When I was a kid, fifteen as I recall — and that was long enough ago that I don't care to dwell on it — my dad, my mom, my cousin and I lived for three years on a small island off the northern coast of Maine. My dad was a botanist who worked for the state and he'd been assigned to catalogue as much of the flora of the islands as he could. Three years was all that had been funded for. So we moved to this little island for no other reason than it had an available house on state-owned property with room for my dad to set up a small lab in the basement. It wasn't really much of a house, as I recall but it was OK. I suspect the main reason we took up residence there was that the price was right. We didn't have to pay any rent.

My cousin, Jason and I shared one of the two bedrooms in the clapboard Cape Cod style house. He became part of our family when his own parents, Dad's brother and sister-in-law died. At least they were presumed dead when their fishing boat went out one day and never came back. No trace was ever found of them or their boat. After the initial period of getting used to each other, Jason and I became more like brothers than cousins. He was a week older than me so I guess that made him the elder son. Up until then, I was an only child.

It was originally planned that Jason and I would stay with my Mom's sister on the mainland during the school year but it turned out that wouldn't be necessary because we found a way for us to be home-schooled on the island and that resulted in an educational experience we could have never imagined in our wildest dreams. More about that later.

The island wasn't all that big; probably four or five square miles in all and there were only two other residents living on the other side. All Dad could tell us is that they were a woman and her son and he was supposed to be odd in some way. Dad didn't know if that meant he was learning disable, weird-looking or what — just odd. The woman piloted her boat sixteen miles to the mainland every week or so to collect her mail and do whatever shopping was necessary.

Except for her two-acre plot of land facing the open ocean, the entire island was state-owned and consisted of nothing but forest and rocky coastline. That may sound boring to today's young people who are almost without exception, tied together electronically and spoiled for choice of things to keep themselves entertained, but back then, for two guys in their early teens, it meant unlimited opportunities for exploration and fun. If you reflect back on your own childhood, I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of fantasies we created; hidden treasures, fantastical creatures, that kind of thing. Maybe we were a bit old for that kind of stuff but we were on that cusp between childhood and adulthood and imagination hadn't yet been squashed out of us by life's cold realities. On top of that, Dad considered television the bane of society, the biggest conversation killer ever invented so I guess it goes without saying Jason and I didn't spend our afternoons sitting in front of one.

I recall one of my personal favorite fantasies was that somewhere in the dense forest, there was a beautiful wood nymph just waiting for me to show up and ravage her body. I may have still been part child but I was toting around a full compliment of testosterone. To my discomfort and sometimes embarrassment, I seemed to be sporting a boner about half my waking hours. My only consolation was that Jason was plagued with the same problem. Being almost constant companions and sharing a room made relief from our condition inconvenient but we had an unspoken agreement to not ask why when one or the other of us would disappeared for a few minutes two or three times a day.

Dad was often gone for days at a time, island hopping in his state-owned boat to explore for new species of flora. During periods of good weather, he probably spent only two or three nights a week at home. Mom managed to stay busy around the house doing what moms do and left Jason and me pretty much to our own devices. She didn't seem to mind what we did as long as we didn't suffer grievous injury and we made it home in time for supper.

Of course, the mystery of the odd kid on the other side of the island was the first thing we set out to solve. It turned out to not be so easy; we spent hours peering through the trees from all sides of their house and never caught so much as a glimpse of anyone but the woman when she was working in her garden or hanging out the washing. It never once occurred to us to simply walk up and introduce ourselves. Where's the adventure in that? We didn't get close enough for a really good look at her but from what I could see, I guessed her to be about Mom's age, mid to late thirties, and kind of pretty in a plain sort of way. If Dad hadn't told us she had a son, we never would have suspected that anyone else lived in her house. After two days of squatting in the underbrush and learning nothing the least bit interesting, Jason and I got bored and gave up our surveillance. But the teenage mind is nothing if not fertile so we concluded the kid was either a basket case monstrosity or howling insane and chained to the wall in the root cellar.

