I lived in a small town in Illinois, just outside Peoria, southwest of Chicago. I was about to enter high school. Seeing the boys in the showers in seventh and eighth grade made me pretty sure I was a homo. Back then there weren't any LGBTQ+ clubs or support. There wasn't even any GLAD or PFLAG or anything. Being gay was as bad a thing as there was. So it was horrendous to deal with. You felt alone and like a sick freak.

It was such a very different time.

Also, there was no cable and no internet. You watched the three or four stations you could get - if you were lucky. And if you were really lucky, a friend would get a porno mag from his older brother or someone, and that was all the porn you'd ever see. Even then, it was almost totally all women. Seeing a guy in a magazine was pretty rare. When I finally did see one, I'd already seen naked guys in the gym showers, but seeing a hard dick in that magazine, being sucked, stroked, being stuck into that pussy, and shooting all that jizz, I actually shot off in my shorts. Dave, Mitch, Kyle, Randall, and Vince had no idea, I hoped. They didn't seem to notice, anyway. I kept pretending I was still interested in the magazine, but all I was really interested in was getting out of there and cleaning up. And, of course, hiding how much of a fag I was.

It was hard.

I couldn't talk to my friends about it at all. We sometimes talked sex stuff, but it was mostly lies and bragging about things. Usual stuff, I guess.

The summer of 1980 I was almost fifteen and about to start high school.

Aunt Barb was mom's sister. Her and Uncle Tony had a daughter, Tara, who was nine, and a son, Brent, who was eighteen. Brent had just graduated high school and was about to go off to college. My parents were all hyped up that I should spend some time with him before he left, saying how I might not get to see him again for a very long time.

I had grown up with Brent as my only older cousin. We saw each other several times a year: over summer vacation, for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, over Easter break, those kinds of times when family gets together. Some summers he had come spent a couple weeks at my place, some summers I had gone and spent a couple weeks at his place. Both his and my family lived outside the small towns where we lived. Our parents were all very into country and rural living, and not living in cities. We had small gardens, and us kids were taught to handle and shoot guns, use bows, and hunting and fishing. Not to mention camping and hiking. We weren't raised to be particularly shy with each other, so we went to bed in our underwear. We always saw each other undressing and in just our tighty-whities at night. If it was warm or hot, we'd often play video games late at night in just our underwear. I saw his boner in his underwear before I had pubes, and he'd seen my boner as well once I started getting them.

Over last Easter break, Brent and his family had come to stay at my place for the weekend. It was usual for us to talk sex stuff. Brent had told me about his first time a couple years ago, and about some of the times since. And he'd told me about what he knew about girls, and doing it. That Easter break, we actually compared dicks! He asked if mine was 'getting full sized yet,' and I said it was, and he asked to see. I said I would if he showed his. So we stood up, unzipped, and whipped them out. We got them hard and compared. His was way longer and thicker than mine, just about the size of that guy in that magazine. It was the hottest, sexiest thing I had ever done so far! I wanted to do way more, but I had no idea how to make anything happen, and way to shy about it to even seriously think about it. So we compared, then put them away, and kept talking about sex stuff until we fell asleep. I woke up having to use the john, with a major, throbbing, aching boner, and had to whack one out before I could even go pee. It was the best orgasm ever, and I made the most cum I had ever before. I almost groaned out loud and my knees almost folded up as I came all over the underside of the toilet lid. It was fucking awesome!

So this summer, we went to stay a couple weeks as our vacation this year. I was looking forward to it a lot.

The first few days were mostly hanging out with Brent and his buddies through the week when they weren't working of their family farms or at their jobs. I didn't see any drugs or beer, and they only rarely talked about either one, and only about how they would get stoned and buzzed on the weekends. They were mostly clean-cut country kids like Brent. There were stoner kids and punk kids and preppy kids around the small town too, but they weren't hang-out friends with Brent and his country/farmer friends.

Every night, when we'd get ready for bed, we'd take off everything but our tighty-whities and lay down. We'd talk and laugh and even play the Atari in our underwear. I have to admit, I loved that. I loved seeing his body. He was lean and strong and tanned from helping around the house and tending the garden and stuff. And he really filled out those white briefs very well. I'd get like half-hard every time we got out of our jeans.

