Chapter 2: Jockstrap

September 8th - October 17th, 1986

The next day at school while walking to my third hour, I was startled when I felt this surge of malevolent anger coming from my left a few moments before I got shoved halfway across the hall against the lockers by Stan.

My right shoulder was complaining when I straightened up, then I only had a second to process Stan towering over me before he said, “If you intercept one of my throws today, you’ll have more than just a sore arm tomorrow.”

Anger flared inside me as I looked him in the eyes and said, “Care to place a wager?”

“What, that you’ll piss your pants tomorrow if you see me?”

“Oh, don’t tempt me. No. I bet I intercept two-thirds of the throws you make while I’m on the field.”

Stan laughed and said, “And what do I get if you don’t?”

“Name it.”

He sneered and then hmphed at me before turning away.

I said calmly, “Chicken.”

He just kept walking. I poked my mind into his and found that now that he had delivered his message publicly, he only had to wait for me to intercept a throw to be justified in pummeling me tomorrow. Not enough to cause damage, but enough to terrify me. He was grinning, thinking about doing that.

I grinned as well.

After telling Joey, Brad and Suzi at lunch, Brad and Suzi tried to talk me out of using my abilities in any way at practice. Joey eventually convinced me not to, but only because he didn’t want me to be tempted to interfere with practice. That and he wanted to witness Stan try and hurt me the next day. I saw the logic of that. It would be far more fun.

And I was so motivated in my task after school that I not only caught three of Stan’s balls but three others without cheating.

If Joey and Brad hadn’t been watching my back, Stan would have attempted to seek revenge in the locker room. He was pretty pissed off.

I was disappointed when Stan didn’t show up between second and third hour the next day. He waited until between fifth and sixth.

Like last time, I felt him right before he attacked. This time, though, I was ready for him.

I sidestepped him and then tangled his feet up, making it looked like he tripped. I just kept walking without looking back as he crashed into the lockers to my left.

That was on Brad’s birthday. Brad moaned and groaned about having to wait until right before practice on Saturday to get his license, but it wasn’t like he could really use it before then.

Wednesday morning, Stan confronted me before third period.

“You think you’re hot shit? We’re mixing up again today, and my boys are going to be gunning for you.”

I said, “Stan, that’s not going to end well. You’re going to get someone hurt.”

“That’s the idea.”

I said, “If you’re half the man you pretend to be, you’d do it yourself instead of making someone else do it. I’ll let the rest of the JV team know how big of a chicken you are.”

Stan was at least sixty pounds heavier and a good four inches taller than I was, but I didn’t care. I met his glare with my own, and people started noticing.

Mr. Kepler, an English teacher, was one of those people. He approached and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

I said, “No, sir. Just practicing our game face.”

After pushing the thoughts into Stan’s head, Stan said, “Intimidate the opponent. Make him flinch.”

We continued glaring at each other until I couldn’t help but break out into a toothy grin twenty seconds later.

Chuckling, I said, “Okay. You win.”

Stan grunted then moved on.

I wiggled my eyebrows at Mr. Kepler and then followed after Stan.

Once we were far enough away that Mr Kepler wouldn’t hear, I caught up to Stan and said, “We should do that to other members of the team. Make it a thing.”

“Fuck off.”

“Okay, but we could call it the Beckersman challenge.”

“I said, fuck off.”

I broke right to enter my classroom.

I only caught one of Stans passes that day, but we only mixed teams the second half of practice. The JV offense had been dealing with me catching their passes for a month, so it was harder for me to do it with them than with the varsity team. The JV team tended to counter me with Brad as the receiver as I had more trouble working against his speed and nimble fingers.

Coach Erickson, the defense coach for both JV and varsity, was specifically tasking me to land on my feet instead of other players. So far, I hadn’t hurt anyone besides a bruise or two. I bruised myself more trying to land on my feet and failing than I had given anyone when landing on them.

Nobody gunned for me during practice, and Stan didn’t make any more threats.

No. He planned to ambush me Friday after the JV game or Saturday after practice.

