Chapter 1: Mark and Nick

In the summer of 1987, I was nearly 18 and heading into my final year of high school. I grew up in a small town in northern British Columbia, and it was a rough place. People have this quaint idea of Canada, but the northern backwaters have a lot in common with the deep south.

In the 80’s the local economy supported a modern middle class, so my elementary and high school experience was pretty normal.

My best friend was Nick, and we had been friends from the time I moved to this particular city in the sixth grade. He started talking to me on my first day as the new kid, and we hit it off immediately.

Throughout the rest of elementary school and high school, we did all the usual things teenagers get up to-- we smoked pot, snuck booze, tried to get with girls, rode our bikes half way across town, all that stuff.

Nick was slim, but he had genetics we’re all jealous of: bronze skin all year round, a perpetual six pack, and single digit body fat no matter what he ate or drank.

I am quite tall, and I grew quickly so I was nearly six and half feet by this time. Nick was also tall, relatively, if I had to guess he was six foot even.

He was just a normal looking guy in many ways. His facial features were soft, not stark at all. His eyes were deep, deep brown, his hair a sandy mix of blonde and brunette. He kept it short on the sides with the top in disarray most of the time. He had very full lips, and I was envious of his nice straight teeth. He had a great smile.

But despite being a normal guy who really didn’t stand out, he had that special quality. The sum of his hotness was greater than the whole of his average parts. He just had it.

Unfortunately, he was completely unaware of this fact. At the time, and probably to this day, the ratio of boys to girls in the Canadian north is probably two or three boys to one girl. And boys, especially latently homophobic boys in Canada’s north, are not going to tell each other they look good. Our relative attractiveness was something never discussed so we went through life unaware.

I was just a skinny, lanky kid that was tall for my age. And, I was pretty pale. Even though I had hardly any body fat, I was still not nearly as ripped as Nick.

That summer, we started hanging around with a guy named Mark who lived a few blocks away. Mark was actually a year older than us but had been held back a year in school and was going to be in the same grade as us the next year.

Mark was also a typical skinny guy, but he was definitely a little softer than Nick or me. Still tight, but just with a small layer of body fat all over.

Mark was the shortest of the three of us, probably five foot nine or ten. He came from a long line of loggers and bush workers. His features were more stark and rugged. He had a classic jawline and strong chin that set the frame for his whole face.

His eyes were also a deep, dark brown. His hair was a dark chestnut color. He kept it short on the sides, and it had a natural wave that crested over his brow. He had a definite masculine aura about him, and his personality was more assertive than mine or Nick’s.

Mark had a twin brother who had been sent to juvenile detention for selling drugs. Both his parents worked, so he essentially had the house to himself all day. And, best of all, his house was the only house in the entire subdivision that had an inground heated pool.

Beside the pool was a small shed that did double duty as a change room and pump room. The walls of the change room were unfinished drywall, and there was an old carpet remnant on the ground that wasn’t attached to anything. There were hooks on the walls and a small shelf with extra towels and swim suit storage.

We knew Mark from school, of course, but it wasn’t until this summer that he invited us over to hang out and swim. Sometimes we’d hang out his basement and listen to records, other times we’d sit around and talk, and inevitably the subject would turn to girls and sex.

One morning the three of us were hanging around in his basement, and Mark showed us a cheap little smut novel that he’d acquired. It was printed on cheap discolored paper with a cardboard cover and stapled pages.

It was terribly written, just porn in prose form. However, it had heterosexual sex, lesbian sex, gay sex, and group sex in it. There were also very graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex.

Nick read it first and gave it to me. It was a short read, and it really didn’t do anything for me. The writing was terrible, just some very uninspired graphic descriptions of sex held together loosely by a weak plot.

The one thing I did find interesting was the matter-of-fact approach to the lesbian and gay sex. The author just covered gay sex like it was normal.

Now, as I said, at this point in history northern British Columbia was still relatively normal and we lived in relatively normal suburbia. But because of the location, and the era, homophobia was as common as oxygen.

I had never really about being straight, gay, or bisexual. I liked girls. A lot. I had no attraction to an overwhelming majority of guys, they did nothing for me. But there were select individuals that set off the sexual thought processes in my brain, if that makes any sense. It’s not like I was actively thinking about having sex with them, but I have this subconsious fuckable/not fuckable filter that I use to parse my interactions with others and a few guys were on the fuckable list whether I was actively aware of it or not.

Mark and Nick absolutely passed the fuckable filter. I left that little bit of information buried in my psyche because there was no way in hell I was ever going to act on it.

However, after reading this terribly written little book, I wondered why the author had chosen to include gay and lesbian sex in a book that was theoretically supposed to get straight guys horny.

“Good book, right?” Mark asked once I was finished.

“Uh, it was okay,” I replied. “The writing was so bad.”

“It’s not supposed to be literature,” said Nick. “You’re supposed to imagine yourself in those scenes.”

Nick’s insight was illuminating. I mean, it’s obvious that you have to use your imagination while reading. But I had imagined abstract characters taking part in those scenes. I hadn’t actually imagined myself.

But I thought back to the gay sex scene. These two had read the same thing I had, right? And, not only had they not expressed any disgust at reading about gay sex, Mark thought it was “good”.

“The sex was hot,” said Nick, snapping me back to reality. “Especially the lesbians. I would love to have a threesome with two girls.”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t,” I laughed.

“What about a girl and another guy?” asked Mark.

I thought about it for a second. I briefly considered whether it was wise to tell the truth. I didn’t want Nick or Mark to think I was weird. But we had just all read the same book and were talking about it openly. I decided to go for it.

“Sure,” I said. “When I start fucking, I really want to be adventurous.”