We were soon totally absorbed in another project; building a tree house. There was an old storage shed behind our house that was on the verge of collapse and it wasn't all that hard to convince Dad to let us take it apart and use the lumber to build our tree house. We picked a huge old chestnut on the highest point on the island that we figured would give us a great view of everything. If I do say so myself, I think we did a pretty credible job. It was a lot of hard work toting the scrap lumber up the hill to our chosen tree but we persisted and within a week, we'd built a fairly solid, totally enclosed eight by eight foot house with window openings on three sides and a trap door in one corner of the floor. Essentially, what we really did was disassemble the shed and put it back together it in the tree. It was about fifteen feet above the ground and had a rope ladder for access.

For the first couple of days of occupancy, we just hung out but that gets old very quickly so we once again took up surveillance of the woman's house situated down the hill and clearly visible from our perch. I had a rather low-power telescope that I'd gotten for my tenth birthday. We dug it out of the back of my closet and hauled it to the tree house and set it up on its tripod. It may have been low-power as far as studying the stars but it was perfect for spying on people. We could see nearly all of the woman's property and even into two windows in the back of her house. One of the windows was in her kitchen and the other seemed to be in a bedroom. All we could see in the bedroom was a lamp and a typewriter (these were pre-computer days) sitting on a desk in front of the window and the foot of a bed.

Off and on for three days we watched the place with nothing to show for our efforts but achy backs from bending over to peer through the eyepiece. I suppose in the backs of our minds we were hoping she'd stand in front of the window and do a strip tease but we never saw anything more exciting than her cooking something or washing dishes. Our interest was flagging again and we were about to give it up as a lost cause when one day I was moving the view from the bedroom window to the kitchen and saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I swung the scope around toward the side of the house and my breath caught. There he was, a kid who looked to be about our age standing at the corner of the house. He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and watched me watching him!

"Oh shit!" I said, backing away from the window. "We've been busted!"

Laying his comic book down, Jason stepped over and leaned out the window to see. I was about to grab his arm and pull him back when he waved at the guy. I stood behind him and looked over his shoulder. The kid waved back and turned to move around his house and out of sight.

The house was about a hundred yards away so I didn't get a good look at him. Jason asked, "You saw him through the scope; did he look weird or anything?"

"Um, not that I could tell but I didn't spend a lot time looking either."

"Well, he waved back," Jason observed, "so you can't say he's unfriendly. Maybe we should go down and talk to him."

"Are you kidding? Jason, he just caught us spying on his house and he's probably telling his mom right this minute! She's probably going to be talking to our mom and I don't see that going well, do you?"

"Your mom, not mine, Levi. And anyhow, what's the big deal? So she knows we looked at her house."

"Yeah, well suppose she takes it personally. After all, we were being peeping toms looking in their windows and stuff."

We nearly jumped out of our skins when "HEY!" was shouted from below. I leaned out the window and looked down. There was the woman standing right underneath us with her hand shading her eyes looking up at me.

She yelled again, "Can I talk to you guys for a minute?"

I was having visions of being grounded for the rest of the summer but Jason just leaned out the window and said, "Sure! We'll be right down."

"Shit, Jason!" I whispered, "Are you nuts? We're probably in it up to our ears."

"Grow up, Levi! She's not carrying a gun or a baseball bat is she? Besides, take a look around and tell me where you think we're going to run away to." He opened the trap door and started down the ladder. I followed reluctantly, steeling myself for the reaming-out we were probably about to get for being such creeps.

When we got to the bottom, we stood in front of a rather pretty woman who was smiling at us. I hoped that was a good sign. She stuck out her hand and said, "Hi! I'm Laura Denney."

Jason did the talking as he shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Denney. I'm Jason Franks and this is my cousin, Levi."

"Nice to meet you too. I've been meaning to come over and introduce myself to you and your folks. I saw you guys checking us out and figured it was as good a time as any to meet up."

I felt myself blushing with shame as I said, "Um, uh, we're sorry for that, Mrs. Denney. I guess it was kind of rude."

