Prologue

A note from the author:

I don't know if anybody will care about me or my story, after all that's happened since 1983. Why should they? To paraphrase the Oglala medicine man Black Elk, if this was only a story about me, then I think I would not tell it, 'for what is one man that he should make much of his winters?'

We all have our stories, and why should mine be special? I tell you, it's not my story that's special. My story is nothing but a tool, a kind of recording device for more important things than my life, which is worth only what worth you give it, and you shouldn't give it lightly. My hope, by writing this, is to ensure there is a lasting record, somewhere, of what love can be and what we can all feel if we welcome it into our lives once more. We have lost a great deal since 1983, and I fear the complete loss of the greatest of human endeavors.

Cities and civilizations rise and fall–they are temporary. We have explored other worlds and sent men to the moon, though few seem to believe that now. These are not our greatest endeavors. They are temporary, and we have seen how easily they are lost. When they are lost, such things do not endure in the hearts of each living human. Love endures in each of us. In my heart, that is the greatest human endeavor. The pursuit of love, which can always be found, which never dies, though our loved ones do, as so many of them have. Love always enriches, never indebting. It grants strength and hopes with exponential intensity in an otherwise cold and lonely world.

I wanted to write about real, true love that has endured everything, and will endure anything, even the loss of everything that has ever held meaning to us because I think that is the truth of love–I know it is. I have lived that truth since I was a boy of eleven. Yet I am nobody special. Now I am an old man. I alone cannot have been blessed with this gift of love. Yet I have begun to ask, why do I see so little of it around me?

I am Donovan Langevin (blame my parents for that), and I am the last of my family. Many others can say the same, though they are often much younger than I am. My old age has been a blessing in many ways. I hope you will allow it to be your blessing, as well. I hope my age and experience, though full of missteps and blunders, will lend some credibility to my thesis, even if my words fall short. Perhaps you might take it from an old man, as it were, who has lived this truth. You can trust that I have no ego left to inflate.

My words might, indeed, fall short. I am no great writer, no great storyteller. It's not for lack of trying though. I have never been able to create works of fiction that aren't boring, predictable, and entirely implausible. This latest boring and predictable story, for you know already how most of it ends, is as I suggested autobiographical.

An old teacher once taught me that it was important for a writer to write about the things he knows. I know nothing better than my own story, which begins humbly, and though I have little to my name, it will surely seem a story of luxury and privilege to you. Despite the chaotic, depressing, violent, and often lawless times in which we now find ourselves, I know, and I want the reader to believe, that true, enduring, life-fulfilling love has not gone away, though we've lost much of our own identities, and much of our humanity. Our loved ones die in time, but love always remains.

My story concerns mostly children, two young boys. Our children rely more heavily on love than the rest of us. Among the rest of us, I have seen precious little love these days, and I have heard much sorry cynicism regarding the subject. Yes, we still raise our children with love, but must they inherit our cynicism? Must they grow up with only the love we inflict upon them, without finding love of their own?

Please, read my story before your children grow old and join the ranks of cynics who have left their hopes and dreams behind. We now need dreams more than ever, and we need hope even more. Allow the children to discover what is still real. Love exists in them as in all of us. Love matters. Love changes everything, and it can bring us back to where we once were. Love is nothing less than Paradise, and Paradise is our inheritance. I am proof that we need not deserve it. We need only to claim it.

First, we must survive.

Main characters:

Donovan Langevin, 11 yo

David Chance, 11 yo, Donovan's love

Niklaus "Klaus" Kettering, 30-something, Phys Ed teacher

Kevin Geheren, 19, Klaus' former boy lover

Atticus Berghoff, 8, Friend of Donovan's, eventually Donovan is his guardian

Eliot Bronson, 8, Friend of Donovan's, eventually Donovan is his guardian

Alicia Schneider, 11, some girl who becomes kinda important near the end of the story

Other various friends and family come and go over the years. Ages listed are ages when characters first enter the story

Chapter 1

Buddy Check

"Buddy check!" The familiar, authoritative voice had followed a reverberant and equally authoritative whistle. David Chance and I were never more than a few feet from each other. We were nerds, and in 1983, that meant something very different from what it means today if it has any meaning left at all. It meant that when we weren't together, we got picked on a lot, so we didn't let that happen very often.

We weren't always nerds. Sometimes we were also dorks or fags. I remember when kids at my summer camp started using the word fag one year. I knew what it meant (I thought), and I wondered who'd made it up. Dork sounded much worse, but there was power in being familiar with the latest insults.

Actually, I had no idea that fag meant anything at all other than 'I want to hurt your feelings.' I thought it was just the new word for dork.

David smiled as he grabbed my wet hand and held it in the air. Boys were calling off numbers in pairs. The first pair called "one," the second called "two," and so on. When it was our turn, we liked to be the loudest, so we shouted "seven" and fell into a giggle fit.

"Quiet during buddy check!" Mr. Kettering was always very serious during buddy checks, but we all knew he was the nicest boys' gym teacher at Northview Middle School. We understood that swimming pools were dangerous places and that he had to be strict, so we got quiet and waited patiently while the others counted off.

***

David and I were in fifth grade. Northview covered grades five through eight. There were more junior high schools in those days than middle schools, but I think Northview and the school district, in general, were pretty progressive. We had both turned eleven during that school year, as most fifth graders did, and we were excited about our upcoming summer vacation. Our parents always liked us to be involved in activities over the summer, but David wasn't very athletic, and I was even worse. He was slim but not skinny, and I was tall and, well, less slim. I wasn't fat, and he wasn't an emaciated waif, but the bullies at Northview always knew who they could catch. I think David and I were both somehow uncoordinated, which made us seem like dorks, which was one rank below nerds.

So, of course, we'd signed up for the regular science program that coming summer, called Knowledge Generation, taught by our favorite teacher, Dr. Apfelheinz. We did things like make radios, build model rockets, and take trips into the woods to observe nature. That was where we could talk about nerdy stuff without worrying about what the other kids thought. The other kids were mostly nerds too.

***

After the boys had all counted off, Mr. Kettering blew his whistle again. David immediately spurted a mouthful of pool water onto my head, so I swished my hand in front of him, dousing him with a nice big wave. A short whistle told us both we were in trouble.

"No splashing! You boys know the rules," called Mr. Kettering. "That's your warning. Once more means a two-minute penalty." We were nerds, but we could be mischievous, too–just a little.

I loved being in the pool with David. It's hard to explain, but I'll try. Yes, it's a gay thing, but I didn't know it then, and really it was so much more. He was my best friend. We'd both come to Northview that year from Anderson Elementary in St. Albert, MN. We did everything together. We even wrestled together, just fun wrestling. We won the three-legged race together in both third and fourth grades. (That's because the three-legged race requires cooperation, not athleticism. The cool kids never understood that.) We climbed trees together, the easy ones usually, and sat talking for hours. We did all kinds of things that involved touching, grabbing, and holding each other physically, and I never thought anything of it. However, in middle school, we were expected to shower after gym, and my awareness of the human body changed. Nearly all of us felt awkward about showering naked together, but a few kids seemed quite comfortable walking naked in front of the rest of the class. David Chance was one of those kids.

I loved his face, with his messy, floppy black hair and his tan skin that went down his usual open-shirted chest. His smile meant everything to me when I was at school. It meant I still had a friend. It meant that we were together, so the bullies usually left us alone. Nevertheless, I thought about his smile when I was alone at home too, especially at night. It was the oddest feeling to think about him. It was almost a sadness that I could never understand, and somehow David's face kept me safe from that sadness. I didn't have to look at the sadness when I saw his face.

Our first day in fifth grade meant I had to be naked in front of all the boys in the locker room showers. I didn't know which scared me more, being naked in front of the bullies or being naked in front of David–but I wanted to see David naked. I was incredibly curious. If his face made me as happy as it did, would the rest of his body have the same effect?

It turns out it didn't. His body had quite a different effect on me. Our gym lockers had been assigned, and David's was twelve lockers to the right of mine, which meant there were three boys between us. I'd taken off my shirt, shoes, socks, and shorts, and I was looking in fear around the locker room at the other boys, trying to summon the courage to drop my underwear, when quite suddenly a long, slender leg arched gloriously over the bench, followed by the rest of my best friend's body. He walked with graceful confidence toward the showers. He caught my eye and waved as he passed, the same wave he always gave me. This was a new feeling, and it was intense.

I dropped my underwear and hurried to the shower next to him. He was comfortable in front of me, and I trusted him. He talked to me as if we weren't standing naked in front of the rest of the boys in our class, including the bullies, and Mr. Kettering.