Every night when I'd wake up and go use the john, I'd whack one out while imagining him naked and hard and doing stuff. Every night.  

 All week long, Brent made a point with his buds that he couldn't have any company over the weekend. So they had plans for the next week set, and plans among themselves for the weekend to camp at the lake with some beers. A couple were going to smoke some weed too, but a couple didn't smoke it, but were okay with the ones that did. I always thought if someone didn't smoke pot they didn't hang out with people who did. I learned a lot that summer, I can tell you.

On Friday night, our parents went into the city for the weekend, leaving me with Brent and Tara. My mom and dad had grown up in that county and still knew a lot of folks there, and a bunch of them were meeting up for the weekend in the city, as it was twenty years since they had graduated high school together. They were going to stay at a hotel and come home sometime Sunday.

Now I knew Brent was a bit different the last couple of years. He'd told me a year or more ago how he smoked some pot with some friends sometimes, and got drunk sometimes, and messed around like that. He was still pretty clean-cut, though. No big stoner dude, or a big partier, he just messed around with some pot and beer. He said he'd tried coke, but it made him too jittery, and none of his friends were into it. The one who did get into coke also changed to hanging out with the stoner/partier kids instead.

So, that Friday night, Brent and I were playing his Atari, and it was late enough that his sister had passed out, when he got a joint from his dresser. He sat down next to me on the floor at the foot of his bed and looked at me.

"You won't tell, will  you?"

"Duh, no."

"Cool. You wanna smoke some with me?"

My stomach flipped over. I liked Brent a lot, even looked up to him a lot, too. But I was the totally clean-cut type. But I shrugged. So he took that as a 'yes' and lit it. He showed me how to smoke it, and I gave it a try. I came close to coughing up a lung!

But after a few minutes, with his coaching, I was hitting it and holding it, and feeling it.

We were giggling a lot. Everything seemed funny. Especially to me. It was a really good time. Pretty soon, we passed out. I woke up with a rager! I took care of it in the bathroom. I didn't usually get boned during the night, but then I usually beat one out before going to sleep, but hadn't since I was sleeping on Brent's floor in his sleeping bag.

Saturday was a lot of fun. We spent most of it outside with his little sister in tow, and Brent drove us into town to mess around a while.

 In the afternoon, his buddy Mike came over, which he wasn't supposed to do. But he brought a present. He pulled a magazine out from under his shirt and handed it to Brent.

"Phil got it in town the other day. We've took turns with it, and it's your turn. Give it to Todd next, okay?"

"Sure!"

Tara came running up to tell us she'd tell their parents that Brent had company.

"He's just giving me a magazine about college, Terror," Brent told her, using his nickname for her.

Mike laughed and told her, "You don't want to get me in trouble, do ya, Tair? I might not marry you when you're old enough."

"Oh, I'm over you," she huffed, then turned on her heel and stalked off.

"Damn," Mike laughed. "Used to work."

We cooked ribs and potatoes on the grill for dinner, watched some goofy but okay movie on television, and then hit the video games. After his sister had gone to bed, we stripped down to get cool. No air conditioning at his house, but then it wasn't usually very hot where he lived anyway. Though it was that summer. We played Atari in our underwear for a while, and I kept fighting off a boner seeing him like that. After a couple games, Brent broke out a joint and we got stoned again. Then he broke out the magazine.

Damn, it even had two sets with a guy in them! One set had a blond guy with a blond chick, the other a dark-haired, olive-skinned guy with a really long-legged brunette. The blond guy was so hung it was almost impossible to believe! But the Greek-looking guy shot so much cum it had to be faked! Brent and I both agreed on that.

Sitting there in our underwear, we both tried using our side of the magazine to hide our hard-ons. So we were up as close to each other as we could get, using the magazine to try to hide them at the same time. I knew he had one, I could see it once in a while when we flipped pages. I was pretty sure he knew I had one too. Man, that was so exciting, knowing he was all boned up right there next to me, our thighs touching, our sides and arms touching. Damn!

We went through the magazine several times, both of us afraid to put it away and expose our erections. I was, anyway. I assume he was too. But we did finally put it aside, and we both saw wet spots on our tighty-whities, and each other's erections, and we laughed and got red-faced.