Before practice on Thursday, Coach Kyser and Coach Erickson called me into the coach’s office. I eyed Coach Haps’s desk where four hours earlier, Joey, Brad and I had worked Connie over and successfully cured her of the need.

Coach Kyser got directly to the point by saying, “Brandton, there’s been a rumor you and Beckersman have been butting heads and that you’ve been encouraging him to continue.”

“Encouraging him? Coach, Stan’s an ass and a bully. All I’ve done is not cower to him. He’s the one who keeps threatening me.”

“So you didn’t put extra effort to intercept his passes on Monday?”

I grinned and said, “Okay, I did that, but can you blame me? It’s not like I cheated doing it somehow.”

Coach Erickson said, “Son, I understand your point of view, but this is distracting him from his game. For the good of the team, don’t fully intercept his passes today when we mix you up again. He need’s his confidence.”

“You don’t want me to attempt to intercept them?”

“No, we want you to attempt and fail to intercept them. Just today. Give him his confidence back.”

I said, “Fine. But you know he’s just going to rub it in my face afterward.”

Coach Kyser said, “Just suck it up.”

Coach Erickson added, “And don’t tell anyone. That will get back to him and make things worse for you and him.”

“No offense coach, but this sucks.”

Coach Erickson said, “Do this and you might just find yourself playing in a varsity game or two this year.”

I said, slightly panicked, “Coach, I’m only on the team to play with my two best friends. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m terrified at hurting someone or getting hurt myself. The last thing I want is to play against bigger and meaner opponents.”

“Then why do you like landing on top of people?”

“Softer landing? I don’t know.”

Coach Erickson said, “Brandton, you’re coming along well. We have some opponents ahead of us who only play a passing game. We’d like to use you in a few of them like a secret weapon.”

My ego liked the sound of that, so I asked, “What weeks?”

Coach Erickson said, “That will be up to Coach Haps, but if you play well on Friday, that could be next Friday, then on the 17th and 24th of October.”

“17th?” I made a face. “Any chance Joey Conner could play in that game? It’s his birthday.”

Coach Erickson said, “Son, we have to do what’s best for the team.”

I said, “Then I’d rather just stay on JV on the 17th. He’s been my best friend since first grade and it’s important to me I’m playing with him that day. But I’ll do what I can to booster Stan’s confidence and play if you really want me to on the other nights.”

Coach Erickson was about to argue, but Coach Kyser said, “That’s fair enough. Go ahead and get changed.”

I left and purposely didn’t try to eavesdrop on them. Instead, I sought out Stan.

I walked up to him as he finished putting on his shoulder pads. Around him were the other varsity offensive linesmen and some of their defense.

I said boldly, “I heard your game is off because you lost your confidence. I also know you plan to ambush me after my game Friday or at practice on Saturday. You’re an asshole, and if you think for one minute I’m afraid of you, you can just piss your pants right now.”

I looked down at his crotch and didn’t see any piss. When I looked up, I had to throw my left hand up to catch his fist aimed at my head.

As the others around us started jeering or cursing, I said, “Temper temper, Stan.”

Stan growled, “I’m going to pulverize you,” but then found he couldn’t pull his hand away from mine and exclaimed, “What the fuck! Let go!”

“Not until you say uncle.”

He struggled a few more moments then looked over at Sean Miller and Karl Stephens and said, “He’s holding my hand in some kind of pincer. I can’t move it.”

Sean and Karl stepped towards me, but when I flicked my other hand’s fingers at them, they both stopped from feeling something getting in their eyes.

“Fuck! What was that?” Karl exclaimed while Sean cursed.

As Karl and Sean complained loudly about something burning in their eyes, some of the other guys started coming forward to find out what was going on

I commanded to Stan and the others there, “When you suit up to play, clear your mind of earlier distractions so you can focus on playing the game to the best of your ability. On the practice field, you want to be challenged by your teammates, including JV, so both you and they can improve.“

I then walked away and blanked the last two minutes from their short term memories.

My commands worked a little too well. I had to make several adjustments where Joey had to use the share link to restore me when I started getting a headache. The headache was mainly from having been using my telepathy earlier all day inserting my ignore controls in people.