"Let's move it, boys! The bell rings in three minutes," he called. So we hurried and got dressed. I followed David out of the shower, noticing that his tan skin, which looked so wonderful on his face, covered his entire body evenly. I watched him getting dressed as much as I could.

I still don't understand what it was about him that made me feel the way I did when I saw him naked. It wasn't his penis, though that did satisfy a curiosity of mine, nothing more. More than anything, it was the way he moved, as if he was weightless, with every body part appearing in the right place at the exact time it was needed. How could a body with such graceful movement be so uncoordinated when it came to sports?

His shape has been burned into my mind since that day. It has become the shape of perfect boy beauty to me, but nobody's shape had ever made me feel anything before. We used to make jokes about butts and boobs, nothing more.

His skin had always fascinated me, though–since long before fifth grade. It was always tan, even through our long, cold, northern winters. His legs were always tan, even on the first shorts day every spring. The rest of us had bright white legs, fresh and ready to be burned in the late spring sun. I wondered if some people were just like that–gifted by God with a permanent tan. (We'll talk about God some other time, ok?) I wondered if he had a grandparent of a different race or something. I was curious, but I was embarrassed to ask.

***

I actually enjoyed gym class when David was there. It wasn't just the locker room either, though I could spot that graceful leg reaching over the bench in my most peripheral vision whenever we had to shower. Mostly, it was his company I loved. It was also nice having another boy in class who could hardly break ten seconds in the fifty-yard dash.

One warm spring morning, something happened entirely by accident that seemed to change the way I felt about David. In late fall and early spring, gym teachers in Minnesota felt it was their sworn duty to make us go outside, even when it was well below freezing, in our t-shirts and tiny gym shorts. (In 1983, they were tiny.) I think it's a state pride thing, a rite of passage for Minnesota boys. That attitude always gave the Minnesota Vikings an advantage during cold-weather home games a the Met Stadium before they built the domed stadium, well before the domed stadium came down.

Anyway, when we had an outdoor sport during gym class, the routine was for us to change into our scanty gym clothes in the locker room, try to blow frosty smoke rings with our breath. Once we were outside, (which David could actually do), determine the temperature by reading it in braille on each other's skin, do five minutes of calisthenics, then sit down and shiver, while listening to the teacher as he explained the sport we were going to be doing that day. That was on the cold days.

Of course, David and I sat together on warm days as well. On the warm spring morning, when that thing happened by accident that changed the way I felt about him, we'd sat down to listen to Mr. Kettering tell us about soccer. I didn't like the game, but it wasn't the worst. (That was war ball, which most people called dodge ball.) I always hoped I would be the goalkeeper because it meant less running around. Besides, I was very tall for my age, and I had good reflexes, so I wasn't bad in the goal. If I was really lucky, David would be on my team, and he always played defense. That meant I could study his graceful body and movement throughout the game.

We all seem to have parts of the body that we are drawn to. For most men, it's women's breasts, or maybe their ass. For me, it was the back of David's thighs. Maybe it's because that was what I saw most often from the goal. (We wore tiny shorts and long tube socks in those days.) He seemed so completely unaware of them. They were round and perfectly smooth, sleek and aerodynamic, yet soft, and slightly muscular when he ran. He was teased about the way he ran, and I'll be honest, I thought he ran like a girl too, but in my case, that was one of those things that made him so special to me. He was who he was, and he wasn't going to let a bunch of idiots at school ruin his day by teasing him. He didn't seem bothered by it. I think other people liked that about him too. He was more popular than I was, but that meant he was the more popular dork.

While contemplating my upcoming morning of studying David's form from the goal, he raised his hand to ask Mr. Kettering a question. I can't remember what his question was. I don't think I even heard it. I just remember his body wobbling a bit as he raised his hand, just enough for his soft, tan thigh to press lightly against the back of my fingers, just above his knee. That was the accidental moment that changed me.

I didn't know what had happened. Why would his skin make me feel like I would be happy forever if I could just touch it? It was soft in a way that I had never noticed. There was some sort of magical energy in his skin. I had to touch him again. I pretended to read the temperature in braille again on his leg. He smiled at my joke and wobbled his head from side to side. I'd felt it again, though. Why had I never noticed that skin felt so good before? I felt my own skin, and I discovered it wasn't all skin that felt like that, only David's. I waited for a moment when he wasn't paying attention. I put my hand on his thigh and tickled him. He broke up laughing and pushed me away. His skin still felt magical.

"Pay attention boys! No more clowning around. Understood?"

"Ok."

"Yes, Mr. Kettering." David was always a little more formal with adults than I was. When he said that–I noticed something else. It was in his voice. It had always been there, but I'd never noticed it until that day. It was a slight sort of resonant croakiness like his vocal cords caused the air to deliver his messages for him. Even his voice made me feel happy to be with him. What was going on? I felt as though I needed him, that I'd always needed him, and that without him my life would be a drawn-out misery.

Maybe now you can understand why I liked swimming with David. We all wore swimming trunks provided by the school. In those days, they were like Speedos, not swimming shorts. I got to see him naked at the beginning and at the end of each gym class, and I got to see nearly all of his body the whole hour. In fifth grade, our pool time was half swimming lessons and half free time. David and I were always buddy-check partners, and I always made sure our free time was full of play that involved me touching him almost constantly.

***

"Fags!"

Back at the swimming pool, the authoritative whistle sounded rather harshly. Mr. Kettering never tolerated anything even close to bullying. He said gym class was a place where we should be learning about how to work as a team, how to build each other up. The boy who called us fags had to take a five-minute penalty, which seemed rather severe for Mr. Kettering. When a boy got a penalty in the pool, his buddy had to serve the penalty with him. No one was allowed to be in the pool without a buddy. It wasn't fair to the buddy, but it made it less likely that kids would misbehave if their friend was punished too, and it wasn't considered safe to have a kid in the pool without a buddy.

"He doesn't even know," smirked David. He looked so beautiful when he smiled.

"Know what?"

"What a faggot is."

"What's a faggot?" I asked. I'd never heard the full word before.

"A bundle of sticks," he said, just before dousing me with a huge splash, followed by the whistle, (which sounded more disappointed than harsh this time), and two minutes of giggling while we sat on the bench next to the boy who'd just called us fags, waiting to be allowed back into the pool. I never had a problem with penalties in the swimming pool, not when David was my buddy. I got to see so much more of his body that way. His skin wasn't quite as tan under the fluorescent lights when he was wet and cold, but I could see details everywhere I looked. His shape was so much clearer. How could he have such a perfect, graceful body yet still be as clumsy as I was? (I loved that about him.) His curves were gentle. His muscles were visible when he used them, but they didn't bulge. His face looked much clearer, too without his big mop of hair covering any of it. (Don't get me wrong. I adored his hair.) We all had to wear swimming caps too, so his face was all I could really see when I looked at him. The water formed beads on his eyelashes that stayed there, even after he blinked. I never noticed his cheeks were as round as they were when his hair was dry. Everything about his face was happiness to me, and everything about his body was graceful, even his slightly bony knees. If David had bony knees that meant that bony knees would forever be a sign of beauty to me, I used any excuse to touch him that I could find, and I still like bony knees.

Chapter 2

1983

"Shh! The news is on!" Then after a pause, she turned to face me. "What did you just say?"

Mom had become strangely angry and then very nervous when I'd asked her a simple question. I'd asked it at the wrong time too. She and my step-dad watched the news every evening, and so did I, but I had something else on my mind. "Why would someone get punished so badly for calling me a faggot?" I repeated. "It's just a bunch of sticks, isn't it? That's what David said."

"Why did he call you that?" There was a note of urgency in her voice that confused me. That sometimes happened when I asked her awkward questions, especially when I didn't know my questions were awkward. "What were you doing?"

"Nothing," I said. "I was just playing with David in the pool, and that boy called us fags. He had to sit on the bench with his buddy for five whole minutes before they were allowed back in. Swearing only gets a two-minute penalty. Does that word mean something really bad?"

Mom rolled her eyes, squinted, and put her hand on her forehead, the way she did when she wished she could be anywhere else. She motioned for me to join her on the couch as my stepdad turned the news up. They were talking about us putting nuclear missiles in West Germany, and how the West Germans didn't like it. "They know damn well if we weren't there they'd be speaking Russian by now!" he said with a tone of disgust.

"It means he said you were gay," Mom told me. I was eleven, and this was the early eighties. They didn't teach us this stuff in school, and Mom only told me what she had to tell me about sex, very reluctantly, and sticking only to the useless parts. Believe it or not, gay still meant happy in our schoolbooks, and that was all I knew. I gave her a quizzical look, waiting for her to elaborate on why calling someone happy was punishable by a five-minute penalty. She turned her head and replied to me in her super-nervous, squeaky voice that meant, 'please get me out of here!' Before she said a word, I already knew I was about to be even more confused, "It means… You know, like Liberace."

