Chapter 3: Awakenings

8th Grade: May 9th - May 12th, 1985

“Mr. Brandton! Pay attention!” Mrs. Patterson bellowed.

As my overweight English teacher finally lifted her accusing gaze from my face, I let the air out that I had been holding. I had been daydreaming about Suzi again. I had tried to appear as if I was listening to what the old battle boat was saying, but my mind had switched off while my dick had turned on. Now I was sporting a hardon, and the bell was about to ring.

“Shit,” I breathed. I tried to imagine old blubber butt naked, and that shrunk it real fast. I saw Joey glancing over to me, and he smiled a knowing look.

The bell finally rang, and I noticed Joey staying seated while Suzi got up and walked across the classroom. We both watched her ass while it went through the door. I looked back at Joey while he got up, skillfully hiding the boner he had, and we walked out together.

“Who was it this time?” Joey asked while ogling Shannon Trist’s well-developed bust as she stood talking to her locker neighbor.

“Ms. Ass_ter, who else?” I replied.

“Heh, thought so. I was too. I think John and Brad must have been too. They both jumped when Patterson caught you. Shit, so did I. And I noticed they were looking at her with THAT look.”

“What look?”

“This look.”

He stared directly at Suzi’s ass again while she was getting things out of her locker. Joey looked like he was trying to will it to do something sexy. Like get naked or something.

“You mean this look,” I said as I gazed at her butt while imagining my hands touching, then squeezing her two cheeks.

Right then, Suzi jumped, turned around with her hand out to strike, and found no one to hit. Her eyes met mine, and I felt a wave of familiarity pass between us. I quickly broke eye contact, and I hurried through the lunchroom doors.

Once we were in line for food, Joey asked, “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know,” I responded. “I was imagining touching Suzi’s bottom, and then it was like I was. It was weird.”

“Wow. Maybe you’re, like, psychic or something. Hey, tell me what I am thinking right now.”

I automatically said, “You’re thinking about getting YOUR hands on Suzi’s ass.”

Joey said with his eyes wide open, “Holy shit!”

“What? There wasn’t anything magical about that!” I grinned at my friend. “I know you too well. Brothers, remember?”

“Heh ... Yeah, I guess so.”

But I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced.

And at that point, I wasn’t so sure myself. Something was going on with my fantasies and now this.

We went to our table, sat down, and waited on John, Brad, and Lex. They bought their lunches while Joey and I always bagged ours. When they arrived, we talked about girls and last night’s ball game, the second midweek game we had had that season. I noticed Joey was a little quieter than usual.

As we were about to get up and go wait for the bell, Joey blurted out I had felt Suzi’s ass.

“I did not!” I said when the other three looked at me. “I imagined it, and it just so happened she turned around like she was going to hit someone. But I never laid a finger on her, and she was ten feet away from me!”

“OKAY, okay, but what about that look you two gave each other? It looked ... intense. I tell you guys, he’s psychic.”

Getting a little tired of the conversation, I just shrugged my shoulders and joined the other three as they had lost interest and were dumping their trash.

Joey was checking out Suzi again while dumping his trash when John mentioned that he had been thinking about Suzi in a bathing suit during English class when I had gotten busted. That got both Brad’s and my attention.

We both said, “You too?” at the same time.

All three of us were looking at each other with surprise when Joey walked up and saw our faces.

“What?” Joey asked.

John looked at me, then at Joey.

To Joey, he asked, “What were you thinking of when Tim got busted by Mrs. Patterson? What was it exactly?”

Joey had a confused look on his face, but then he grinned, leaned up against the wall and stared out across the lunchroom at Suzi’s back.

He said in a sports commentator’s voice, “Ms. Suzi Aster, in a blue bikini, stretching her arms where her tits stand out. She gets up, bends over, and, oh! Look at that! Her bikini bottom string breaks, and the crowd goes wild over her full moon.”

The bell rang just at that moment, and Joey never saw the shock on our faces. He had just described in a slightly different style what apparently all four of us had been thinking of at the same time in class. The thing that Brad and John didn’t know was that particular fantasy was my latest personal fantasy, and I was sure that I had somehow shared it with them.

Brad and John were both looking at me, apparently remembering Joey’s psychic remark earlier.

I said, “Not a word of this to Joey. You got that? I don’t want him going off again. Like the time he thought John had made it with Lori Johnson. There has to be an explanation for all this.”