I didn’t intercept any balls due to being distracted and the varsity quarterbacks being so focused. At least the coaches were pleased with me despite being confused by all the weird behavior that caused.

After practice, Joey said, “So much for not cheating.”

“I’m not cheating. They’re just focused. And I didn’t do it to anyone on the JV.”

Brad said, “Man, it still gives them an advantage. I’d call that cheating.”

I said, “It’s nothing they couldn’t do if they really tried. All it does is help focus them a little. I turned it down where it wasn’t so strong. It’s just so they have more confidence.”

Joey said, “Would you like to place a bet on Friday’s varsity game?”

“No.”

“Chicken.”

“I’m not wagering anything. I don’t know anything about who they’re facing. I’ll turn it down some more if it is obviously giving them an unfair advantage, okay? I just want Stan off my back.”

Joey said, “You could have just done what the coaches asked.”

I groaned and said, “I don’t like eating shit from an asshole and that’s what it would have been like. I’d rather quit the team than do that.”

Brad said, “Man, you’re not quitting the team because of that asshole. That would be the ultimate defeat.”

I sighed and nodded.

Friday’s JV game was okay. I didn’t score any touchdowns, but I did intercept a few balls and they ended in several first downs later. Coach Erickson seemed pleased with that. We won 20 to 13.

Watching the varsity game that evening, I was having serious doubts about playing next Friday. It just looked way rougher. Suzi said it didn’t look that different to her and that I was just seeing it from a different perspective. I didn’t know what perspective that would be other than the one from the bleachers versus the bench. The varsity won 27 to 21.

Saturday, I had to make a few additional adjustments to stop the varsity trying to coach the JV. It was slowing down practice.

Coach Haps had me and a few others both on JV and varsity to return after lunch to work on some special drills and exercises. Ugh ... I hated running up and down the damn stadium steps. We’d done that a lot that year, and I was not enjoying doing it an additional fifteen minutes on a Saturday when I could have been soaking in my jet tub, putting together my go-karts, or having mind-blowing sex with the twins.

But before I did the stairs of hell, Coach Haps gave me fifteen minutes of his time trying to tune my jumps. I guess what was unusual about me was how I didn’t have to visually see where everyone was to know where they were. I worked out that by aiming at someone to land on, I was assured of not hitting someone else I wasn’t tracking. Now I was tracking everyone in my vicinity and I realized it was my empathic abilities doing that rather than my telepathic abilities. The twins were pleased that I made that connection.

Landing on my feet without a soft body to roll on was getting easier. I really didn’t know where I got my coordination from. Someone started calling me Timmy the Tiger from the way I would twist in the air to grab the ball and land on my feet if all went well. (Tigers were our mascot.) Dodging people underneath me was what people commented on. I literally would sail over their heads, arching or twisting my body to avoid contact when necessary.

Suzi borrowed her uncle’s video recorder and taped it Saturday so I could see it for myself. I didn’t jump up like other players. Running at full speed, I’d leap into the air, literally sail headfirst through the air horizontally, my back end slowly passing my front and proceeded me when I was coming down to land. Sometimes I leaped so high I was several inches over people’s heads, while other times I had to magically twist my body to prevent myself from colliding with their heads. Timmy the Tiger indeed.

After spending the evening putting some of the go-karts together, I dropped Joey off and spent the night at the Marlfield mansion.

I started giving the remainder of the girls of my flock I had yet to cleanse brain fucks to help speed up their needs to the point where I could cleanse them. I wanted the backlog over with by Joey’s birthday. Suzi and I were still working on the rules for having volunteer sex slaves while my dad and I were testing our combination of the personas he taught me over the summer and the identity perception methods I had used last year with my flock. Joey’s birthday surprise was on track.

I cleansed three girls that week, all solo to Joey’s dismay. I took one home each day after practice Tuesday through Thursday. I couldn’t on Spaghetti Monday as it was Spaghetti Monday, and on Friday, I was playing in the varsity game.

