Mark and two of his friends were in the park, just horsing around, climbing among the rocks, playing a little tag. Near the street a playground was flat and open. There was a backstop and diamond for baseball. In the winter this section was flooded for skating. Stony cliffs occupied the opposite corner of the recreational area and on top of that were the woods.

The three restive teenagers never stuck to any one thing for long, unless they met up with some other kids and began a pick up game of capture the flag or some such thing. But this was a gray, Saturday afternoon in late fall and nobody else was around, no one except a guy on a bench, down near home plate. He looked like he was reading a paperback, but Mark thought the man might be watching them.

The youngster started complaining, first about the cold, then about some chores that he said he had to do that weekend. Mark pretended that he was nagging himself about it. “It’ll be nice tomorrow; I should get it out of the way today.” Then he kicked the dirt as though he didn’t want to hear that. The lad put his hands in his jacket pockets and faked a shiver.

“I’m goin’.” Mark sputtered at last. While he paused for a reaction, neither of his friends raised objections. So he turned and took a couple of steps.

“Me too,” one of them said. The youth hesitated and the other two caught up with him. They left the park together.

At the second intersection, his friends took the left that led to their neighborhood. Mark bore right where the road went off at an angle. He proceeded past the first house and then stopped and counted to fifty. By the time the kid got back to where he had split off from the others, they were no where in sight. It took him another minute to return to the park.

The guy on the bench was still there. He was about twenty five, medium height, a little on the stocky side. He wore jeans and a heavy sweater. His thick black hair was very long and in need of a trim, but his distinguishing characteristic was a shaggy mustache. He might have looked sinister, except that his expression and bearing gave off the opposite signals.

“Forget something?” he asked as the boy approached.

“You live around here?” Mark impertinently inquired, ignoring the question. He had unzipped his jacket before reentering the park in order to show off a narrow waist. Now the kid struck a pose, throwing a hip out.

“On the hill,” the fellow said, gesturing in the opposite direction that the three chums previously had taken. There were a series of streets that ran up from the main road and behind the park. “Aren’t you cold?” the young man wryly commented as he looked the lad over.

“Yeah. Let’s go to your place,” Mark offered.

Lenny’s house, half way up the steep hill, was small and a sickly, pale green color. The front yard was ragged. Judging from the exterior, the youth expected the inside to be a dump, but it wasn’t. The furniture in his living room was ordinary but new and the room was neat. They sat on the sofa.

“Do you have any dirty pictures?” the boy prompted, in the belief that these guys always do. Lenny reached under the sofa and his hand came back with a half dozen gay porn magazines. He laid them on the coffee table that was in front of them.

Mark spread them out. Each had a lovely youth on the cover, an eighteen year old or someone a little older who could pass for eighteen. Mark was just fifteen himself, but short, so he seemed a year or so younger.

“These guys are really cute, but they have such big dongs they make me feel inadequate,” Mark complained as he quickly leafed through the first of the glossy offerings.

“Actually, I rather prefer something a little less dramatic,” Lenny commented.

“Younger, you mean.”

“That too,” the young man admitted readily.

“So where’s the bedroom?” Mark inquired.

*****

The house contained only four rooms over a basement. Half of that was a one car garage. The sitting room was on the left and behind it was a large eat-in kitchen. Lenny’s bedroom was across the hall from there, occupying the right rear corner of the building. All the shades were drawn, making it rather dark.

Mark enjoyed being touched all over. In his experience, however limited, this is what boy lovers most liked to do. Then they would make him come, one way or another. Mark had let Lenny undress him. He found this very sexy. The teenager was proud of his body and liked to show it off.

Lenny had him sit forward on a chair and spread his legs. The man got between them where he could look and touch at the same time. Then Mark got a blow job while Lenny took care of himself. Another time, the boy knew, the fellow would want more.

A while later, Lenny gave Mark a tour of the house. In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator door and pointed out some steaks he had bought that day. Mark thought this to be a peculiar effort to impress him. Lenny also had him look at the guest bedroom. It was dark like Lenny’s and had a big, mahogany bed in it. The absence of personal effects made it seem sterile and forbidding.

Lenny wanted Mark’s phone number and address, but the teenager wouldn’t tell him. “You know where I live,” Lenny observed, reasonably. Mark was adamant. He didn’t want the slightest chance of visits, letters or phone calls that would require him to make up explanations for the benefit of his parents.

In a last ditch effort to maintain some contact with the boy, Lenny told Mark that he was having some friends over the following afternoon. He invited the youngster to join them. The lad’s response was noncommittal.

*****

It was sunny that Sunday at two when Mark rang Lenny’s doorbell. The young man led him to the sitting room and introduced his friends. They were both considerably older than Lenny and particularly unattractive.

Gus, sallow and emaciated, with a long head and sunken eyes, reminded Mark of a character from a horror film, something about the “walking dead.” More normal looking, Henry was fat and rumpled. On the other hand, their greeting was appropriate and friendly. This made the youngster feel at ease in spite of their looks.

“I’ve been telling them about you,” Lenny said to Mark. They were standing with Lenny’s hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go in the bedroom, get undressed, and then come back?” he suggested, giving Mark a look.

When the boy had left, Gus wondered out loud if this was such a good idea. “Sure,” Lenny said, “he’s doing it. He wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t want to.” Henry didn’t say anything. He was excited by the prospect of this unexpected treat, but it didn’t show on his habitually unexpressive face. Lenny drew the shades and switched on the lamps.