"Don't sweat it Levi. People are always curious about people they don't know. If I'd felt offended, I'd have gone straight to your parents. No, the reason I wanted to talk to you is that my son, Kenny wanted to know if he could come up and share your cool tree house. He gets really bored not having any people around his own age."

I couldn't believe how cool the lady was. Most grownups would have wanted our heads on a stick for what we did but she just laughed it off.

"Uh, sure, I don't see why not," Jason said, taking it upon himself to speak for both of us. "How old is Kenny?"

"He just turned sixteen. I need to explain some things about him, though. Kenny is a deaf mute. He's not retarded or anything like that; in fact, he's quite the opposite. His IQ is somewhere in the 160's. He and I talk using sign but I don't suppose either of you can do that, can you?"

We both shook our heads.

"Well, he could carry a pad and pen to communicate with you. I know it might be a little uncomfortable for you at first but I'd sure appreciate it if you'd make the effort."

I jumped in, deciding to speak for myself for a change. "We can work it out, Mrs. Denney. Send him on up. Uh, I was wondering why we hadn't seen him around before today."

"Well, I guess it's because you haven't been looking at the right times. He helps me in the garden sometimes and he does a lot of chores around the house. Of course, he spends most of his time in his room writing; that's what he likes to do best other than read books. He's actually written some pretty good stories. He'd probably let you read some of them if you asked." She had kind of a funny look on her face when she said that.

"Cool! I'd like that," Jason said.

She turned to leave but then stopped and looked back. "Um, is your mom expecting you home for lunch?"

"No, she never knows when we'll show up so she asks us to make our own."

"Good. Why don't you come on down to the house and I'll fix us up something while you get acquainted with Kenny."

Jason and I looked at each other and nodded our agreement. "Sure, thanks Mrs. Denney."

"I'd rather you called me Laura."

"Laura," we both said at the same time and followed her down the hill.

We entered her kitchen through the back door and found Kenny there waiting for us with a smile on his face. There was nothing weird-looking about him at all. In fact, he had the kind of looks girls would probably drool over as he walked down the school hallway. He was taller than either of us and seemed to be pretty well built as well. His jet-black hair and pale blue eyes gave him a kind of movie star look.

Using sign and speaking at the same time, Laura introduced us and said that if we spoke slowly and naturally, he could read lips well enough to follow conversations. She made a point of explaining that we had to look directly at him when we spoke and not exaggerate our mouth movements because that made it harder for him to see what we were saying and could be mistaken for anger. He insisted on shaking hands and indicated we should sit at the kitchen table.

"OK, guys, how about some sloppy Joes for lunch?" Laura asked, turning Kenny's face toward hers.

We all voted in favor.

As she busied herself at the stove, Kenny, Jason and I got busy with all the requisite nosy questions about each other's lives. He hadn't been to a public school since second grade because there'd been some bad experiences with some idiot of a teacher who didn't know shit about working with special-needs kids. Laura was a teacher anyhow so she just decided to home-school him. He'd already completed all the necessary work for his high school diploma and one had been issued by the county school system after he blew them away with his test scores. He and his mom were in the process of looking around for a university that could accommodate his needs. I was so jealous because Jason and I had two more years of high school to go. I figured the woman had to be amazingly bright herself to educate a kid all the way through high school. She'd have to be up every subject.

Laura had quit her regular teaching position and moved to the island with her son when he was nine. Her husband had been a navy pilot flying A-6's in Viet Nam when he got shot down near Hanoi. He was MIA and presumed dead. They were living off his navy pension and money left to her by her late father. Apparently, they didn't have to worry too much about financial issues.

Kenny was amazing at reading lips. We almost never had to repeat what we said or resort to writing on the pad he used to ask us questions. A couple of times, Laura stepped in laughing at me for raising my voice when I spoke. "He's completely deaf, Levi. Shouting isn't going to make him hear you any better, OK? Just speak normally, you'll get used to it."