I had taken piano lessons for three months, and I thought the best piano player ever was Liberace. He was so funny too! He had this way of talking and moving around that made it seem like he was always making fun of proper, formal people. He was so formal, he didn't just wear a suit, and he didn't just wear an ordinary tuxedo. He wore a tuxedo covered with sparkly glitter and sequins with old-fashioned ruffled shirt cuffs flowing from his sleeves. He had silver candlesticks on his glass piano. That showed people how stupid tuxedos and fancy formalities looked. The way he spoke was also very proper, and far, far too polite. He showed how silly people sounded when they were trying to be too polite, and he made me laugh. Whenever he was on TV, I had to watch it. That really was how I thought about Liberace. I thought that was why people liked him so much because he made fun of silly formalities and outdated manners. To this day I still think he was one of the best pianists I've ever heard. That was why Mom's reply to me did not have the desired effect.

"You mean they're funny?" I asked, "cause I thought the gay person was the one who was laughing, not the one who made them laugh, right?"

With a great sigh, Mom reluctantly gave in. She took her hand down from her forehead, looked me in the eye, and said, "No. It means boys who like to wear pretty things with frilly lace, and lots of rings and jewelry, like Liberace." She was bravely trying her best, but I needed her to be blunt.

"They like to dress like girls?" I asked, thinking I might be getting close to an answer I could understand.

***

I liked playing dress-up with my aunt Shirley when she babysat me at her house. She put her clip-on earrings on my ears, and I got to wear her dresses and walk around in over-sized high heels. Then she put makeup on my face and red polish on my fingernails. Shirley thought I looked adorable, and when I looked in the mirror, I thought so too. I liked looking like that. I liked the idea of being adorable or pretty or whatever I was. It meant that people would want to look at me, and they would smile when they saw me.

Aunt Shirley smiled a lot when I was all dressed up in her things. She took pictures of me with her fancy Pentax SLR camera whenever we played dress-up, and she said people would love to see them. I knew just how to pose too–chin down, eyes up, no smile, give a tiny pout. Then shoulders right, head left, eyes right, eyelids down a bit, smile just a little. Left hand on hip, elbow back, left foot forward and to the right, with the side of the skirt falling open to show my whole bare leg, bent a little at the knee, sometimes showing the top of a lace stocking I was wearing.

Then a few pictures without the skirt, a few more with me rolling down the stockings, a few more with me kneeling on her bed without the dress, me slipping out of her bra, chin down again. I thought her panties were much more comfortable than boys' underwear, but she wouldn't let me borrow hers. (She bought lots of panties and stockings just for me because hers didn't fit me well, but I wasn't allowed to take them home. For some reason, she never let me take any of the pictures home either.) We both decided wigs looked silly. My hair was long and wavy already, and it looked wonderful with a bow or a flower in it. We both agreed that I looked better in girl's clothes without my glasses. Did all that mean I really was a fag? Because I liked playing dress-up with my aunt?

I'm not stupid. Today I understand what Shirley was doing with those pictures, but I didn't then. To me, it was all glamorous fun. I sure wish I had all those pictures today. Imagine what I could get for them today. I think she'd sold them all as fast as she took them. I looked through what was left of her house some years back, but I could never find them, or anything else worth saving.

***

The look on mom's face told me I was indeed getting close to the answer. "When normal boys grow up," she said with growing confidence, "they like kissing girls and dancing with them." I knew most older boys were into that, but I couldn't imagine wanting that myself. I nodded anyway. I knew what she meant. "But some boys like to kiss other boys. That's what being gay means."

Mom was relieved that she had finally been able to give me an answer I understood, but what she said sounded so strange that I had to ask a follow-up question. "You mean some boys would rather kiss other boys and dance with them and get married?" I asked, wanting to be sure of what she was telling me. That thought had never occurred to me before.

"Yes, that's it," she said. "Most people think it's icky and wrong to be that way, and it's not good to be around boys like that. That's why the boy who called you that word got in trouble. He called you a really bad name that was mean. It's very bad if people think you're gay." I knew then I couldn't tell Mom about Shirley's dresses and earrings. I wondered if she knew that was how we played. I thought she must have seen some of Shirley's pictures, but I was beginning to have my doubts. I also abandoned any thought of talking to her about David.

***

It was 1983. (Did you ever think we would see 1983 as part of the good old days?) I was constantly afraid because our teachers kept teaching us about the upcoming, inevitable, and hopeless nuclear war. I was eleven, and my perspective was not yet fully informed. Here's how I saw things: On the news I saw that the scary-looking Russian guy with the huge, evil eyebrows had died, only to be replaced by someone worse as the supreme leader of the USSR, the secretary-general of the Soviet Union. President Reagan was telling us terrible things about the Soviets, and the Soviets were always telling lies about how great they were and how bad we were. They'd invaded Afghanistan a few years earlier for no reason. (That's how I learned Afghanistan was a country.) Our president had called them 'The Evil Empire,' which I thought was a good way to describe them. We all believed it in those days, and our president had to keep the Soviets on their toes. They needed to know he wasn't afraid to push the button if he felt he needed to. I watched the news every day, even when my mom and stepdad weren't home. I couldn't bear the thought of something happening, and I missed it.

It was too hopeless for some of us kids to want to talk about it when we didn't have to, so we usually pretended it wasn't happening. Other kids had more important things to do, like playing baseball. The cool kids said they'd rather be in the middle of a nuclear bomb blast so that it would be over quick, end of the conversation.

I didn't want to die! Did that make me a coward or a pussy (which still meant cat to me)? David was someone I could talk to about anything. When I was scared, he could smile and wipe the fear away. When he was scared, and he almost never was, I tried my best to smile, but it made me hurt to see him in any kind of distress. Sometimes it felt as if he and I were the only kids who understood the danger we were in from the Soviets.

It wasn't only a nuclear war that scared people in 1983. There was a new disease spreading very rapidly across the country and around the world. In the US it was killing gay men. At first they called it things like gay-related immunodeficiency disease (GRID), gay wasting disease, and the gay plague. Then they started calling it AIDS. Some people called it God's wrath because it was a sin to be gay. I wondered why people would even want to be gay.

***

They taught us in our catechism classes that sins were something we were tempted to do. To be tempted, didn't we have to want it first? Did everybody want it, and the proper Christian thing to do was to resist the universal temptation? Or was this a sin that only a few people could commit because only a few people wanted to be gay? If it was a sin, why wasn't it in the Ten Commandments? Was that covered under adultery? My family was Catholic at the time, and our church was pretty liberal, but there were still questions they declined to answer, at least when asked by an eleven-year-old-boy. The improvement over the Church just a decade earlier was that the universal answer to uncomfortable questions was 'you'll need to pray about that' instead of a ruler across the knuckles, which thankfully I missed.

***

People were scared of this disease because it was almost always deadly in a few years, maybe only one or two. No one knew what caused it, and there was no treatment for it. Gay men wasted away and died horribly. Nobody knew how the gay men were catching this disease, or what being gay had to do with it. There was a story on the news about the police trying to arrest a gay man with the disease, and he spat at the cops and shouted, "Now you can die with me! How does it feel?"

That seems so stupid today, but in 1983 people were afraid of their lives. Here in Minnesota, it became a violent felony for a person to spit near a police officer if that police officer thought the person was trying to spit at him or her. It didn't matter whether the person was infected or what their own intention was. The maximum sentence was five years. That law was still in the books as long as our laws were printed in books. Now, of course, we don't have very many books at all, given all that's changed since then.

Soon, it wasn't just gay men who were getting sick. A few married men had gay affairs, and somehow their wives became sick before the men knew they themselves were sick. Then prostitutes, male and female both, began dying of AIDS. Nobody knew women could get the disease, or that female prostitutes could give it to their male clients. It was supposed to be a gay plague.

Children who had received blood transfusions were the next group to come to public attention. Still, no one knew the cause of the disease, but they knew the American blood supply was tainted with it somehow after gay men had donated blood (something that became illegal, despite what we eventually learned).

AIDS meant death–a leper's death, slow and horrible. In many places, it was still God's wrath against gays, and it was the gays who were the evil agents spreading it to children and good, married, heterosexuals.

