a hiding. His father was a hard, short-tempered man and he demanded perfection from his only son.

Actually, Joel said he thought that was why he was so abusive towards me when we first met. He didn’t know how to love. He’d sure learnt a lot since then – his cousin, Gary, had helped a lot with that.

Now that he was older and bigger, his father didn’t beat him anymore. He hadn’t laid a hand on him since the time when Joel was 14 and he hit him back, but there was still a lot of tension between them.

Joel was just hanging-out until he could leave home, it wouldn’t be long now. This was going to be his last year at school and, come Christmas, he’d be gone. I didn’t like the sound of that, but he told me not to worry, we’d work something out.

Next year, he was going to be working for his uncle, his mother’s brother. Uncle had a small marine engineering business, down at Kaimoana, and he had a boat doing chartered fishing trips as well.

I knew of Kaimoana, of course, but didn’t know a lot about it. It was just a small town, bigger than Tiroroa but still small,. It was down the East Coast, between Picton and Christchurch. Whatever – it was a long way from here and I’d be here and Joel would be there. Bugger. I didn’t want to think about that, so I didn’t.

Mum and Mr. Stafford parted company. They were ‘just good friends’ now, which was good. I think. At least I could stop worrying about appearances of incest. Okay, it was not incest, we weren’t related in any way, but it, kind-of, looked like it. And – eww!

Okay, I’m going to wrap this story up soon – maybe next time. There’s not a lot more to say. Life was good. It was excellent. It was so good that I don’t like to think about it now that it’s gone, but for a few months we were together constantly and we loved.