As she slid plates with two sloppy Joes each in front of us and set a large bag of chips in the middle of the table, I turned to Kenny and asked, "Your mom says you like to write stories. Do you think we could read some of them?"

His reaction was kind of strange. He looked a little concerned and turned to his mom and began signing. She signed right back with a little grin on her face and that seemed to satisfy whatever concern he had. He scribbled something on his pad and passed it to me. It said, 'Sure, if you want. I'll look for some I think you might like."

Over lunch, I explained to Kenny and his mom how we wound up living on the island and how Jason had come to be a part of the family. Laura said she'd make it a point to pay a visit to our folks within the next few days and introduce herself. She thought it would be nice if the two families could get together for dinner soon, maybe have a bar-B-Q.

After lunch, Kenny showed us his room. It turned out to be the one we could see from the tree house. What we couldn't see was that the wall with the window was solid bookshelves. There were literally hundreds of books from floor to ceiling.

I tapped his shoulder to get his attention and asked, "Jeez, Kenny, have you read all of these?"

He took his little pad out of his shirt pocket and wrote, 'Of course. What good are books you don't read?'

Jason laughed, "I'll bet between the two of us we haven't read fifty books in our whole lives." He read a few titles and turned to Kenny, "I don't see any novels here. It looks like they're mostly about science."

Again, he wrote on his pad, 'I have a lot more. These are just the ones I use for reference. I have a closet full of other kinds of literature. Can we go up to your tree house now?'

"Sure, let's go."

Kenny climbed up behind us but stopped just below the floor, looking around and pushing on the frame and floorboards. He did the same thing inside, pushing on the walls and checking out the roof. After he'd done a thorough inspection, he took out his pad and wrote, 'Would you mind if I made a couple of suggestions?'

I guess I felt just a little irritation that Kenny thought our hard work needed work but I smiled and shook my head.

He did a couple of quick sketches of the interior and then motioned for us to follow him. We descended to the ground where he did a few more rough sketches of the outside. We followed him down the hill to his house and into his bedroom. There he took out some typing paper and a ruler and started drafting an incredibly precise drawing of the tree house. Then he began adding some bracing and reinforcements to the underside. On the interior view, he drew some shutters for the windows and some triangular braces for all the corners. The guy obviously knew what he was doing.

Jason got his attention and said, "This is really nice, Kenny but we don't have the materials to add all these changes."

He crooked his finger and we followed him outside to a large shed on the other side of the garden. Inside were stacks of various sized cuts of lumber, 2X4s, 2X6s, sheets of plywood and so on. He grabbed his drawings and a steel tape measure and we followed him back up to the tree house where he measured pretty much everything. The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon cutting pieces and carrying them up the hill. By late afternoon, our tree house could have supported the weight of a rhino. We even roofed it with some leftover tarpaper and sealed it with roofing tar. Bring on the rain!

We stood at the bottom looking at our refurbished creation with pride. Kenny took out his pad and wrote, 'Tomorrow, we can make the shutters and finish it off, if you want.'

My earlier irritation and envy had been replaced with awe. Jason and I both had big grins on our faces as we shook our heads in agreement. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Thanks a lot for your help, Kenny. We'll see you tomorrow, OK?"

He smiled, nodded and headed down the hill to his house as we turned for home.

The next day, after double and triple checking the measurements, the three of us spent most of the day in his shed making slatted shutters designed to allow the air to circulate and keep out the rain. We finished the place off with a coat of dark green paint that practically made it invisible if you weren't looking directly at it. I didn't doubt the place would keep us comfortably dry in the worst storms.

Laura came up the hill as we stood admiring our work and loaded the compliments on all of us. "Tell you what," she said, "If you're looking for contributions, I've got a bunch of old decorator pillows and an oil lantern you can have. Probably a lot more comfortable than sitting on the hard floor and the lantern will provide enough light to read or play cards or whatever. Interested?"

"You bet! Can we get them now?"

"Follow me, men!"

Dad was home that night so we told him and Mom about Laura and Kenny and asked if they'd like to go with us to meet them and see our tree house the next morning. We agreed it was best to leave out the part about being caught spying on their house.