Brad and Ang weren’t working out and broke up Tuesday. I checked on some of the other girls and found one perfect for Brad. Jean Ingram. Not only was she a cheerleader, she wouldn’t get her license until April and was happy to fuck Brad in his backseat whenever he liked. Jean could be a bit of an airhead, but Brad didn’t mind. She fucked, sucked and liked to be eaten out. A little random conversation was easily tolerable compared to that.

I was practicing with the varsity that week. I was constantly being challenged by the others to do better as my interceptions went down to maybe two if I was lucky. Tuesday, I didn’t get any.

During practice on Wednesday, I discovered something new, though. I intercepted the ball, landed on my feet, and took off towards the goal. I could feel one of our offensive guards was coming at me at full speed while I just started to get up to speed. When I felt him catch up with me, I sensed him reaching out to tackle me and I just bent down, let him grab me as I planted my feet, then used his grip to pull him as I rolled beneath him. After he sailed over me, I completed the roll, somehow taking his increased momentum as I whipped over myself over him and back on my feet and continued on my way without losing a significant amount of speed.

A whistle blew a few seconds later, and I thought I had might have hurt him.

When I returned to him, I found Wes Lawrence sitting up, saying, “What the fuck was that, Brandton? Kung Fu?”

I asked him, “Are you okay?”

As some of the others gathered, he said, “I swallowed some turf, that all. Shit. Seriously, where did you learn that?”

I shrugged and said, “I didn’t. It was like what I do when I intercept the ball in the air only from underneath.”

I had to repeat that explanation to Coach Haps and Coach Erickson before we went back to practicing the plays. The opportunity to repeat that trick didn’t occur despite the several attempts to reconstruct the conditions.

Joey, Brad and I were playing with guys who had played football for as many as six years. For us to show up without any known experience and play like we were was unheard of, but I got a whiff of the coaches’ perspectives. They simply thought we were naturals.

Brad was a natural in a lot of ways. He had scored three touchdowns so far, one in the first game and two in the second. I was less talented. I was realizing my empathic abilities were aiding me, but there was the jumping and landing that I couldn’t explain besides being naturally talented.

Whereas Brad and I were constantly improving, Joey’s improvement had tapered off once he had fully exercised and integrated all his given knowledge. He was pressing me to find someone else I could transfer experience from so he could play on varsity on the 17th like I wanted.

So during the time between Friday’s JV and varsity games, I arranged for some of the opposing team’s four best defensive varsity players to join us for a little get together after the game.

I scored another touchdown, pulling that pass over me move again, and intercepted seven more, three of which resulted in touchdowns in later downs. I was loving playing against a passing game team until I got sacked hard in retaliation near the end of the third quarter. I knew it right before they hit me too. After hitting the ground, I telepathically zapped the pair who had done it making them scramble off me. But I still got the wind knocked out of me and my left leg hurt at the knee.

I was done for the game. I was icing my knee throughout the fourth quarter questioning why the hell I was playing a game I didn’t even like to watch on TV.

We won 27 to 7.

Everybody’s parents had come, including mine. After watching the video Suzi had taken of my leaps, Suzi’s dad wanted to see it live for himself. Frank had played college ball and was full of congratulations and praise for confounding the opposing team. We ended up going out to eat as a group afterward, and I had to send the opposing team defense players home after getting their addresses and digits so Joey and I could pay them a visit Saturday night.

I was flustered and felt a bit guilty getting all that attention. Normally I would have eaten it up, but it didn’t feel right to me. The download of knowledge was starting to feel like another cheat.

My knee didn’t let me practice Saturday even though I still went. At least I was able to sit with Suzi and the twins.

After the first half-hour, I asked Suzi, “What is it you that enjoy watching us practice? I’m bored as hell watching them.”

“Timmy, it’s not that we find it entertaining. It’s more about supporting our men.”

The twins gave me the sense they were finding this practice boring without me being in there. I got the idea they liked watching me use my empathic abilities in new ways without me realizing it.