That got us talking about how much we liked beating off, how much we shot when we came, that kind of stuff. We'd talked about that kind of stuff before, plenty of times. He was the only guy I knew who I had ever talked to about such things in such ways. My friends and I talked a little about it, but not very much. Mostly bragging lies. But Brent and I pretty much only told the truth to each other.

So when Brent said, "I got something I have to tell you. But you got to promise not to just get mad. Okay?"

I said, "Sure, okay. What?"

He took a long time to think about it, I guess, never looking at me at all, before he said, "Remember over Easter break? We, um, showed each other our dicks?"

"Yeah."

It was pretty embarrassing to remember that, but kind of hot and sexy too. I mean, I'd been thinking about it ever since, and especially since getting to his house a week ago. And every time I saw him get undressed for bed, most especially.

"Um, well, when you went to sleep, I snuck out and smoked a doob. And when I came back, you were, you know, laying on the bed, and, you know, was wearing just your underwear. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"Well, promise you won't get mad?"

"Sure. Promise. What?"

"Well, I sort of, just for a bit, kind of, well, played around, some."

I wasn't sure what he meant. At all. So I asked, "What'd'ya mean?"

He sighed, then looked at me for the first time since saying he had something to tell me, then said, "I been feeling really guilty about it. So I decided I'd tell ya, even if ya got mad. I won't blame ya if ya do."

"Mad about what?"

He sighed again, then looked right in my face, and said, "I played with your... with you... when you were asleep."

HIs face was really red, and he looked almost sad, mostly scared.

I was so mad for a second. Then I was sort of... relieved? Not really, but I wasn't mad any longer. Sort of still mad, a little. I don't know how to describe it, really.

"What did you do?" I asked, my voice sort of squeaking.

"All I did was... you know... just sort of..."

"What?"

He looked away and shook his head, then said, "I'm sorry I did it. I was just... it was just messing around. I didn't mean to. I should'a beat off before I came back from getting stoned, I guess."

"Did you take my underwear off?"

"No! All I did was... sort of... just..." He looked back at me, "I just toyed with it a little, to get it hard. I guess I just wanted to see how big it was. Compared to mine. By... you know... actually touching it."

I felt really nervous. I felt myself shaking some. All over. I mean, it was sort of scary. But it was also sort of... hot.

"How long for?" I asked.

He shrugged, then said, "At least, like, ten minutes. Maybe more."

I didn't know what to say. I mean, would you? I just sort of sat there for a while, until he said, "You mad?"

"No," I said without even hesitating. "I'm not mad. Honest."

He sighed really loudly then, and even smiled a little. I smiled too. I mean, I didn't like him feeling bad, and I didn't want to be the reason he felt bad either. The only thing I could think of to say was, "It's okay."

"No it's not. I shouldn't have done that. Especially not to my favorite cousin. Man, I've been feeling so guilty about it ever since."

I blame the pot for what happened next. I couldn't have even seriously considered it if I hadn't been so high. But the thought came, and it made me snicker at it. He noticed, and asked, "What's funny about it?"

"Want to not feel guilty about it anymore?" I asked.

"Yes. Duh. Why?"

"Let me feel you back."

His eyes got really big and his mouth hung open. Like a comicbook image. Then he asked, really slowly, "Are you even trying to be funny or something?"

"No. Payback is fair."

"So you wanna play with my boner?" he asked me, as if he was surprised.

"You played with mine."

I had him there, and he knew it. He'd admitted to it. So, so had I.

He coughed, then nodded, then sat up straighter, straightened his legs, and said, "You're right. Go ahead. As long as you want. Fair is far."

He was serious. Stone-dead serious.

I felt like my guts were going to churn up a frothy mess. My heart began hammering in my chest. I felt prickly-sweat on my back and neck. I was shaking.

I swallowed, then looked down at his lap. He was getting hard again. The wet spot was still there, but his boner had faded and dropped, so now it was rising again and poking out at a lower place on his briefs. Poking, pushing, throbbing upward. I could see the shadow of his pubes, too. It was almost like watching a movie as I reached down.