John quickly agreed, and while Brad and I headed for gym class, Brad also agreed after I reminded him that I had kept his secret about his crush on Paula Duncan. We switched to talking about normal things, mostly baseball.

After an awesome game of basketball in gym, the coach announced that we all stank and had to take one of those mandatory showers. Practically everyone groaned, but knew the faster we got in, the quicker we got out. I didn’t have a problem with taking a shower with everyone else. I had always been a little more mature than the other guys, and I got a kick out of everyone checking me out. With everyone watching me, I didn’t really have to worry about getting a hardon.

But this time, things happened a little differently than in the past.

I was doing the basics, getting enough soap on everything so I would smell clean without doing any real scrubbing. Suddenly I felt my dick rising straight up. But when I looked down, I saw it was only just starting to get a little hard. I looked around, and my eyes got drawn to Brad facing the other way. His face was flushed, and I could tell he was hiding a hardon.

Before I could stop it, my dick started rising up too. Feeling a little embarrassed myself, I tried to hide it, but I had picked the spot that had the least amount of cover. Soon every guy in the shower knew I was hard. After they had gone through the surprise then amusement bit, they found that none of them could keep their own from getting hard.

Finding myself amused by this, I figured I would show these guys what they had to look forward to. I started stroking my meat and making sure everyone there noticed. Brad, by this time, had managed to go soft only to find himself getting hard again when he had turned back around.

I started to imagine what it would be like if everyone in the showers would cum at the same time. This felt so much like the fantasies I guess I lost my sense of reality and thus my inhibitions. I started to stroke in earnest then, feeling my dick go to full size to the amazement of my audience. I loved showing off, and after all the jerking off with the guys the past couple of months, this wasn’t as weird to me as it should have.

When I noticed everybody had started beating their meats too, I felt myself getting close. The idea that everyone there was jerkin off with me put me into overdrive, and within another 30 seconds, I released my load with a groan that was amplified 22 times. I fell from the intensity of my orgasm and it nearly knocked me out. It took me about a minute before I realized that everyone had done the same thing. They all were sitting on the floor with their dicks in their hands, some of them with cum dripping off their hand.

I got scared at that point. Something I did had made everybody share in a mutual orgasm. And then I realized that not only everyone in the shower, but the coach as well!

He was sitting at the entrance of the showers with his back to us like usual. But even from where I was on the floor, I could tell he had jerked off sitting there and was starting to regain his senses. In fact, everyone was coming out of their stupor, and I heard a “Shit!” from someone when they had realized what they had done.

No one seemed aware that I had caused it, though. Everyone was very quiet as they finished their shower as fast as they could, and the coach had disappeared.

Actually, there was one person that had put two and two together. Brad was giving me these really weird looks, but before I could talk to him, the bell rang, and he didn’t wait to talk to me.

I was getting anxious about what all this meant. I didn’t seem to have any control over what my imagination did. I always prided myself on how self-disciplined I was with other people. But now my urges were taking over not just me but others as well.

I sat through my Algebra class not paying attention to a single word Mr. Benson said. I really didn’t socialize that much with anyone in this class, and Benson was cool. He didn’t pick on you if you weren’t hanging on every word he said. As long as you did your homework and did well on the tests, he pretty well left you alone. Math was one thing I could always do without sweating about it. I basically went into my own little world to think.

I remembered things back when I was little, how I had imagined hearing others thinking, and talking to my mother without making a sound. I focused on these things, trying to remember what I did. I started to have a familiar feeling. Sort of like remembering what something tastes like after a very long time. I kept getting bits and pieces.

After about half an hour, I noticed the room was a bit noisier than usual. I brought myself out of my daze and realized that while only Mr. Benson was talking, I was “hearing” several conversations all at once. In fact, I heard two voices from Mr. Benson. I realized I had turned on another part of this ... power. I got really excited about this new discovery.

I started to listen in on the others around me. Most of them were basically following what Mr. Benson was saying. A couple of people were daydreaming, one about Mr. Benson. I checked out the looker in the class, Betsy Heite. Her thoughts were going back and forth between the stuff Mr. Benson was going over, and what she wanted to wear to the party at Jimmy’s house that weekend.

I spent the rest of the class listening in on everyone’s thoughts, finding out some surprising things about a few of them, and basically getting a kick out of it all. By the time the bell rang, I was getting a little tired of listening to math and had just realized that I could hear a few people outside of this room.