Suzi and I had a long debate about that. Part of me wanted to quit. I didn’t believe I enjoyed the game. I found it frustrating and tedious. Practicing a play over and over again wasn’t fun to me as I usually got the hang of it pretty quickly. I would have rather played the quarterback if it wasn’t for the constant threat of being tackled. They were at the heart of the game. I thought I’d be pretty good with my situational awareness as someone called it.

That evening as Joey and I visited the homes of our previous night’s adversaries’ defensive team, my knee reminded me that my situational awareness hadn’t protected me from getting sacked like that. I swore I’d be ready the next time someone targeted me like that again.

I dropped Joey off at home again who was happy to have a headache.

As it turned out, that didn’t help Joey as much as we hoped. There was a minor improvement by Wednesday, but nothing to really get excited about. Maybe copying the knowledge from someone we beat so badly hadn’t been the best idea.

When my mom and I moved out of our house on Joey’s street, we gave Joey my mom’s queen size bed and I started spending the nights at Joey’s on Spaghetti Mondays. After the dishes were cleared and homework was finished, we’d play poker with his parents until bedtime.

The poker thing was his dad’s idea of bonding with his ‘boys,’ but Margaret was probably more of a poker player than Tom was. They had taught us the game when we were in sixth grade, but we had burnt out on playing it by summer. The biggest reason was they could never bluff me, especially Joey, and it really pissed Joey off.

Joey and his parents had started playing again that summer, and because they knew Joey so well, Joey still had a hard time bluffing them. Joey had talked me into helping him improve his poker face, so just before school started, we had made playing poker a part of Spaghetti Monday.

My mom sometimes stayed and played a few hands to be sociable, but she didn’t find the game itself that enjoyable. My dad was the same way. He hated poker, mainly because his father had played it a lot and had always been critical of my dad when playing with him.

Starting that week, Mondays became our new three-way sex night, I knocking his parents out once they were in bed. I was the designated bottom as my butt and prostrate gave us a better experience. Because I had sex with other girls during the week and the twins on the weekends, I rarely ever swapped with Joey as I simply didn’t feel the need.

My mom, of course, found it amusing I was the designated bottom, and despite her sometimes embarrassing quips that made me squirm in embarrassment, she passed on little tidbits of helpful information based on her own long experience of receiving that sort of thing. For one thing, it was important to medicate afterward and to know my limits. If I overworked it, I’d lose some sensitivity. I’d lose some anyways as my ass would become more resilient to that sort of thing, but there was a happy medium. Some of the discussions we’d have in the evenings made my head spin later.

Joey and I also made sure to separately spend some time making out with Suzi at school during the week. Suzi was trying to live by her parents’ wishes for the most part, and making out with boys was behavior her mother tolerated.

That Wednesday was the first of our official tutor sessions. Joey, Suzi, Brad, Angela, Tracy and I struggled with the concepts Dr. Higgs had laid out for us. He was on hand for most of it. I ended up copying the more theoretical than applied knowledge from his head directly into the others, and that surprisingly really helped get the ball rolling.

I took two girls home Tuesday to clean, and on Wednesday, Joey went with me to help with another suck and fuck.

As we got started, Joey thought to me, <You know, I wouldn’t mind if we didn’t cleanse her this time. Maybe keep her around for a couple of weeks?>

<There are two more fuck and sucks coming up. I’ll spread them out so we can do one each week.>

<But... >

<Just trust me, okay? You won’t go without.>

Thursday after practice instead of girls, Joey and Brad came home with me to try out the go-karts. We took turns racing around in the two we had working until it got dark and then ate a late dinner. We got the okay for them to spend the night and then worked in the garage getting the third that wasn’t running right going and finishing another. I had bought six kits, and two were still in their boxes needing assembling. My mom made us quit around 9:30 and insisted we all slept in our separate rooms. But Brad joined me and Joey in my shower for some innocent shower fun after we promised we wouldn’t tease Brad with any gay playacting.

We had another tutor session on Friday. That went a lot better. The twelve students we were using were good students to begin with, but that was so they could help tutor others while the rest of us worked on the drawings.