The perceived likelihood of catching the disease depended on many non-scientific factors, the strongest of which might have been whether a person had children who went to school with a classmate who had AIDS, or something they were calling AIDS-related complex (ARC), the set of illnesses that distinguished people who were expected to become sick with AIDS. In many districts, kids who were determined to have AIDS or ARC were expelled, often as required by local laws. Some of the most religious fringe fanatics even believed that God had given some children AIDS because he knew they would grow up to be gay. 1983 was not a good time to be gay. It wasn't a great time to be a kid, either.

I had finally learned what being gay was, so I was able to develop my own immature context for the AIDS epidemic. We watched the news together as a family, but we rarely talked about it, and I knew better than to ask questions, so my understanding of these things was somewhat limited at the time, but that's how this country, or what's left of it, really was in 1983, the good old days.

That was why it was such an offensive thing to call a boy gay in school.

***

I never realized being gay was an option until that day, when Mom explained it to me. I had wondered why anyone would want to be gay, but the more I thought about it, the more curious I got, especially when I thought about David. Was that what I was feeling? Was I in love? With another boy? It was exciting to think of being gay with David. I would kiss him if he wanted to. I wondered what it would feel like. I knew how magical his skin felt. I wanted to be with him all the time. Sometimes it made so much sense.

But my timing was terrible. I had learned that boys could fall in love with other boys at about the same time the nation was treating gays as lepers, regardless of whether they showed any sign of disease. Gays were being beaten and murdered in those days, and if kids at school thought a boy was gay, that boy would be beaten and ridiculed every day until his parents withdrew him from the school and moved. (Today I know it wasn't that bad everywhere, but that's how it was in St. Albert schools.) Gay boys were seen as the problem, not the 'innocent' boys who actually had AIDS or ARC from a transfusion. Nobody beat on them because really, they were afraid of catching AIDS, and beating on a terminally ill kid would earn a brutal social sentence for the offender.

I learned much of this history after everything changed that summer, but it gives an idea of what was going on in the background while I was sorting out my feelings for David. Obviously, I never went to a normal high school. In some ways, it's ok how things turned out. I never really had to deal with all that. In fifth grade, calling a boy a fag was just another way to say I hate you.

***

Summer soon came, and I could finally live another three months free from that place they laughingly called a school. I went there to be oppressed. I learned far more from books, TV news, and public television documentaries than I learned at school. The only things I learned from teachers was what repetitive work I had to do next, and how 'boys will be boys' when someone had picked on me or beaten me.

David and I both loved science, which to us actually meant science, not dying of boredom in that stinky room with the dead rats they dissected in eighth grade, and the guy up front droning on about how things worked, and he was right because he said so. "When you go to college and get your masters degree," he said to me one day, "then you can ask me if I know what I'm talking about. Until then, you will sit quietly and do as you're told." A teacher like that could destroy a kid's love for science, so I'm glad he wasn't the only science teacher I had.

Dr. Apfelheinz knew what science was. He was in charge of the summer science program I mentioned earlier, Knowledge Generation. The easiest way to make him smile was to ask him, "How do you know that?" In most classes at Northview, asking that question of a teacher was grounds for detention, and that's no exaggeration, as I learned again and again. But Dr. Apfelheinz told us we had to ask that question constantly in science. He taught us about making a hypothesis and then doing an experiment to see what happens. He talked about that every day during the summer. He said experiments gave us evidence, and it was our job as scientists to determine what the evidence meant about our hypothesis. He said that science is something you do, not something you read or a set of facts to be memorized.

Dr. Apfelheinz usually said the answer to my question about how he knew something was that he knew because he had done an experiment and analyzed the evidence. Then he would describe the evidence, and I was always surprised at how easy it was to understand. He was always careful to say that he didn't know anything for certain except how he felt inside. He would also say he knew something because he read it in a reputable journal or something like that, but that didn't make it true either. He said we could only know something until new evidence comes along to show us we'd been mistaken. He said he liked being mistaken because that meant something even more wonderful was true.

David and I loved science, and we loved the Knowledge Generation with Dr. Apfelheinz. We each had our own chemistry sets, which we combined and kept at David's house. We also had a small collection of model rockets, which we kept at my house. We really, really liked science, and our version of summer fun was to learn as much science as we could before the school year started and spoiled it all. Dr. Apfelheinz was a huge help to us. He told us we both understood the processes of science and experimental design better than many graduate students at the University of Minnesota did, where he normally taught. (David's mother was also on faculty there, though in a different department.)

In June of 1983, Dr. Apfelheinz began the program by teaching us a two-week unit on animal biology. We gathered as usual under the large tent near the school entrance to see a whole new collection of cool things he'd brought for us. He had several animal models and a real chinchilla. He also had a child-sized human model with plastic organs that could be removed, and a penis that could be replaced with a vagina. One fun contest he had us do in pairs was to put the organs back into the model as fast as we could. The winners got one chocolate bar each, but it wasn't David and me. I found it difficult to concentrate when every part of the model I touched made me wonder if this was what David was made of, or if he was made of something special inside.

Dr. Apfelheinz taught us about anatomy, the study of how the body was put together. That included a lesson in surface anatomy, which meant studying parts of the body you can see or feel with your hands. We all liked feeling the different bones and some of the muscles on the chinchilla. Its fur was as soft as a light breeze. It surprised me how much detail we could feel on its bones, though. We could even feel the suture lines, which are where the skull bones join together.

Then we went back to the human model, and he showed us where we would find several different features and landmarks on the human body. He told us we could feel our own bodies and find these parts if we liked. A few boys took off their shirts, including David. I still don't have the right words to describe the effect that had on me. I can only say I was stunned, and I was unable to pay attention to Dr. Apfelheinz for the next few minutes. David's shorts were so tiny without a shirt on top. Somehow, that made his long, graceful legs seem even more graceful. I'd seen it all before, but this felt different like he was putting it on display when he didn't have to. Even his shoulder blades were beautiful.

When we got to the sternum, we were supposed to find two things, the sternal notch and the xiphoid. I found my sternal notch easily, but I couldn't feel my xiphoid through my t-shirt. I pulled my shirt up and felt around but still couldn't find it.

"It's right here, Don, feel mine." David had taken my hand and put my fingers on his soft, tan, ethereal skin. He moved them around as I stared into his beautiful deep-brown eyes. "Do you feel it?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I think so." I was still looking into his eyes. For the first time ever, all I wanted was to kiss him. As my hand slid down and away from his body, he held his gaze on mine. What did that mean? Was he trying to tell me something? Then we both giggled softly. I took off my t-shirt, and David found my xiphoid. Mine curved inward more than his did, which made mine harder to find. Then we learned where to find each other's true, false, and floating ribs, nipples (which made all of us giggle), umbilicus (the proper name for the belly button, or navel), and iliac crests. I could feel David's linea alba, but neither of us could feel mine. He was thinner than I was, and it was easy to see his muscles under his skin, but for some reason, my abdominal muscles were completely smooth and featureless.

We noticed we weren't the only boys who were studying each other's bodies. (There were only two girls in the program, and they always partnered up.) Science made it ok to feel and touch each other's bare skin, and nobody called anybody a fag, but there weren't any real bullies in a summer science program like that one. Only us dorks and nerds… and fags.

Chapter 3

A Walk in the Woods

We walked slowly toward David's house that afternoon. It was time to get out our chemistry sets and mix acids and bases together and stopper the tube quickly, then hold it over an alcohol flame until the stopper shot out down the driveway. David had a real knack for such things–he once got a stopper to shoot thirty feet. Well, it was probably less than twenty. We didn't measure it properly, but we called it thirty, so we could brag about it. I was nervous about breaking the glass test tubes, but we were outside. A little mess was ok. We would just buy more tubes, which meant mowing a few more lawns. In 1983, an eleven-year-old boy with a lawnmower was industrious, not a horrific accident waiting to happen.

I was nervous that day. I didn't want to go all the way to David's house, but I didn't know how to tell him. I'd had intense feelings about David since we became friends on my first day at Anderson Elementary School. I couldn't understand those feelings, but they were nothing compared to what it felt like to explore his body that morning. I wanted him to know that. And I wanted to know if he was trying to tell me something with the look he'd given me as my hand slid down from his chest during the surface anatomy lesson. Did I dare hope? I'd developed a plan that felt risky, and there would be a few hurdles to clear, but I had to try.

"It's… It's ok when boys don't wear a shirt, right? Mom says it's ok."

David looked at me curiously when I asked him. Then he showed me his heart-melting grin that made my world a swirling heaven. "Of course it's ok Don," he said. "Why?"

"Oh good," I said. "I just wanted… I'm getting hot. I think I need some sun." I nervously took off my shirt, thinking how stupid that sounded–I'm getting hot, so I need some sun. By the time I'd pulled my shirt over my head, I saw that David had already taken his off too and thrown it over his shoulder. I had overcome my first hurdle; get us both out of our shirts.