All hell broke loose when I tried to go out into the hall. Too many people. I was overwhelmed by the “noise.” I struggled to get to my last class but ended up falling over my own feet and knocking myself and two others to the ground.

It just so happened that one of the two unfortunate bystanders had been Suzi. The other was a guy I had never seen before. They were pretty pissed at first, but once they realized I hadn’t responded to them and saw my face twisted with the agony of 200 people’s thoughts being thrown at me, they quickly lost their anger, and in a few minutes I was in the nurse’s office.

Thankfully, the bell rang, and everyone had gone to their last class. I was starting to recover and discovered that I was still hearing more and more people, but they were not as loud. I also found out that the nurse was about to call my mother and was seriously considering sending me to the hospital.

I didn’t want to go to the hospital, and I didn’t really want my mom getting upset over this. I tried to say something, but it only came out as a groan. The nurse looked over at me, and our eyes met. It happened again. A strong feeling of familiarity, and that time I felt something else. Something passed from me to the nurse, and the nurse suddenly decided that I would be okay after a little rest.

After we broke eye contact, the nurse made me comfortable and told me to just to lie there until I felt better. I could only nod and close my eyes.

I felt an ocean of minds around me. At first, all of this was pretty cool, having switched on this mental radio. But now I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t even tell what any specific person was thinking anymore. It all was a low roar in my mind. A part of my mind started to ache that never had before.

I put my arm over my forehead like I sometimes did when I had a headache. My arm partially blocked some of it out, so I put both arms up to block the incoming noise. I felt much better then, and the ache started to fade. I laid there for about ten minutes, then the nurse came over to me to see if I was feeling better.

I was able to speak a few words to her to let her know I was better, then the nurse got up and closed the blinds. The afternoon sun had made its way to the window and was starting to heat up the room.

The blinds gave me an idea. I imagined closing some blinds between me and all those minds, and it instantly shut them out. Relief washed over me, and I must have sighed or something because the nurse looked over at me and asked me if I was okay. I gave her the standard sort of better line. I didn’t really feel like going to class now.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, the bell was ringing and the hall outside the door got noisy. I got up and told the nurse I was okay. She said she wanted to talk to me tomorrow morning, but I could go home now.

I hurried to get my stuff from my locker and barely made it to the bus. Joey, as usual, had saved me a seat, and I plopped down next to him.

“What happened to you?” Joey asked. “Suzi came in late to seventh hour and passed me a note saying you had like passed out in the hall or something.”

“I tripped and fell on her and some dude, and, uh, his elbow got me in the balls,” I lied. “I was in serious pain.”

Joey said with a grin, “Ha! That’s what you get for staring too long at her ass while walking behind her.”

“You would have been doing the same thing.”

“But I wouldn’t have tripped!”

I said with an even bigger grin, “And you wouldn’t have gotten to feel her butt for real!”

That part wasn’t a lie, but at the time it happened, I hadn’t really cared.

As we talked about more ordinary things, I started wondering what Joey was really thinking. I imagined looking through a crack in the blinds and peered out at Joey. I only got bits and pieces at first, but then I imagined the crack a little wider and started to get his thoughts pretty much whole. All of a sudden our eyes met and I found myself in two places at once.

I could almost feel Joey’s body like I could feel my own. He was saying something to me about the test we would have in English, and I heard myself respond. That was cool. I was like talking automatically without having to concentrate on what I was talking about. And I could see his questions before he actually asked them.

And a few questions that he didn’t ask. He was dying to have another session and had a hardon because of it. But he couldn’t ask me because he was worried we had lately crossed a line or something we shouldn’t have.

I found out that Joey wanted to do more than just jerk off together, but he didn’t understand what. I felt inside him the same frustrations I had been feeling about wanting to do more, but in my case, it was because I had no control over my imagination.

Then it hit me.

Was it my imagination, or could it have been real? Is that why I couldn’t control the situations and what the people did? Holy shit. Did I somehow make Josh give Maggie the female version of a blowjob?

I was then worried if I had done something to Joey or the others. I had no doubt that we were straight, and everything we had done was just ... experimenting before doing it with a girl. But finding Joey had jerked off a couple of times thinking about our jerk off sessions. That wasn’t the Joey I knew. Had I somehow done that to him?

We only had made eye contact for a split second, but I didn’t need eye contact to listen in on his thoughts. When I sensed we were approaching our bus stop, I figured I had peeked enough and simply closed my gap in my mental blinds.