Dad jumped at it. "Yeah, we'd love to! I'm ready for a day off and we've been meaning to go over and meet her since we moved here. Thanks for taking the lead on that, guys."

"Are they nice people, Levi?" Mom asked. "I really hope they're nice people."

"You're going to really like them, Mom." We filled them in on everything we knew about Kenny and his mom.

So the next day the families were officially introduced. On the way over the hill, Dad stopped and voiced his approval of the tree house. He even climbed up and checked out the inside. "You guys did a great job on this place. I don't think I could have done better myself. I guess meeting up with your new friend was a real stroke of luck, wasn't it? I see your telescope is up there, Levi. What are you using it for? You don't have much of a view of the sky from there."

Damn! I'd forgotten all about it. "Oh, you know, watching ships and boats out on the ocean; that kind of stuff."

"Right!" There was a note of suspicion in his voice but he let the subject drop.

Laura welcomed everyone and insisted we stay for lunch. She and Mom got busy making sandwiches and ice tea. The grown-ups visited for a while afterwards while we guys retired to Kenny's room.

As soon as he closed the door, he pulled out his pad and wrote, 'Are you guys interested in reading some good sex stories?"

Well, what kid our age isn't! Remember, Internet porn hadn't been invented yet. Hell, the Internet hadn't been invented. Jason and I just grinned at each other and nodded our heads enthusiastically.

'OK, but not right now. I'll pack up a few and we can take them up to the tree house after your folks leave.'

With that promise in front of us, we thought Mom and Dad would never stop talking and go home. Finally, Mom and Laura promised to get together at least once a week for coffee and gossip, although what they'd find to gossip about on and island inhabited by only six people was beyond me.

So Mom and Dad headed back home and we headed up to the tree house with a bag of typewritten stories along with a few Tijuana bibles Kenny had somehow managed to accumulate. Most kids our age live to get their hands on porn of any quality and Kenny had a locked trunk in his closet filled with everything you could imagine from dirty magazines to Victorian era pornographic novels.

I dropped the trap door shut and tapped Kenny on the shoulder to ask, "Where did you get all this stuff? And how do you keep your mom from finding out about it?"

He shrugged and wrote, 'She knows all about it. She buys the comics for me and I write the stories.'

I guess Jason and I just stood there with out mouths hanging open.

When Kenny saw the disbelief and incredulity on our faces, he sat on one of the pillows and started writing. He filled up two pages before he ripped them out of his pad and handed them to us.

'I'm not going to take the time to explain it all to you right now but I'll tell you this much. Laura — Mom — doesn't believe something as normal and natural as sex should be withheld from kids just because some do-gooder busybodies say it's nasty and you'll wind up burning in hell forever or hair will grow on your palms if you masturbate. First of all, we don't believe in heaven or hell. I'm sorry if you're offended by that but it's how I was raised. Secondly, she doesn't believe that making kids ashamed of normal sexual feelings is healthy. She thinks it causes a lot of problem when they become adults because they wind up with a distorted understanding of what it's all about. Anyhow, Mom will be happy to explain it all to you any time you want to ask. If you're thinking she's a bad parent for thinking that way we can part company now. I'd rather you didn't say anything to your parents because I doubt they'd understand. Not many people do.'

Jason jumped in with an apology right away. "Oh no, Kenny! I'm sorry. It's just that we've never heard of anything like this before. I don't think it's bad at all; in fact, I think it makes a lot of sense. Are you saying Laura would actually talk to us and teach us about sex?"

'Sure! She'll talk to you about anything.'

"Damn!" I said, "I need to think about this. Uh, could we see some of those stories you wrote?"

Kenny smiled and emptied his bag of goodies on the floor between us. Jason and I each grabbed a story and got settled on our pillows. Kenny picked up a handful of comics. That's when my sex education really began.