Even though my knee was fine by Friday, I wasn’t allowed to play in the game. I still suited up and sat on the bench with the rest of the JV team and was startled when I realized I yearned to go out on the field and do my thing. I complained to Joey and Brad how they had corrupted me, which they thought was great.

We won 21 to 20. Varsity also won, 28 to 26. Those extra points can really make a difference.

Joey and I made love to Suzi Friday night in the limo in between the JV and varsity games. We physically took turns rather than doing it together, but like on Monday night, Joey and I took turns riding along either in each other or Suzi. Doing that was now how we kept the magic in our threesome. We had already found double penetration to be a poor substitute for one of us just riding along in another’s body during our love sessions. We even planned on letting Suzi ride along with us when we fucked the twins (which didn’t work when the twins did their empathic power fuck as I would completely lose all the telepathic links.)

After the game, I copied more experience from the opposing team, this time copying offensive knowledge into both Brad and Joey to see what kind of difference that made. We found it made a big difference at Saturday morning’s practice. Gaining the experience of a quarterback and middle linebacker gave them a boost to their ability to read the offensive and defensive play. I ended up giving all three of us another headache copying the knowledge from our own varsity offensive players after practice, buying them all lunch at Steak n Shake in exchange for them agreeing to share their knowledge. Like the previous weekend with the four opposing team players, while they thought sharing meant doing it verbally, that was enough consent for the knowledge copy to work.

We learned sleeping was the best way to get rid of the headaches, so Joey and Brad went home with me to take a nap for a couple of hours. I still had mine when we woke up around four, but Joey and Brad were good.

That afternoon, Sandi, Suzi and the twins went with my, Suzi’s and Brad’s moms out to a horse riding school to learn how to ride horses. The parents were planning on going on some kind of three day camping trip that involved some horseback riding in the spring and it was scaring the hell out of me. It sounded too much like a vacation.

When I was ten, my mom and I went with Joey and his parents to Walt Disney World. The two day drive became three days because of car trouble, it rained two days straight while we were there, and on the only day it didn’t rain, I spent over three terrifying hours wandering the park alone before a crew member took notice of me and notified security who was out looking for me. The next day we went to the beach and I got bit by something in the water.

Since then, I had refused to go on another family vacation that involved more than a few hours in the car. But after flying to and from the Crow Academy last spring, I was less resistant to taking short recreational trips by plane. The simple two day trips to Six Flags and Silver Dollar City hadn’t bothered me as I had done them somewhat frequently. But this camping trip was sounding more like a vacation from all the people planning to go.

Joey, Brad and I would have to start taking lessons as well. The Hamilton estate - my home - had stables on the grounds, but they weren’t even stocked with hay or straw. As tempting as it was to get a couple of horses, it would also require someone to take care of them and I was just not interested in hiring more staff just to take care of some animals.

I went back to sleep while Joey and Brad tried out the two go-karts we got running Thursday night. After dinner, I helped them put the other two go-karts together. One of them we couldn’t get running by ten o’clock when the twins and Sandi insisted we call it quits and come in. We goofed around in the north study until the twins decided it was time to fuck. I don’t know what Brad and Sandi did. Joey and I did our equal share of the work and just passed out with the twins when we were done and slept the night.

Seeing how I had slept for four hours Saturday during the day, I awoke around five Sunday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. When I checked on Sandi, I found her in Brad’s bed and it was obvious they had had sex.

I was upset by that. There was no real reason for them to have sex anymore. That was one of the benefits to having taken her freewill from her. Her needs would be secondary to Brad’s. I carefully probed her mind for the details leading up to the sex and found it had been Sandi’s initiative after seeing Brad’s frustration from watching us with the twins.

Brad simply couldn’t say no to her when she made up her mind. And this wasn’t the first time they had done that either. I didn’t know what to do about it. I decided I’d talk to Suzi and my mom separately to see what they thought.

The twins woke up around six. You could set your clock by their internal alarm clock. Six AM no matter what time they went to bed, they woke up. Sometimes you could tempt them to go back to sleep, but with Joey and I, we usually had to let them have their morning suck before that.