We got off the bus talking about some of tonight’s homework, and I found myself with a woody that wouldn’t stop. I was confused by that since I was still worried about having done something to him.

I peeked inside his head again and realized it wasn’t my hardon I was feeling but his. But what I felt even more was the trust and sense of brotherhood he felt towards me. A sort of love that went beyond the best friend kind. It wasn’t romantic, just ... intimate. And I couldn’t help but realize I felt the same for him.

I got his attention with a grin, which got the expected reaction.

Joey asked, “What?”

“You know, we both seem to have a problem today.”

Joey said, totally confused, “Huh? What are you talking about?”

I said in a hushed voice, “We seem to have something very large in our underpants.”

As his eyes flickered from my face to my crotch, then back to my face. His mind flashed from confusion to enlightenment, then went straight to horny. His grin was all the real confirmation I needed.

We stopped by his house and let his mom know we were heading over to my house to goof off for a bit before homework. While he was there, Joey grabbed the latest Playboy we hadn’t yet looked at. His mom pretended not to notice.

I parted the mental blinds to see what was going on in her head about that. I just got a bunch of conflicting thoughts about boys growing up, not interfering, her sadness over our loss of innocence, and her desire to protect us.

I gave my second mother a hug and said, “We’ll always be your little boys. We’re just your little boys who like looking at pretty women. At least we’re not looking at pretty boys.”

Momma Conner let out a humph before saying, “But those girls aren’t real. You’re going to be disappointed when you see your first real girl and they don’t look that perfect.”

I shrugged and said, “Looks aren’t everything.”

Joey returned from getting the magazine at that point and looked at us suspiciously for a moment. I shrugged again before heading towards the door.

Outside, Joey asked, “What was that about?”

“Nothing. Just your mom being your mom.”

Joey grunted, “Oh,” and didn’t ask any further questions on that subject.

I was feeling a little nervous when we laid down on my bed to check out the Playboy. Joey didn’t seem to be in a rush, and as usual, he opened it and started working his way from the front. We actually read the magazine, something Joey’s dad recommended we do to help give us a broader view of what it meant to be “mature.” The content was rarely exciting like the photos, but I had to admit I enjoyed reading it. But then I enjoyed reading period.

I only skimmed the articles which was what Joey usually did. He looked for keywords that interested him.

I kept the blinds closed until we reached the centerfold, then I peeked and found Joey contemplating how to talk me into doing something. I didn’t understand why he was hesitating like that. He usually just asked.

I bit the bullet and said, “Want to try something different?”

Joey looked at me with a look of concern and asked, “Different? How?”

“I keep thinking about the first time with Maggie. What if we pretended...

I just couldn’t say it. Despite knowing he had been thinking it earlier, thinking about something and actually doing it was two different things. Did I want to cross that line? The thought of touching his dick didn’t exactly excite me.

I looked in his eyes and saw the earnest curiosity mixed with excitement and caution. He had no idea what I was thinking, but he could see I was conflicted.

Joey asked, “Are you okay?”

I sighed and said, “I don’t know. I need to tell you something but ... It’s hard.”

Joey grinned and said, “So’s mine.”

I looked at him confused for a moment, then snickered, “That’s not what I meant, you bonerhead.”

“Hey, I can’t help it. It has a mind of its own.”

I rolled onto my back, sighed and said, “It sure seems like it sometimes, doesn’t it? I think I’ve let it do more of my thinking lately than I should have.”

“What are you talking about? You’re still not stuck on what Suzi said about walking the halls like a jock, are you?”

“Not exactly. I’m just ... I don’t want to be that kind of guy, you know? I don’t want people to look at me and expect me to talk or act like I just want to get laid.”

“Just because you like looking at girls and get horny doesn’t make you that kind of a guy. And you’d never hurt anyone on purpose. Now stop acting like a pussy and say what you were going to say.”

I looked at him, and for the first time with him, I felt that familiar feeling. I held my breath as I felt my nervous feelings melt away and then his earlier feelings came flooding in.

Tears sprung to my eyes as I smiled and said, “You’re my best friend. I’d be lost without you.”

Joey smiled and teared up a little, the familiar feeling fading away gently as he rolled onto his side and scooted up against me to put his arm behind my head. As he rolled onto his back, I slipped my arm behind his neck, completing our version of how brothers hugged without it being gay.

I snorted at our constant concern over that sort of thing. At that moment, I felt so close to Joey that I would have done anything without caring if it was gay or not. I just wanted to make him feel good.