I'm a long way from being a literary critic but I have to tell you the guy had an incredible talent. I'd never read a porno story before but it wasn't what I expected. I figured it would be non-stop fucking and sucking but Kenny's stories had actual plots. Every sex scene was in the right place at the right time. It read so smoothly and with such sensitivity that you felt like part of the story; you know, like you do when you're really getting into a good novel. In no time flat, I was tugging at my jeans trying to get my boner into a comfortable position and I could see Kenny and Jason were too. When I put the first story down, all I wanted to do was run to the john and jerk myself off. Instead, I picked up one of the little comics.

I don't know if you're familiar with Tijuana bibles but they're also called "dirty little comics". They're usually eight pages long and show super horny guys getting it on with super stacked women. Of course the guys all have dicks like horses and the women all have really big tits and hairy snatches. They can be pretty funny but it isn't the humor that gets the attention of kids our age.

Kenny watched us rubbing at our stiffies and put his comic down. He wrote something and handed us the note. It said, 'I don't know if you guys have ever done it before but we'd be a lot more comfortable if we all dropped our pants so we could just jerk off.'

I knew that Jason and I had peeked at each other before and sometimes I watched his blanket moving up and down at night when he was doing it but we'd never done anything together. But after that story and the first page of the comic, I knew I needed to get off in the worse way.

I was a little taken aback by Kenny's suggestion and had to ask, "You mean all of us doing it in front of each other?" As if he could have meant it any other way.

Kenny just nodded his head. Jason looked at me a little strangely and said, "Uh, I guess I would if you would because I need it real bad."

As if on cue, the three of us stood and took off our jeans and underwear. We were all sticking straight out. Jason and I were about the same size, maybe six inches but Kenny was something else. I swear his dick was at least eight inches long and so big around I wondered if he could even get his hand around it. It was framed by a dense thatch of black pubic hair. When he sat back down on his pillow and started stroking, I saw that he could get his hand around it — barely!

My first group masturbation session didn't last all that long. Before I had even finished the comic, I blew a load all over my T-shirt. Jason was right behind. Kenny was obviously able to exercise more control because he just kept on stroking as Jason and I watched, totally enthralled and envious of his equipment. Of course, he'd probably already looked at all the comics a hundred times. By the time he grunted and spewed a monstrous stream of cum onto his chest and belly, I was already getting hard again. I would never have admitted to anyone that it was the sight of Kenny stroking that incredible cock that was the cause but I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Jason and I tossed our comics on the pile and grabbed another one. I figured I could make this one last a lot longer. As I stroked a few times and flipped the page, stroked a few more times and flipped another page, Kenny sat there watching us. He was making me feel a little bit self-conscious but not enough to stop. He wrote something on his pad and handed Jason the page. He read it and handed it to me with a funny look on his face. It said, 'Again, I don't know what you guys are used to but jerking off feels a lot better if someone else does it for you. Would you like to try it?'

I looked at Kenny for a moment and said, "I'm pretty sure I'm not queer."

Grinning, he wrote another note and handed it to me. 'I'm not either but sex is sex and it feels a lot better if you share it with someone. I wouldn't be interested in marrying you, Levi.'

I couldn't help but laugh when I read it. My cousin did too. "What do you think, Jason? Do you want to try it?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt anything as long as nobody ever finds out. How do you want to do it?"

I wasn't about to admit it but I really wanted to get my hand around Kenny's dick. "Well, since there's three of us, I guess I could do Kenny and he could do you while you do me. Would that be OK?" I asked with my eyes fixed on Kenny's crotch.

We all scooted closer to each other and formed a triangle, leaning on our elbows with our faces near the other guy's equipment. Jason gave out a grunt followed by a pleased sigh when he felt the strange hand stroking his now rock-hard boner. I guess I felt pretty much the same way when he started jacking mine but I really felt a thrill when I wrapped my hand around Kenny's big hot one. Later that night I would seriously wondered if I really was a homo but at that particular moment I was more sexually excited than I'd ever been. As we were getting into it, I heard Jason let out a shuddering groan and looked up to see that his dick was moving in and out of Kenny's mouth. Damn, he was getting a blowjob!