An hour of tossing and turning was enough. I got up and headed to the kitchen, to the vodka in the freezer. On the way, though, I heard noises. I found Herb -- no, Thommy, I caught myself -- doing crunches in front of the mirrored wall. He had unrolled his sleeping bag and lay on it dressed in just a pair of gym shorts. A light film of sweat made his torso and ridged abdomen shine. His shoulders were broader than I had thought and his thighs more muscular. I had expected that his body would be beautiful. I had not imagined it would be perfect. I must have gasped because he looked up and saw my reflection behind his.

"Oh, Simon, I'm sorry." He really looked upset as he scrambled to his feet. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"You didn't, Thommy. I couldn't sleep. I was just going to get something to drink and then I saw you exercising. Go ahead. Finish." I started to move back to the kitchen, but I couldn't help myself. "Thommy?" I searched for words. "Thommy, kid, do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

"Yeah, sure," he said. It was as if I'd offered him a potato chip instead of my adoration. "I'm very handsome. I know that, but I won't always be this way, Simon. I've got to make it work for me while I can. And I've got to work to stay this way. Does it bother you, Simon? Am I too good-looking?"

He was so matter-of-fact about it. Maybe he couldn't realize how much he turned me on. "That's like being too rich or too blond," I tried for a light tone. "I don't think it's possible to be too good-looking, at least not in my book. Youth and beauty and sex appeal mean a lot to gay men, Thommy, and you've got them all … in spades. You might scare off some women who'd see you as competition, but to a gay man, no, you're not too good-looking. You're a dream come true."

"Does that mean that you'd like to make love to me?"

"Jesus, Thommy, what kind of a question is that?"

"I thought it was an obvious one. Somebody has to show me what gays do, and if you like me and I like you, why shouldn't you be the one? I like you, Simon. I trust you. I'd be glad if you'd teach me."

Why did I hesitate? He was offering me exactly what I'd wanted since he first smiled at me in my car coming back from the Storm King shoot. But now I didn't just want to hump his ass. I wanted his heart. I wanted him to want me.

"Thommy," I tried to change the subject. "Shouldn't you make it with a girl first? So you have some basis for comparison?"

"But I don't want to do things like that with a girl I don't love, and I'm not in love with any girls."

"You're not in love with me either."

"But I like being with you, Simon. You're my best friend. Please." He took my hand and drew me toward his sleeping bag. The minute he touched me, I got a raging erection. I sleep in my underwear, boxer shorts that are on the baggy side, and I realized that my cock was pushing its way to freedom through the opening. Thommy realized it, too.

"That means yes, doesn't it?" he giggled nervously as he looked down my front. "Can I see it all? I've never seen anybody hard like that."

I had never expected him to be so aggressive. The first time I had sex, I remembered, I was scared witless, and all I could do at the beginning was fumble with my equally inexperienced partner. I hadn't dared look at his tool until he suddenly came in my hand and I thought he was pissing on me. Now, here was Thommy, a virgin at 22, so brazen or determined or something that he was already guiding my drawers down over my hips and letting them fall to my ankles.

He whistled. "God, Simon, it looks so strong. See?" He turned me to face the mirror. I am as interested in my equipment as any other male, and I've always liked its heft and responsiveness, but except for shaving my balls at regular, hopeful intervals, I don't spend a lot of time eyeing my crotch. Now though, Thommy had his fingertips on the underside of my shaft so that he could display it like some blue-ribbon exhibit at the county fair. The truth? I was completely turned on by the way I looked and by the way the boy was handling me. If he had stroked me just once at that point, the mirror would have gotten badly spattered. I was that close.

Fortunately, Thommy needed both his hands to undo the drawstring at the waist of his shorts. And he was having trouble. Maybe he wasn't as cool about all this as he seemed.

"Can I try?" I asked.

He smiled, a little embarrassed, and nodded and put his hands at his sides as I worked on the knot he had made. When it came loose, so did the shorts. They dropped to the floor, and the two of us stood naked facing one another. I was still hard. He wasn't, but checking him out, I could imagine that his cock, more than four inches soft, would easily be as long as mine and probably thicker. It looked magnificent and adorable at the same time. So did he. I cupped his head in my hands and pressed my mouth on his. His lips were cool, firm and unmoving. I pulled back.

"Kissing is part of making love, Thommy. Can we try again?"

"Kiss me some place else, first, please, Simon. My neck or my ears maybe. I need to get used to being touched that way."

