As They Say - (Revised) - 39. Entry 51

21st June 1991:

I can't help but feel guilty for stealing the porn magazine from the shop yesterday. I could have asked Carl if I could borrow his one.

You know what, when I think of it, I don't think he'd relent.

I hear these grades of collectables are incredibly valuable among people my age. I think Carl would be the type to protect his dirty little secret at all costs.

So that is a no go.

In other news, it was a warm day today. It has been the warmest day I've ever experienced; it must've been 28° at least or could have been more. It was one of those days where it was so incredibly hot, you are naturally irritable because of it. With nothing else to do, I decided to ask all the boys to go swimming. I rounded up Ross and made my way to every one of the lads’ houses. Everyone thought it was a genius idea, though I secretly hoped that nothing absurd would transpire like it did the last time, and thankfully it didn't.

I decided to go to the castle. After all, it has become our hangout spot. I'm not exactly sure what has happened with the site down by the recreational park, but I think this place is home now. As I sat down my gym bag, I drew in a breath of fresh air and appreciated the sun beaming down on the back of my neck. I was planning to stay for as long as possible, and I waited as long as possible. The lads sheepishly undressed down to their shorts, fully aware of what had happened the last time we were here. Nobody spoke a word about what had happened. And I was surprised to see that Ross wasn't hesitating; he was in an equal proportion of undress.

One thing I came to notice was how incredibly flat his stomach is; I mean, it's not horrible. It's cute, actually. Ross's skin is so smooth and patchy white. By patchy, I don't mean his skin to be brown or white like a dog; I mean, his complexion is surprisingly white. It's hard to explain, but it seemed apparent that Ross wasn't accustomed to sunbathing at first glance. When I glanced around at the rest of the boys, it is evident that they were sunbathing every chance they got. Yeah, occasionally I sunbathe, but I don't think Ross or I would be on the same level as Eli about the case. But compared to me, Ross is a ghostly pale. I could see the creeper lines of his blue veins beneath his skin. They all encircled his outie belly button and ran up to his armpits.

If I was just passing by and it was a typical boy, I don't think I would've had any particular reaction to the sight, but something about seeing Ross like that excited me more today. It's not that he is thin or abnormally white under his clothes; it seems to be the predicament of actually seeing him without a shirt on. It's like I've been dreaming; he looks perfect to me regardless of whether he has a shirt on or not. Of course, the sight of actually seeing him without a shirt on was too much for me to bear, and well, I got horny. I quickly scrambled down towards the water before anyone had a chance to notice that I was boning up. Imagine if I got caught?

I need to be more careful.

Why do these erections happen at the most awkward times? And in public places of all things. Can't they wait until I come home or when I’m in the toilet, or you know, jerking off to happen? No, they think it's a goddamn good time to pop one when I'm in the middle of church or the supermarket or freaking school.

But yeah, Ross was just different. I'm not sure how I should phrase it, but just looking at him gave me the rattles. It was like a seismic series of tremors that ran through my body; only it didn't show on the outside. No, it was on the inside. The sight of him was enticing, intoxicating even.

It was like he was a God; his body is gorgeous.

I tried making myself look as goofy as possible when I dove into the water. I ran down and dove into it as fast and as efficiently as possible. When I resurfaced, everyone else was ambling on down and entering the water. It was fun. You could say none of the boys seemed to have a chance against me; I am a professional dunker at that. Everyone who came near me, I wrestled until I had them underneath the water. Whenever someone would latch onto me to try and drag me under, I always knocked them off. I was showing off more than I was doing any work. It was like one of those moments where you feel you're moving more than you are, but you're not making any progress.

Eventually, we grew tired; Eli was the first to crawl out of the water this morning, saying that he was hungry. Carl said that he had to help his father work around the farm, leaving just me, Thomas, and Ross to our own devices. It felt a little awkward being left with Thomas considering, well... you know, Thomas could be spying on me. We had no Conor today; he was somewhere else, I guess.

So, that just left the three of us to entertain ourselves. We decided to play some form of hide 'n' seek. I don't remember all that much of it, but I do recall cautiously watching my footing as I navigated between the trees and the lakefront. All I could come to appreciate was that when I was on the lawn in front of the castle, there were no prickly pines to concern myself with.

Eventually, the enjoyment of roaming the land wore off because Thomas kept finding Ross and me. However, now that I think of it, Thomas found me four of the six times we played the game. I'm not sure what that means, but it appears to be a little creepy now when I think about it. It's even more horrifying when I write it down.

After a while, we crawled back into the water, did a couple swims about, and then decided to call it a day. Ross went on ahead of me and started getting dried and dressed, while I stayed in the water with Thomas for a couple of extra minutes. When I was about to exit the water, he latched onto my wrist and pulled me back. I didn't like it at all, but Thomas wasn't rough or gentle. Thomas was... just I don't know… needy. He asked— nervously for some weird reason— if I wanted to come over to his house tomorrow, and you know what I told him?

Ugh… Yes.

I couldn't even say no; I wasn't busy at all, and the way he said it seemed like it meant a lot to him that I turn up. But yeah, I quickly skedaddled after that, got dressed, and left for Ross.

I found out today that Ross likes fish and chips; the reason I know this is because I went to the chipper: we got a bag of chips with some fish on the side, which he called kippers, and well, we gobbled it all up. Yeah, that's about it for today.

Night,

Adam