*****

Because the kitchen door was closed, the only light in Lenny’s room was what filtered down the hallway from where the three men were waiting for him. Mark sat at the foot of the bed and slowly untied the laces of his sneakers. He wasn’t in any hurry.

Removing his foot wear, he set those neatly side by side under the side chair he had used for another purpose on the previous day. His jacket was already hanging on the back. Mark took off a sock, folded it, and placed it inside one of the sneakers. He did the same with the other one.

The boy stood to unbutton his jeans, pull them off, fold them and lay them on the seat. He watched himself in the mirror over a low bureau as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his heavy, plaid shirt, then up the front. Here I am, Mark thought, stripping myself for those three guys. He wanted to savor the moment.

After placing the folded shirt on top of his jeans, he pulled his T-shirt up from his waist. Then he lost sight of himself as it went over his face. Rather than folding the undershirt he laid it over his jacket.

The youngster shoved his thumbs inside the waistband of his briefs. He drew the material off his hips, slowly, for the benefit of his audience of one. Then Mark looked away as he bent to remove his briefs and place them on top of his undershirt.

He turned again to the mirror for one last look. He was just over 5’ 3” and weighed a mere 125, slim and smooth. There was a reddish-brown, curly tuft of crisp hair above his genitals; on his head it was soft and wavy. He would have preferred to reenter the front room without a hard on, but he couldn’t help it. His uncircumcised penis wobbled five inches in front of him as he walked unhurriedly to join the others.

*****

Lenny looked up when Mark entered the room. The boy came forward and stood by the side of his chair. The young man placed a proprietary left hand on the inner thigh of the boy’s right leg, inserting it between the lad’s legs and from the back. “What did I tell you,” he said to his guests, “isn’t he gorgeous?”

The youngster’s obvious sexual excitement relieved the two of any lingering concerns over his willingness to participate in the doings. Gus’s face showed his interest, Henry’s did not. They passed the boy among themselves for a while. Mark stood between Gus’s legs while the man explored his body. Later the youth sat on Henry’s lap.

When Lenny saw that Henry was beginning to stroke the youngster’s erection, he interrupted the proceedings. “I’ve had an idea,” he announced. “Let’s have a contest to see which of us can make him come.”

“Huh?” Gus said, not really caring to have his concentration broken at that moment.

“We’ll take turns, say, one minute each. Whoever is doing it when he comes is the winner.”

The other two must have understood implicitly that the prize would go to Lenny regardless of the outcome, since neither of his guests inquired into its nature. For them victory was to be the only reward. Mark, however, not arriving at the same conclusion, earnestly wanted Lenny to win the game.

“Who starts?” Henry asked, having abruptly ceased his manipulations of the youngster’s penis and not wanting to be first.

“We can cut for it,” Lenny suggested. He opened the draw of a side table and withdrew a pack of cards. He shuffled them.

“Low card goes first,” Henry asserted, having quickly figured out that was the worst position.

Lenny cut to an eight. “Come here,” he said to Mark.

The youngster climbed down from Henry’s lap and went to the young man. Lenny handed him the pack to bring over to Henry. He cut and drew a queen, smiled and showed it to the others.

It was only when Gus came up with a nine that Mark realized the implications of the order: Lenny, Gus, Henry. He least wanted Henry to win, and most wanted Lenny to. Somehow he would have to hold off for three minutes.

The boy thought that Lenny might be reading his mind when the young man helped by not making much of an effort in his turn. The youth then moved to where Gus was sitting and watched while a sallow hand took its grip. Being pumped hard and fast, Mark took recourse in foul imagery. First he pictured the rotting body of a dead cat. Then the boy imagined that someone had thrown up on it.

Even so, he could feel a stirring within himself when the deathlike fellow’s time expired. Mark took his time getting over to the next contestant, managing to stumble over nothing in order to further delay his arrival. The normally lethargic Henry suddenly acquired an unsuspected alacrity.

“Hurry up,” the fat man urged, shifting forward in his chair and reaching out in the boy’s direction.

Clamped firmly by Henry’s heavy legs, Mark felt thought control begin to fail when the rotund fellow used his other hand to rub between his buttocks. He was saved only by Henry’s failure to trim his fingernails. One bit into the soft skin of the youngster’s otherwise hard shaft. The pain, though minor, was enough to postpone ejaculation.

At first, Mark thought that he had succeeded when he was again in his friend’s clutches. Then it occurred to the boy, that if he ejaculated, he would make a mess on the guy’s rug. The set back was momentary. The youth soon reasoned that if he didn’t shoot the game would continue and he would eventually do it anyway. Thus relieved of guilt, his climax struck him hard.

The youngster groaned with the release. Following the path of semen some three feet in front of him, he saw that Gus’s reaction was one of enjoyment of the scene. Even though he had not emerged victorious, he took pleasure in the outcome. Only Henry grumbled. At Lenny’s suggestion, the lad found a paper towel in the kitchen and did what he could to daub up the spill.

*****

There was never to be a rematch. Mark did see Gus and Henry from time to time at Lenny’s house, but not together. Oddly enough, the youngster became quite fond of Gus in spite of his looks. Friendly and cheerful, the man was unfailingly kind and thoughtful to the lad.

Gradually, the feeling turned into affection and the two spent time together alone. Mark came to enjoy Gus’s rather cold and skeletal touch, and marveled at the fact. “How could I possibly like this fellow,” he wondered. The easy answer was that, by contrast, Gus set off the boy’s beauty for his own enjoyment. But there was more to it than that.