“Adventurous?” they laughed.

“Fuck off,” I replied. “You only live once, I want to do it all.”

Nick nodded.

“Yeah, me too.”

On nice days, Mark invited us over to swim. The three of us would always get changed in the change room. Nick and I were there so often we kept our swim trunks on the old shelf, so it made sense that we would get changed there.

I never stopped to wonder why Mark would get changed with us since his house and all his clothes were literally right there. In hindsight it’s obvious, of course.

Nick and I would just quickly change into our swim trunks. Mark would take his time getting changed, often getting naked and wandering around the change room before finally putting on his swim trunks.

I was a very horny teenager. I don’t know if I was more or less horny than other guys, but I was in the masturbating-multiple-times-per-day club. But no matter how much I jerked off, I was still horny. My hormones fueled the raging furnace of my young body, keeping me up at night with yearning dry sweats.

So, It didn’t take much to turn me on, and being with other naked people - particularly guys on my ‘fuckable’ list - definitely got me going.

Now that I had read that awfully written little book and had the benefit of Nick’s insight, I was suddenly looking at them both in a sexual context. So, I took advantage of every opportunity to steal glances at their naked bodies.

While I tried to keep things stealthy, Mark was a lot more forward. On one afternoon he caught Nick and I mid-change, and got up close to check out our cocks.

“Hey, weird,” he said, “all three of us are circumcised!”

While it’s not important to any of these stories, I wasn’t circumcised until I was fifteen. I had phimosis, which is the inability to retract the foreskin, so it had to go. To me it was a medical thing and I hadn’t really considered the sexual connotations.

Without thinking, I looked at Mark’s cock, then Nick’s cock.

“Ah,” I said, “I wasn’t always. I had it done a few years ago.”

They both looked at me in surprise.

“I couldn’t retract my foreskin. I had to have surgery.”

They looked at each other with a grimace.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I laughed. “I do have some scars though.”

“Let’s see,” said Mark.

Mark and Nick watched intently as I grabbed my cock and showed them the scars on the underside of my shaft. As they leaned in I felt the first inevitable signs of an erection beginning. I panicked a bit as I watched it grow slightly, formerly wrinkled skin subtly stretching out.

“I couldn’t help it, I got hardons while I had stitches.”

“Oh, that’s not bad,” said Nick.

“Do you guys have scars?” I asked, trying to divert their attention from my growing erection.

Mark stood upright, then grabbed his cock and turned it over in his hand.

“Yeah, just a little one.”

Mark pointed to a little white scar on the line that marked where his foreskin had once been. I bent over to look. This was the first time I had seen any cock other than my own up close and a little rush of excitement washed over me. Mark’s cock had started out slack and flaccid, but his shaft was now fuller and straighter.

I was surprised by the difference in color between the skin on his shaft and his head. Mark let go of his cock and it flopped down, his shaft straight and semi-rigid, his head swollen and defined. I realized that I had been staring at it too long and bolted upright. I shot a quick look to gauge his reaction, but he was looking at Nick.

Nick hunched over, leaning down to check out his own cock. He rolled his flaccid shaft over in his hand and took a closer look.

“Yeah, I never really looked but I guess I do.”

Mark and I stepped over and leaned in.

“Let’s see,” said Mark.

Nick turned his cock slightly and pointed to a small, slightly raised scar on the underside of his shaft.

“Just that,” he said, then looked up and noticed we were both leaning in, staring at his cock.

There was little twitch as his cock began to stir as well. His shaft straightened, his stretched with new definition. He quickly stood and dropped it, and it only dropped about two-thirds of the way down, bobbing slightly.

As I stood, I was suddenly very aware that my cock was in the same state, and growing. I panicked, quickly pulling on my trunks and heading out the door for the pool.

We swam, and had fun, but I couldn’t stop thinking about their cocks, how nice they were, how hot it was that they were getting hard.

On one particularly nice morning a few days later, Mark called to invite me over to swim. He told me to pick up Nick at his house, so I made my way over there and we walked the few blocks together.

When we arrived at Mark’s house he met us at the fence that separated the carport from the backyard, excitedly telling us he had something cool.

Inside in the living room, Mark disappeared briefly and reappeared holding a thick, shiny magazine. With a huge amount of ceremony, he flipped the cover around to show us that he had acquired a Penthouse magazine.

You have to understand that back in the day, we didn’t have the internet. That meant we didn’t have ready access to pornography of any type. No, to us, finding porn was like striking gold.

But here was pornopraphy. Mark excitedly flipped open the magazine.

There, on those glossy, shiny pages was the holy grail that we, as horny teenage boys revered: girl on girl action.

“Bring it over here,” Nick said breathlessly. “Let’s see.”

Mark closed it and stuffed it under his arm.

“Let’s check it out in the change room.”.

I didn’t pause to wonder why Mark wanted to look at the magazine in the change room. It just made sense to my raging hormones that checking out naked girls was something best done in a small, dimly lit room.

Minutes later the three of us sat in a circle in the change room, huddled around the magazine, drinking in the glorious pornography.

I wore loose shorts and was fully, ragingly erect. I was thankful for the extra erection-concealing space because I was helpless to control it. I looked over at Nick and he was sitting at an awkward angle.

Mark had on a pair of corduroy pants, and when I looked over at him I noticed he had popped the button on the front. And when I looked down, the head of his swollen cock was fully sticking out of the top of his underwear.

I cast a quick glance over to Nick, his focus still on the magazine. A quick look down at his crotch revealed the unmistakable outline of his stiff cock under the fabric. I looked quickly back at Mark’s pants to be sure and, yeah, there was no question what I was looking at.