I could have told him to kiss my neck or my ears. I should have told him to kiss my ass, but I didn't. Then and there, I let him take charge. I was so enthralled that I stopped being the Simon Moore who always calls the shots. Instead, I became a worshipper in the cult of Thommy Farmer. I was the first. I do have that distinction, but it doesn't make my surrender any less abject.

Nibbling at his ears, lapping the taut, satiny skin of his throat, dropping my head to tease his nipples with my lips, I kept waiting for some response from the rest of his body. Finally, as I scoured his chest with my tongue, wiping up the slight, salty, delicious coating of sweat, I felt his back arch as he pressed his body against my mouth. He even made a little noise, almost a moan of pleasure. I put my hands on his hips to brace myself as I sank lower to explore his navel and, looking down, saw that he was stiffening and swelling. Then I looked up, hoping for a signal from him, a gesture, anything that would tell me that he liked the way I was touching him. Thommy, though, was completely absorbed in watching both of us in the mirror.

When he noticed my unhappy surprise, he put his hand gently on the back of my neck. "Please, Simon," he said. "Please don't stop. This is just great. I never imagined…"

He didn't tell me what he'd never imagined. He just told me, in effect, to go on doing it while he observed the play from a certain distance, accepting my tribute to his body as if I owed it to him. The thing is, I went along. I accepted my role as second fiddle. No, that's not right. I didn't just take the part he chose to have me play in our erotic pantomime. I rejoiced in it. I sank to my knees on his sleeping bag and reverently took the tip of his awesome, lengthening cock between my lips. I kissed it. I bowed my head and I worshipped Thommy's beauty and his aloofness and his sex. I hadn't felt so happy in years.

What's more I was making the kid happy. I could tell. His cool spectator self may have been engaged only on the level of curiosity, but his body didn't need guidance. As his prick turned into a thick, drooling rod, his hips began to dance back and forth pushing him farther along my tongue and then drawing steadily back till my lips just held the flaring, rosy head. To make sure I wouldn't lose contact, I wrapped a couple of fingers around the base of his shaft and began, with my right hand, to caress his nuts. They were a nice size but basically ordinary, almost the only thing about him that was. His sac was hairless. In fact, most of his body was smooth. The brown hair in his crotch was silky but sparse, and when I managed for a second or two to envelop his rod completely and mash my nose up against his pubic bone, I inhaled a sweet, fresh tang that added to my intoxication.

As I played with his balls, Thommy changed his stance, widening the space between his legs to give me, I guess, more road room. He also pulled his cock completely out of my mouth, turning himself slightly to present his full, priapic profile to the mirror. "Am I very big, Simon," he asked, "or about average?"

I looked up at him, bewildered. "Don't you know, kid? Haven't you ever looked at yourself before?"

"Yes, but never like this. Never standing up and seeing my whole body naked. Never with a man next to me. Simon, am I bigger than you?"

"I think so, baby. I think so. But it doesn't matter. You are just incredibly beautiful, and I want to have you. Please, Thommy, let me suck you. You like it, don't you?"

He bent down, took my hand out of his groin and lifted it to his lips. Then he blew my mind by taking my index finger and sucking it into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it and releasing it. "My girl friend used to do that do me," he confided, "and it drove me nearly wild. What you're doing is a thousand times better. I love it, Simon. I love you for doing it."

That was all I needed. He had said, "I love you." Screw the context. I was a goner. I drew his penis back into my mouth but I kept the finger he had moistened free and used it to probe between his legs.

"What are you doing there, Simon?" I had his attention, but I was also making him nervous.

"Relax, lover," I let his wet cock slap me between the eyes. "I want this to be wonderful for you. I know what I'm doing. Just relax and let me in."

He hesitated a second and then gave way. I found his lovely, hot opening and pressed against it, then in it.

"Oh, Simon!" it was a little shriek. "Oh, God. You're inside me. It feels so weird, Simon. Are you sure…?"

I was sure. I went deeper, and as I did, I recaptured his dick and drew it far into my mouth. And I didn't let it go. Sure, he did some pumping, almost involuntary, but I collapsed my cheeks around his shaft so that the wet friction enclosed him everywhere and I got my finger where I wanted it, on the tight knob of his prostate, and I pressed. And he screamed and poured himself out into my mouth in one hot, gooey spasm after another.

"There," I thought joyfully, "there, I bet you didn't see that in the mirror, baby. I bet your eyes were closed and your head was thrown back. And I bet you're going to be mine from now on."

Two out of three isn't bad, I suppose. Nursing like an infant on his warm, still-solid cock, I felt his hands come down hard on my shoulders. "Let me go, please," he whispered. "I can't take it. I've got to sit down."