David wasn't smiling. He was looking at the ground in front of him as we walked as if lost in thought. "I was wondering," I began nervously before he abruptly cut me off.

"Yeah? D'you wanna do something else today?" He still wasn't smiling, and that made me even more nervous. He had stopped to look me in the eye, though.

"Well, what about the woods," I said slowly, thinking carefully as I spoke. "We could climb some trees and hide from everybody."

"That sounds fun." He surprised me with his usual heart-melting smile again.

David's house was near the woods. We had to walk a dirt path through them to get there. The woods were big, but he knew them well.

I had overcome the second hurdle, which was to find a way to be alone with him where no one else would see us. The third hurdle would be the scariest. I'd thought the first two hurdles would be tricky, but David seemed to want to go with me both times. Did he, though? Did he want the exact same thing? Did he want to leap over that third hurdle with me? What did all those weird looks mean that he had been giving me that day? Were they an invitation or a warning? (There wasn't a fourth hurdle. I hadn't learned that much yet.)

***

"Dr. Apfelheinz didn't teach us everything," I said. We'd found a nice tree that had thick branches and soft bark. It was also easy to climb. We'd left our wadded up t-shirts at the foot of the tree. I sat out a ways on a branch, and David stood on the same branch, leaning back against the trunk. "There were lots of other body parts he didn't show us."

"I know," he said with that grin. "Which body parts were you thinking about?" His voice was calm and casual.

He couldn't want the same thing I wanted, could he? If he did, wouldn't he be as scared as I was? "Don't blow it!" I thought to myself. "He's making this easy! You're almost there!"

"Turn around," I said. "I'll show you." I reached up and lightly traced a letter H on the back of his left knee. "I've always wondered why we all have this shape on the back of our knees."

He giggled softly and bent his knee. "I thought it was because we bent our knees, so the skin had a crease there."

"Yeah, but why are these two up-and-down lines at the ends of the folded part?" I said.

"I don't know," he said with a gentle voice, looking over his left shoulder, trying to see the back of his leg. "Maybe it's because we have muscles there that bunch the skin up when we sit."

"Oh, I bet you're right." I suddenly felt bold. "And here's another one," I said. I pulled up on the back of the leg openings of his shorts and traced gently, also hoping ticklishly, across the crease along the bottom of his butt cheeks.

"Yeah, the gluteal fold," he said with complete calmness. "Dr. Apfelheinz didn't talk about anything under our shorts though," he said. His face looked serious again. He turned to face me, and in an instant, he had pulled his shorts and underwear down. "Look," he said. "He didn't mention the penis." He pointed at his penis. Mine had become suddenly very hard. That had happened to me many times before, but it had never felt this good. He pulled his penis, which was not hard, to the side and said, "This is the scrotum, and inside are the testes. They're not the balls and the ball-sack." Whatever they were, he was pointing at them, and they were just inches from my face.

I stared straight at it and weakly said, "yeah." Had he just leaped over the third hurdle without me? I tried to look like a doctor as I stared at his balls. Then I got the idea to poke my fingers up next to them and say, "Ok, turn your head and cough." We'd both been to summer camp, and we both knew about that part of the physical. I'd expected him to pull away when I did that, but he didn't. He turned his head and coughed rather seriously. "Oh! Yours does that too?" I noticed his cock was getting long and hard.

"Sometimes it does," he said, completely unembarrassed. There was my chance!

I stepped onto another branch next to him and pulled down my shorts and underwear to show him my hard cock. Third hurdle: Clear! We were both naked! I was nervous, but since he had gone first, the nervousness became more of a thrill. "Mine's like that too now. See? Do you know why it does that?"

"No, I don't," he said, "but sometimes it feels nice. I like to rub it on something soft when it's like that. You've seen the comforter on my bed. That feels nice and soft."

"There's nothing very soft in this tree," I said, "but your skin is the softest thing I've ever felt." Had I just said that?

He slowly turned his whole body to face me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I felt a rush of fear come over me, but it somehow emboldened me to keep going. I had said that much, so I might as well continue all the way over my third hurdle and tell him the truth.

"David, I think your skin feels nicer than that chinchilla Dr. Apfelheinz brought in today."

Had I just told him he was soft, like a sissy? Like a girl? His skin was soft though, and I was starting to tell him the truth about how I felt for the first time. I held onto the tree trunk with my right hand and gently put my trembling left hand on his waist, stroking his luxurious skin down over his hip and back. "I like your skin. I like feeling it. It really is soft."

He stared deeply into my eyes again, and I had no idea what he was thinking. Then he lifted his left foot out of his shorts and underwear and kicked them off with his right, all the way to the ground. He still wasn't smiling, but I thought it was a good sign that he'd gotten rid of them.

"Touching someone you like always feels nice," he said, his eyes still in a penetrating stare. I gasped as I felt his hand gently caressing my left butt cheek. "I like you Don," he said. "I've told you that. I mean, we're best friends. I like you a lot, but I didn't know if it was ok to touch you like this."

"All you w-want," I said, kicking my shorts and underwear off. My underwear landed on a branch below, and my shorts landed on another. David was even graceful in the way he kicked his clothes off.

I had cleared all of my hurdles. I had what I'd desperately wanted. I was alone and naked with David, and we were touching each other. Now what?

"Do you really think my skin is that soft?" he asked.

I nodded emphatically. We were both still gazing into each other's eyes. He still wasn't smiling. Was he really happy about this? How could he be happy and not smile? Then I realized I probably wasn't smiling either. I was still scared, and none of this felt real.

"Do you like this then?" He took my cock in his hand, rubbed it gently across the front of his offered right hip, and across the bottom of his lean belly until it bumped into his own stiff cock.

I was shocked! I made a weird high-pitched noise with my voice, though it sounded like it came from somewhere else. My mouth and eyes both opened wide, and my knees nearly collapsed. I was glad I still had a good grip on the tree trunk with my right hand.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" He quickly pulled his hand away from my cock and said, "I won't do it anymore! I'm sorry. I thought you would like it because you like my skin so much. I mean… I'm sorry."

I quickly hugged him with my left arm. I didn't know what else to do. "It's ok," I said. "I liked it a lot! I want you to do it again! It felt really good. I was just surprised."

When we finished hugging, I could see tears coming from his eyes. I didn't want him to cry! "David!" I said. "David, I really liked it." He looked into my eyes again. It was a look that told me he wanted something desperately, but I didn't know what it was. I wiped his tears away with the back of my hands and did the only thing that felt natural. I kissed him. On the lips. It wasn't a long, sloppy kiss like they do on TV, but it was more than the quick kiss you give Grandma when you say goodbye. He didn't pull away either. He held me close, squeezing me tight with his right arm. I desperately wanted to do more, but I was getting scared of falling out of the tree. How could I let go of him now? Would we ever touch like that again? "Don't be silly!" He was smiling again, which made me giggle. "I didn't know you wanted to, I mean, I want to do this again and again and not stop unless we have to!" Then he gave me a quick, smiling kiss and told me his plan.

***

We pulled off our clothes again before we tied a hammock to the two trees at the bottom of a ravine. There was a stream that flowed through the ravine, and we thought it would be cool to hang the hammock across it. I think we both had in mind that we might push each other out of the hammock some time and get ourselves all wet, but really, David wasn't that kind of boy. I was, but when I was with David, I wasn't that kind of boy either. It was just a little stream, maybe three feet wide, but it grew a lot bigger before it reached the Crow River, which then led to the big Mississippi. We could easily stand on dry ground or even straddle the stream to get into the hammock.

This time we took off our shoes and socks too. We had dashed down to David's house to get the hammock and a snack, which we never ate, and we brought them both back into the woods. His parents were at work, and so were mine, so our afternoons were always spent together. Our parents preferred it that way. They knew we were both well-behaved science nerds who never got into trouble, and they thought if anything happened, we could help each other. I'm quite sure this was not what they had in mind, but they never found out.

I soon learned that I liked to touch, and David liked to hold if that makes any sense. I liked the feel of his body, and he liked the feel of who was inside my breathing body. That's how I understood it anyway. I sat down on the hammock and pulled him toward me, both hands feeling his ass. His cock was again just a few inches from my face, and I stared in fascination as it grew. "That's so cool," I said, softly rubbing his ass cheeks. I took his cock in my hand and gently rubbed it against the soft skin of his lower belly. "Do you see how nice your skin feels?"

