Chapter 2

So, because I already told you I was sitting on a plane, you know how the conversation went the next morning. It was explained to me that my mother – who had given up her academic aspirations to parent us – had been over the moon with the letter announcing her scholarship, until her eldest child crapped all over everything.

There was a family meeting, a heart-felt apology and I resigned myself to living in a thatched hut staring out at the rain all summer long.

During the long flight (in coach – it wasn't THAT much of a scholarship), I did my best to try to sleep. Now that I was just over six feet however, there didn't seem to be any way to get comfortable, so I just tossed and turned in my seat for hours.

I was left with a lot of time to think about what might be – maybe this wouldn't be so bad, I thought. Maybe the English girls would be less, well, restrictive in their thoughts on sex. After all, I had a chance to remake myself, at least for the summer, into whatever kind of boy I wanted. No one in England knew me as "husky Ian, the band geek." My shoulders and arms were downright muscular, I had the beginnings of a six-pack on my stomach (instead of a pony keg), and physically anyway, I'd never felt better.

This might be pretty good, I thought to myself. Maybe there will be a neighbor, with some really cool accent who will think that my American – no, my CALIFORNIAN accent is the neatest thing they've ever heard and they'll just flop over legs apart in the nearest hayloft to relieve me of my hated virginity.

As I looked out at the lightening sky, I felt my cock harden as I thought about this mystery girl, who in my daydream looked remarkably like my sister Ariel, unbuttoning her top to reveal two, magnificent, firm, braless breasts. I would bury my nose between them as she ran her hands down my naked chest (where did my shirt go?) and fumble with the belt on my jeans. In my daydream, my cock seemed a lot bigger than it's 5 ½ erect inches (yes, guys measure their johnsons – all of us – don't believe anyone that says they haven't). In my dream, her buttoned top became a buttoned dress and not only was she without a brassiere, she had no panties on either. Her blonde hair was spread around her head as she grabbed my massive erection and rubbed the head of my cock against her soft, wet pussy lips.

In my seat, I adjusted myself so that my hard-on found room to stretch out and as I did so, saw Melinda (who had been asleep in the seat next to me) staring right at my crotch, where my erection was painfully obvious.

"Gross. Stop playing with yourself, you pervert," she said – in a tone low enough that the whole plane didn't hear, thankfully.

I gave her my standard reply. "Shut up, twerp," I said, pulled the blanket up to cover myself and looked back out the window as my cheeks burned. The mystery English girl in my head had disappeared. Just the beginning of a summer with no privacy, I thought, I'll probably simply explode in a tidal wave of sperm about the middle of August.

By the time we cleared customs at Heathrow and hauled our mountain of bags to the curb, it was probably nine in the morning. Then, after wrestling the bags on and off the rental car shuttle bus, we loaded them one more time into the strange looking minivan that my father had rented for the summer.

After much consultation with maps and two conversations with the very polite older English lady at the counter, we set off northwest on the M40, then on increasingly smaller "A", the "B" roads that led to our cottage in the Cotswolds town of, I kid you not, Upper Oddington.

I had to admit, I wasn't expecting it to be so green and beautiful. I'm not sure why I was surprised, maybe because I'd lived in parched Southern California all my life, but I was blown away by the rolling green hills dotted with sheep and cows, pretty little villages made of honey-colored stone. I remember thinking that this might not be so bad after all.

Finally, we arrived in the gravel courtyard of what looked like a farm. It was just about two in the afternoon by this point and we were all completely exhausted. As we climbed out of the car, a young, tanned farmer kind of guy, complete with rubber boots, came around the side of one of the buildings, smiling and holding out his hand to my Dad.