I freed him immediately and put my own hands up to hold his narrow waist as his legs buckled and he dropped onto the sleeping bag and into my arms. His head bowed toward mine, and I thought that at last he wanted to kiss me, even with some of his peppery spunk coating my lips and dripping onto my chin. But his lips didn't head for mine. They came to rest, quivering, on my chest. His forehead hit my shoulder. His arms went around my neck, and he began to keen like a banshee.

I hadn't a clue. I couldn't have hurt the boy. On the contrary, I had given him his first taste of one of life's larger, though brief pleasures. He should be exultant and passionately grateful to me, crying - if at all - from joy. Instead, he had balled his fists and was pounding me with them on either side of my neck, hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to incapacitate. I grabbed his wrists and held him off.

"What is it, Thommy? Why are you mad at me? What did I do to you?"

He burrowed his face deeper into my clavicle. "Not you, Simon. Them." The words were muffled but fierce. "All of them. Liars! Shits! I hate them!"

Curioser and curioser. "Who, sweetheart?" I asked. "Who lied to you? About what?"

"Everybody. My dad. Our minister. Teachers. My girl." He raised his head and looked at me, cheeks shiny with tears, an angry hurt in his streaming eyes. "They all … they all said sex was for animals, that it was not nice, that it was dirty unless you were married. And I believed them." He started to wail again. "I don't even touch myself there except to wash. I didn't know… Oh, God, I've missed out on so much. I hate them all!"

He had to be putting me on. A model, a would-be actor, a boy who could coolly weigh his own beauty and what it could do for him -- and he didn't know anything about sex?! It wasn't possible. But it was. His fury and anguish were too real. He had been tricked, and he was mortified. Uncle Simon to the rescue. I tightened my embrace around his heaving back and drew him into my body.

"Thommy, lover," I murmured into his ear. "Calm down, honey lamb. I'll teach you about love. We'll make up for lost time. I love you, Thommy. I'll make you happy. That's all I want. To make you happy."

He stopped sobbing, but he kept his head down, pressing into me. "Oh, Simon," he moaned, "you're so good. You give me so much."

"No, baby, no. The other way. You've brought love back into my life."

"Then, Simon…" he hesitated a long time. "Simon, would you show me how to make real love? Would you let me fuck you, Simon?"

At that moment, with him clinging to me, after I had declared my passion for him and my promise to make him happy, what the hell could I do? I had sprung the trap on myself, and Thommy was now nailing my skin to the wall. The fact is, I don't much like being on the receiving end of a fuck. It always hurts, at least at the start, and unless the guy plowing you is really caring and considerate, you feel like a piece of meat when he pulls out, used and soiled. But if I wanted to keep Thommy - and there was nothing I wanted more - I had to oblige him.

"Sure, baby," I said. "Sure, you can fuck me whenever you want. However you want. Wherever…"

"Now?" he asked.

"Are you ready so soon?" I marveled.

He pulled out of my grasp and drew one of my hands into his crotch. "See?" he said, grinning like a little boy who had just caught a big fish, "I'm ready. Oh, Simon! You are the best thing that ever happened to me." He wrapped my fingers around his thrusting, pulsing cock. And then he kissed me. He put his lips on mine and he pushed our mouths together as if he wanted to seal us forever. I melted into him. He loved me the way I loved him. Life was going to be wonderful from now on.

Breathless, I finally broke away and started to get up. "Where are you going, Simon?" he asked. "I'm ready now."

"I have to get some things, kiddo. A condom for you. Some lube for me. You are bigger than the average bear, and it's been a long time since anybody…"

"Where are they?" God, he was eager. And, as he scrambled to his feet, I saw that he was also stiff as a tire iron. "Tell me where to find them, Simon. I'll do it."

"In my bedroom, in the table by the bed. Where the reading lamp is."

He took a step and then turned back and took my wrist. "Simon, could we do it on your bed? That would be really nice. And then would you let me sleep with you? It would be so great if you would hold me while I went to sleep. And when we wake up, I could do it again."

"I… I don't have a mirror there, Thommy, and you like to…"

"Yeah, but we can do it with the mirrors some other time, can't we? This time, I want to concentrate on doing it right, not on how I look. Or," he let go of me, "does it bother you, Simon, to have me in your bed? If it does…"

It was my turn to weep. The tears that welled up in my eyes, though, came from joy, from astonishment, from gratitude. "Thommy," I clutched him. "Thommy, I have wanted to have you in my bed almost from the first moment I saw you. You're my angel, my dream. I just can't believe that you want me…"

"Oh, but I do. A lot. How can you doubt it?" He put my hand on his cock. "Herby wants you, Simon, real bad."