We were both in just our undershorts, and seeing Joey was still a little hard I suddenly got inspired.

I asked, “Do you want a handjob?”

Startled, Joey looked over at me and gasped, “What?”

“A handjob. Get on your side facing away from me.”

“But...”

“It’s not gay. I’m just giving my best friend and brother a feel for what it’s like.”

As he looked me in the eyes, that familiar feeling formed again. This time he felt it too a little and felt my honest intent.

Joey said gently, “We do it together. Both of us at the same time.”

That connection didn’t fade as he bent down slightly to push his undershorts down where his dick popped out. I did the same, and then as one, we reached for each other’s tool.

After a few minutes of getting the hang of stroking each other like that, and Joey started to thrust into my hand a bit. I felt his pleasure through the connection and began to concentrate on pleasing him. While I wasn’t sharing my half with him, because I could feel what he felt, I was giving him a pretty damn fine handjob. When he went off, I went off at the same moment, doubling my pleasure. I came so hard mine shot clear over Joey and hit the wall next to the bed on his side.

As we both came down off the ceiling, I gently released him and pulled away from him as Joey mirroring me.

We didn’t look at each other for several minutes. The connection was gone, and I was more than a little weirded out about what we had done. Instead of feeling even closer to Joey, I felt a little dirty. Like we had just done something we would never be able to live down. And I was terrified what Joey would make of it.

Joey finally said, “That was different.”

I said pensively, “To put it mildly.”

...

Joey offered, “Felt good.”

I admitted, “Felt great. Best cum ever even.”

Joey said, “Yeah.”

I said with a grimace, “Kind of gay, though.”

“Kind of gay,” he agreed, but then asked, “Any regrets?”

Trying to inject some humor into the situation despite the feeling of disgust in the pit of my stomach, I said, “Yeah. I’m going to have to wash that wall. My mom doesn’t like it when I leave cum streaks.”

Joey looked over at the wall, snickered, then looked at me with humor in his eyes that changed to tenderness as he said, “Not gay.”

I smiled, understanding he meant he knew we weren’t gay, and acknowledged him by repeating him, “Not gay.”

Joey nodded, but then said sternly, “But don’t even think about telling Lex.”

I let out an explosive, “Hell, no,” then we both chucked.

We cleaned up and got dressed, picked the Playboy off the floor and hid it, then after I cleaned up the wall, we grabbed some root beers from the fridge and decided to go out to the platform. It was a sunny day in May, and we both felt we needed to get outside for a while or we might end up naked and trying something else crazy.

We hardly spoke a word while we walked side by side to the platform. When we got within sight of it, I was glad to see no one else was around. I followed Joey up.

We sat up there, swinging our legs back and forth, hanging over the edge of the platform drinking our sodas, not saying a word. I peeked into Joey’s thoughts and was surprised to find he was thinking about Suzi.

I chugged the rest of my root beer and tossed it off the platform. Then I laid my arm across his shoulders in the buddy style kind of way, and began with, “Do you remember me in first grade?”

Joey replied, “Huh? Yeah, I guess.”

“What do you remember about me?”

“Quiet. You didn’t really say much, and you didn’t seem to want to play with anyone but me. Why are you asking?”

“Before I say, tell me one more thing. What did you think about me back then? I mean why do you think I was like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, frowning.

I could see he did remember, but he didn’t want to say. So I said it instead.

“I was weird. Everyone always felt strange when I was around. They like knew what I was going to say before I would say it, and vice versa...”

Joey looked at me with his eyebrows up and said, “Yeah. But it was like everyone got used to it, and then it didn’t happen anymore. I hadn’t really thought about it since.”

I sat silently while watching his mind make connections between then and now. He sat there staring at me while I stared straight ahead.

Finally, he said, “So, what ... What are you getting at? I mean, are you like telepathic? Or an alien or something?”

I looked at him, smiled, and for the first time since I was seven years old, I spoke without using my voice.

<I’m not an alien, you bonerhead.>

Joey’s jaw dropped, and for a few moments, I didn’t know what he was going to do.

But finally he closed his mouth, and with a grin, he exclaimed, “I was RIGHT!”

He got up, pranced around yelling, “I WAS RIGHT!” and screaming his head off.

When he nearly knocked me off the platform I commanded, <SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!>

If he had been any closer to the edge when his legs just went out underneath him, he would have fallen butt-first to the ground.

My face must have been as surprised as his, but his started to show fear when he realized he couldn’t get up or say anything.