"I think you would feel a lot nicer," he said, pushing my hand away. He took hold of his cock and brushed it against my cheek, then down around my chin, up my other cheek, and back across over my nose. I wanted to turn my head and bite it, just for fun, but that would be mean. He was smiling at me, and I was smiling back at him as he circled his cock around my face. "Do you know what happens when I tickle my cock after a few minutes?" he asked. "It suddenly feels like an explosion, and I have to stop."

"Oh!" I said. "Don't do that! I don't want to stop."

He giggled and said, "I don't want to stop either Donovan. I'm so happy we wanted the same thing. I was afraid to tell you how I felt."

"Me too," I said, his cock still circling my face. "I was scared that if I said anything, I'd lose my best friend, and everyone would call me a faggot forever."

"They call us that anyway. It's just sticks."

"No, it's not," I said. "Mom told me, and I think we really are faggots now, but being a faggot with you makes me happy!"

He tilted his head as I explained what Mom had told me about boys who like to kiss other boys instead of girls. "Don, can I put it in your mouth?"

"You won't pee, will you?" He giggled and shook his head. David was the kind of boy who wouldn't even joke about being mean to someone. I tilted my head back and opened my mouth wide. I closed my eyes because I wanted to feel every little bit of his cock, and I wanted to remember all of it. I licked around to feel it on the sides and even the top. I still had my hands on him, and I could feel his ass and thighs twitching when I did that.

"Is that ok?" I asked.

"Oh yes, it feels really good. I'll show you next if you want. Could you try sucking on it?"

I would do anything he asked and sucking it sounded like a good idea, so I did. He threw his head back, sending his messy, floppy hair flying. He began moaning, and he was twitching a lot more. He'd said that meant it felt good, so I kept sucking.

Suddenly, he pulled my head in, making it hard to breathe, and he held his body and my head still as he made a loud crying sound that scared me a little. He suddenly pulled out and sat next to me. He leaned in and kissed me, which again felt like the natural thing to do. We laid back on the hammock and kissed again; only this time, we kissed for almost a minute. His lips felt even softer and more magical than his skin, and I didn't want to stop. He put his head on my shoulder, and I held him in my arms with my leg wrapped around him.

"I want to show you how that feels," he said. "It was nice when I was rubbing it around your face, but it was best when it was in your mouth, especially when you sucked it."

"David, do you want to be faggots together? Can I be faggots with you?"

He kissed me with his brilliant smile and said, "I think we already are, but let's call it something different. I don't like that word."

***

A wonderful thing happened after that day – it no longer hurt when people called me a fag. It made me think of David, and that always made me feel happy. It confused the few bullies I saw over the next few days when I smiled at their taunts. None of that would ever matter again though. The day was coming soon. We wouldn't be going back to school that fall, not as we'd known it.

Chapter 4

The Library

"Hippies! It's all hippies and faggots marching and prancing!" My stepdad was having a rant about the news of no-nuke demonstrations in Minnesota and around the world, and about the gay rights demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country.

"What are they gonna do when the Russians drop the bomb on them? They'll wish they had nukes then, and all these queers can keep it to themselves. I'm sick of hearing about it! We all knew who was queer in the Navy, and nobody gave a damn as long as they kept their mouths shut about it and did their jobs. Now they have to dress like girls in bikinis and dance in the streets, showing it off. If they can't find a better place to put their stuff than up each other's butts, they can keep their AIDS and their protests to themselves!"

Gay people put things up each other's butts? I didn't like the sound of that. I'd have to ask David. If I had to do that, I wasn't sure I was going to like being a real faggot, but I couldn't imagine living without him.

***

David gently slid his arms around my neck and closed his eyes, tilting his head as he leaned in for a kiss. We had just crossed the kissing line, that place in the woods beyond which we were both sure nobody on the dirt path could see us. I lifted David's shirt up and off so I could stroke the skin that I lived to touch.

"You horny gay boy," he said to me with his devilish grin before leaning in for more kissing.

I reached down into his shorts and squeezed his rapidly stiffening cock. "Who's a horny gay boy?"

***

That was Thursday, three days after we'd decided we were going to be gay with each other. We'd spent all our afternoons that week in the woods, and twice I was invited to have supper with David's family, including Thursday. That evening, David asked his mom if she would drive us to the library after supper. I think she liked the idea of her son and his little friend taking advantage of educational opportunities during the summer, so after calling my mom to see if it was ok, she dropped us off, saying she'd be back in an hour. The two of us went straight to work, looking for any information we could find about being gay.

It was no easy task. We didn't want to be noticed either, so we started out in the young reader section and grabbed a few random books without even looking at them, just to carry around. We then went to the reference section to see the big, huge unabridged dictionary that was attached to its own special reading table. It seemed a good place to start.

We found the word faggot easily enough, but as David had said, the definition was a bundle of sticks. Gay wasn't much help either. The definition just said, homosexual. I remembered that word from the news, but I couldn't remember what it meant. So, we looked it up, and the definition was an erotic affection for the same sex. We looked up sex, fuck, ass, butt, anus, even gluteus maximus, but there wasn't anything helpful. What I really wanted to know was what we were supposed to be sticking up our butts.

We hadn't really expected to find much in the dictionary, but we did learn a few different words, like anus and gluteus maximus, that might help our search. So we moved on to the encyclopedia. I grabbed the H volume for homosexuality, and David got the S volume for sex. We brought them to a small table in the corner and set them down, along with our young reader books. In the H volume, I saw pictures of men kissing and holding hands. I was a bit shocked to see that, but then I thought David and I would grow up and be men someday too, so it made sense. I preferred to think of him as a boy though.

"Look Don! I think I found something," he said. He slid right up next to me and pushed the S volume in front of me. His finger was pointing to a pair of words in italics, anal sex.

"That's in here too," I said, "but I didn't know what it meant."

"We saw what the anus was in the dictionary," he said. "Anal sounds like it might mean something like an anus. Do you think?"

We had one last look at the giant unabridged dictionary before returning the S volume to the encyclopedia shelf and grabbing the A volume. The article about anal sex wasn't very long, but it made me horny to think about sticking my cock up David's ass, or him putting his up mine. I moved his hand under the table so he could feel my boner over my shorts. We both had a giggle, and in an instant, a librarian was marching toward us to give us the lecture on this being a library and us needing to be quiet.

We closed both encyclopedia volumes before she reached us and began her sermon, which was louder than our giggling, I'm sure. She took the two volumes from us, saying, "It appears you are quite finished with these." When she left to re-shelve the volumes, David and I went to look through the card catalog for books on some of the new things we had learned. The subject cards all seemed to point to books in the same section, so we walked over to have a look. We couldn't believe how many books there were about being gay and about gay people having sex. A few books even had pictures, and we both got boners when we saw the naked men kissing and doing things together. I finally found a photograph in A Pictorial Exploration of Men in Love that actually showed a man's big cock stuck inside another man's ass. "That must hurt," I said to David.

"Well, it's no bigger than poop coming out, is it?"

"Can I help you boys find anything in this section?" The angry librarian had walked up behind us and snatched the book we were looking at. "This is the adult section! This material is not suitable for children! Is this why you have come to the library tonight? To giggle at lewd pictures that you don't understand?"

We understood the pictures just fine, and neither of us had been giggling. I had the impression at that moment that we understood the pictures better than she did, and that we were more emotionally ready to see them than she was. After all, we had been exploring each other's naked bodies for almost a week now. We had done our homework, but neither of us felt the courage to argue with her. Even in a library, being gay could be risky in St. Albert.

I knew for a fact that kids older than nine were allowed to read books and even check them out from the adult section. I wasn't very good at holding my tongue in situations like this, and normally I would have had a fit. It's easy now to think about what I should have said to her, but in fact I was terrified. David and I had kids' library cards, and that meant the librarian had our home phone numbers on file. She could easily have called our parents. How would I explain that to my stepdad?

We went back to the young reader section to wait for David's mom to pick us up. The librarian had told us she would throw us out if she saw us anywhere else in the library unescorted. I despised her, but I recognized that we'd been let off easy. It all seems so frivolous now, doesn't it? Of all the things to worry about, no one cares today.

I wanted to see more pictures of naked men having sex, or even better, boys our age (we couldn't be the only ones), but things had turned out quite well anyway. We'd learned a lot about being gay, I learned about sex in the butt, and now we were in the crowded young reader section, which was good for two reasons: we could talk in that section because low conversation was allowed, and no one would hear us over all the other voices. We set the randomly-selected young reader books on a table and sat down for a chat.

"I can't believe that," I said.

"Can't believe what?"

"How he had his big cock all the way inside the other guy's ass! Don't you think that would hurt?" My boner was so hard it was sore.

"If it hurt," he said, "why would so many gay people want to do it? Going to the bathroom doesn't hurt."

"Would you do that? I mean, would you want me to…" I stopped suddenly, realizing what I was about to ask him, realizing we were in a crowded library.

He looked at me with those desperate eyes again. Did he mean it? Slowly, very slowly, he began to nod his head. I wanted so badly to kiss him, but we were in public. I slid his hand into mine under the table and felt the smoothness of his bare leg against mine. Boy's shorts were really short in 1983.

Boy's shorts were also usually made out of some sort of lightweight, shiny, polyester, fake-satin material that blew along with each passing breeze. That made an erection quite difficult to hide from the librarian and from David's mom, so when she arrived to bring us home, we each took the randomly-selected young reader books we'd grabbed when we first arrived and held them in front of us as we stood up and went to the check-out desk. We didn't even know what they were.

"I love to see boys reading books like this," said the checkout librarian, a much more cheerful librarian than the one who had caught us looking at the gay books. She was holding the two books I was checking out. One was a story about a girl in the 1800s who worked as a dressmaker's assistant, and the other was called Peers, Periods, and Puberty: A Guide for Girls. "I think it's just marvelous when boys your age try to understand what girls are going through. It shows sensitivity and girls like that in a boy." I no longer had a boner to hide.

Chapter 5

The Longest Weekend

I thought about David constantly that weekend. That meant two things. I had a lot of boners to hide, so Mom kept asking why I was wearing jeans instead of shorts when it was so hot outside. (I could point my boner straight up when I was wearing jeans, and it seemed to hide well behind the zipper.) It also meant that I was distracted and moody, and I spent a lot of time lying on my bed with the door closed. I'd begun masturbating that week in a rather crude way. I rubbed my penis against my thigh, faster and faster until I had to stop. I did that several times that weekend, thinking about David and our time in the woods, but when I wasn't masturbating, I was still thinking about him constantly. I was sad, lonely, frustrated, and annoyed by anybody who wanted to talk to me. Love and happiness were in there too, but I didn't recognize them.

I couldn't see David because his family had gone up north to their cabin for the weekend. In Minnesota, up north meant anywhere people went for outdoor recreation that was outside the cities, even if it was actually down south (which it rarely was). David's family cabin was northwest of St. Albert, and I thought it must have been a million miles away. His parents had taken the day off on Friday because they wanted to beat the afternoon traffic jam and leave early in the afternoon. That meant David and I met in the morning in the woods. Yes, I was upset about losing David for the weekend, but not until I had to come back to reality, and David had to get dressed to go home. I actually cried when I kissed him goodbye and for most of the walk home. What was happening to me? Did love really hurt this much?

Being without David meant my weekend was the same as every other weekend had been, at least as far as Mom and my stepdad were concerned. The TV was on all day on Saturday. It was always loud because my stepdad had hearing problems because of his time in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and because Mom was at the kitchen table using her sewing machine as usual. The best thing about Mom's sewing was that she never made me wear anything she'd sewn, unlike Aunt Shirley's horrible creations. Shirley could make me look adorable in her girl clothes, but when she made boy clothes for me, they were dreadful, and I had to wear them on school picture day.

The news was full of Pershing II missiles in West Germany, West German outrage, and Soviet outrage, then a protest outside of a school for allowing a boy with AIDS to attend, and a protest outside another school for not allowing a boy with AIDS to attend. I went back to my room until supper. Why did President Reagan have to make everybody so mad? Ok, he needed to make the Soviets scared of us, but the West Germans were our friends. I didn't understand it, and I didn't want to talk about it. I wanted David.

Sunday was the same as always, except how I felt. We weren't allowed to have breakfast before we went to church, so I was always hungry. My stepdad was Catholic, and we'd all converted so he and Mom could get married. I thought to be Catholic was cool, but at some point, Mom stopped going to church with us. My stepdad was generally a crabby guy, but during the half-hour drive to and from church, we always had good conversations, and we always stopped to eat at a nice restaurant. Well, nicer than the places we usually ate. He said it was a tradition after fasting for church.

After we got home from church, we all spent the rest of the day at my step grandfather's farm. That was normally a fun time, but I just wanted to be alone. I had my secret place in the manger of the heifer pen. Heifers were cows that hadn't mated yet, and they were friendly, especially when I crawled into their manger with a few handfuls of fresh alfalfa for a snack. It was difficult to explain to Mom how my shirt had been badly torn when a hungry heifer thought it was made of hay. I swatted her on the nose (the heifer), and she shook her head and ambled away, apparently disappointed with the cotton-polyester blend.

Even at the farm, the routine was the same– watch the news, then have supper. I didn't know what Soviet troop movements were, but I learned what gay pride meant when they showed video of men in bikinis, fairy wings, and feather boas dancing in the Fourth of July Parade on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. My stepdad's whole family was disgusted, and they muted the sound until the story was over, complaining about 'faggots spreading their AIDS.' I watched the images, wondering if I would have to do that with David if we were gay. I loved playing dress-up with Aunt Shirley, and the thought of having David come along to play dress-up was exciting, but this gay pride thing was somehow different. They were big, hairy men. They weren't adorable or pretty. When I dressed like that, I could look like a real girl and be cute. It looked nasty when they did it, but they all seemed to be having fun. I wondered if that was why the word gay was used for homosexual people.

***

David's dad liked to "get away" from things by going up north. I thought that was silly because their house was on the river and next to the big woods. He had everything at home that he had up north. What was he getting away from? Why did he have to take David away that weekend, when we had just discovered something so beautiful in each other? I wondered how David felt and what he was thinking. At least he got to go away and have some sort of fun, though he didn't seem very excited about it when he left. He told me he'd ask his parents if I could come next time. I didn't think I'd enjoy his dad's idea of fun, but I thought about the huge woods, and I imagined David and me sneaking off somewhere hidden far away from his parents, all alone.

Chapter 6

Independence Day Reunion

Monday began with the usual soft knock at the door just after breakfast. It was David! I was expecting him, but still I was filled with joy and excitement. He walked to my house every morning, and my mom drove us to school.

I ran down the stairs to let him in, then I grabbed his forearm and pulled him into my bedroom before mom could even yell at me for not putting my dishes in the sink. We kissed at length before saying a word. I had to feel his body to make sure it was really him.

"I missed you so much," I told him with my weepy voice when I was able to catch my breath.

"I missed you too," he said. "I don't like fishing anymore." We fell into a hug, and I felt myself beginning to cry. "What's the matter, Don?" I couldn't let go of him.

"I don't know," I said. "You're here, and I'm so happy! But it was awful when you were gone."

"I stayed in the cabin most of the time," he said. "I didn't want to go out on the boat with Dad. I wanted to be alone because I didn't feel alone. I felt like I could be with you when I closed my eyes. When I was with Dad, I was just with Dad."

We were hugging in the usual way people hug. Our hands were around each other's backs. I wasn't groping his soft skin or anything. I was just holding my David. He was with me now.

"Are you boys ready? It's time to…" My door had opened, and Mom stood in the doorway, looking worried. Then she smiled her usual, nervous smile and said, "It's nice to see boys hugging. Most boys won't do that because they think it's icky." Icky was my mom's word for anything that was uncomfortable to think about.

We broke our hug abruptly. "Aren't you supposed to knock?" I was embarrassed, terrified, and angry. I knew how she felt about boys who liked to kiss boys, and my room was supposed to be private. I wiped my eyes quickly, hoping she wouldn't notice.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. You're eleven now. I should have knocked. I'll knock from now on. Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," I said, a little louder than I'd intended. "Nothing's wrong. You were supposed to knock, and you didn't! We were just hugging! Ok?"

David had remained silent, looking toward the floor the whole time. Mom looked very concerned. Did she know? Moms seemed to know everything. I could never lie to her. She knew every time. "I really am sorry," she repeated after an uncomfortable pause. "It's time to leave though. Are you ready?"

"Yeah," I said, grabbing my three rockets. David grabbed his three rockets, and we left. That was meant to be the first day of our unit on rocketry in Knowledge Generation, and David and I loved model rockets. We had been excited about starting the unit, but spending the weekend apart, and then Mom walking in on us, had dampened our excitement about rockets, but it was the Fourth of July, and we were launching rockets!

***

As we got nearer and nearer to the school, we could feel our excitement returning. I had three packs of rocket engines, and my recently completed Pershing rocket was ready for its maiden flight. I always used slower engines for first flights of new rockets, and the eighteen-inch Pershing looked beautiful in every detail, my first skill-level four rocket. David brought his Honest John rocket, a huge rocket that launched nice and slowly!

I had made sure to bring my Pershing rocket to the school. I wanted to show it to Dr. Apfelheinz because it was my first skill-level four rocket, and it looked beautiful. (Most kids only made skill level one rockets in that unit, except some of the older kids.) I also wanted to ask him about what I'd heard on the news. They said we were putting Pershing II nuclear missiles in West Germany, and that was making the West Germans and the Soviets angry. I wanted to know if that's what my rocket was. I didn't want a model of a nuclear missile! I thought it was just some futuristic rocket we could take to Mars or something. It looked really cool!

Mom always drove us to the school on her way to work, and we walked home. The program was only a half-day, so we had to make sandwiches or heat a can of something in the microwave for lunch when we got home. Both houses had lots of food in cans, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and loaves of bread with cheese and lunchmeat in the fridge and freezer. We had usually alternated days, going to David's house one day and mine the next. We were always careful not to leave a mess, and we never got in trouble because we didn't want our parents changing the arrangement.

As usual, we arrived early because Mom had to get to work on time. That meant we had lots of time to talk with Dr. Apfelheinz before the other kids arrived.

"Donovan, this is a beautiful rocket! You don't usually pay this much attention to detail, and I hope you see how well you can do when you take the time to really work on something you can be proud of," he said to me with a smile. "But kids your age shouldn't be worried about nuclear weapons and such things," he told me in answer to my question about whether my Pershing rocket was really a nuclear missile. "Yes, that's a model of an older version of the missile we're installing in West Germany, and no, the Soviets don't like it, nor do most of the people of West Germany–but we can't change that. What we're here to do is prepare you kids for your future when you are able to make a difference and influence decisions concerning nuclear war. As long as your family has a plan, we live far enough from the Cities that we should survive any blast if we are in our basements, and with a little luck, there shouldn't be any fallout here at all, not with our usual westerlies."

"Everyone says plans are stupid because we're all gonna die anyway," I said.

"Enough of us will die to make the rest of us feel miserable for a very long time," he said, "and most of us who survive will be sick and miserable unless we have a plan."

"My mom and dad have a plan," David told me. "They're not sure if it will work though. We keep lots of food and supplies in the basement, and there's a corner where we will all have to stay for a few days. You could come too if you want. There's lots of room for other people who need shelter, and Mom's a doctor. But it won't happen, will it?"

"I don't think anyone is that foolish," said Dr. Apfelheinz, "but if it does happen, the ones who are prepared will be the ones who survive in the long term."

I wished I hadn't asked him about my Pershing. All this talk of dying from radiation or being burned or vaporized made me feel sick. To make things worse, later that day, Dr. Apfelheinz asked the kids all about our families' planning for nuclear war. When he saw that very few of us had any plans or knew of any plans our parents had made, he decided to spend the first half-hour every day of our rocketry unit to talk about being prepared for nuclear war. He even showed the class my Pershing rocket as an example of a nuclear missile. I didn't launch it that day, and on our way home, I stepped on it and kicked it into the ditch.

***

After a quick lunch at my house, we went into the woods. There were no bombs there. There was no AIDS there. There was only David and me. It didn't feel like there were two of us. It felt like we made up our own world, just the two of us. We were everything, but it took both of us to be everything.

"Did you see the news about the gay pride parade yesterday?" David and I had taken our clothes off and lay spooning in the hammock at the bottom of the ravine. He was snuggled up in front of me, and I was holding him close. Holding him this time, not so much touching or groping him.

"No," he said. "We were on the way home from the cabin."

I told him about the big men in bikinis and fairy wings dancing down the street. His reaction was hard to read. Sometimes he looked scared when he was just thinking about something. Other times he really was scared or nervous.

"Have you ever dressed in girls' clothes?"

"No," he whispered, "Have you?"

"Yeah, I have," I said, "and I think it's kinda fun," I told him about my aunt Shirley and playing dress-up. "And I think you would look incredibly cute in some of her stuff! But I think it looks all wrong on big hairy men."

"I liked looking at those big naked men at the library," he said. "I wonder what it would be like to have a penis that big, or what it would be like to play with one."

"Would you let a grown man stick his big cock in your ass, like in that picture?"

"I'm not sure it would fit," he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "but I'd like to try… if he was really nice about it."

I looked at him in disbelief, which was never called for with David. If he said something, he always meant it. "We need to find a grown-up gay man," I said. "He could tell us about how gay boys can feel good together, and maybe he'd let us play with his cock. That would be fun someday."

David turned to face me, a slight grin on his face. "Yes, someday it would be fun," he said, "but right now I want to be with you, not some man. I love you."

He kissed me, and I was stunned. I wanted to cry, and I wanted to devour his kiss. He had never told me he loved me before. I loved him too, but I didn't know what to call it, but everything that we'd seen in those books at the library said that what I felt toward him was love. I was in love with David, and he had just pieced it together for me.

"I love you too, David," I said before bursting into tears.

"It's ok," he said. He rolled onto his back, and I felt his gentle hand wiping my tears and a soft kiss on my forehead.

"I know," I said. "I didn't know this was what it felt like to be in love. No one ever told me, and no one ever told me I could be in love with another boy."

"How does it feel for you, Donovan?"

"I see your face everywhere," I said, "and no matter what, it makes me feel happy. When you're away, all I can think about is when I can see you again. Every time I see you for real, it's like a happy reminder that my life really is full, that this wonderful boy is my best friend, and now he's my gay boyfriend, which is a little scary with AIDS and people who think we're disgusting, but we're not! My feelings about you are the most beautiful feelings I've ever had, and I don't know why people would think it's anything but wonderful love–but they do. If they find out, they might put us somewhere. My mom and stepdad would never let me see you again. That would be like the world ending."

"So it's not just my girly-soft skin," he said with a wink, a smile, and a kiss.

I adjusted to make room for my boner as I caressed his soft ass. "Well, it's that too," I said with a smile and a kiss of my own. "Everything about your body makes you so beautiful. I mean, have you ever seen your eyes? Have you really looked at them in the mirror? All of the feelings in the world are always exploding from your eyes, but love especially. When you look at me, I know you love me. I haven't seen you look that way at anybody else. That means I'm special. Look what they're saying now!"

They had begun to water, so I held his head against my chest. His chin was wrinkled, and his eyes were closed tightly. He sobbed a few times; then he kissed my chest. "You're the one who hates writing," he said, "but you've got all the most beautiful words!"

"Well, I've always had those feelings," I said, "but I never knew what they meant. How could I talk about them without sounding stupid? Why did I cry when you went away for three weeks with your family last winter? Now I know. The answer is simple–nothing changed last week. I've been in love with you this whole time! I just know what it's called now."

He tightened his grip on me and said, "Me too! I've always felt this way! Maybe we just weren't old enough yet to make sense of it until now. We're still very young to be in love, but we've been together the whole time, so it's not like we've wasted time when we could have been together. We just know what to call it, and we've started having sex. Well, oral sex."

"And manual sex," I said, remembering the phrase from the book at the library.

"Yeah," said David with an uneasy chuckle. "Just one kind left for boys." His voice had grown quiet as if he had swallowed the last few words.

"Do you really want to?" He nodded. "I think we really have to be in love in order to do this. It seems like it's the most important kind of sex between gay lovers."

"We are in love," he said softly. "I really, really love you, Donovan. I want us to be together all the way."

If it had been anyone else but David, I wouldn't have done it. I would have felt stupid, but I wanted to be together with David all the way too. "Then we really, really are in love, because I really, really love you too."

He kissed me softly and then stood up. He arched his graceful leg over the hammock and put his knee down next to my chest, then lifted his other knee and put it on the other side of my chest. I pulled his ass forward so I could suck his cock for a while. I was nervous about doing this. What if I did it wrong? It looked simple in the picture, but I was scared. This was David, my David, and it had to work. If I hurt him, I would die! He would never want to do it again. Oh, the things I didn't know.

Chapter 7

The Things We Do for Love

The soft knock announced David's arrival the next morning, a little earlier than normal. For the first time ever, I was afraid to see him. Things had not gone well the previous afternoon, and I had run home feeling terrible. He'd hugged me and told me it was ok, but he was so sweet, he'd say that no matter what. How could I face him? I was so upset I didn't even go to see the fireworks in St. Albert. I just watched them from our deck at home with Mom.

I opened the door slowly, and David burst in. This time he grabbed me by the forearm and led me to my bedroom. He kissed me without a word. I could tell he'd been crying. Why would he be crying? It was all my fault!

We sat cross-legged on my bed, facing each other, our bare knees touching. "How could you even come here, after everything?" I had started crying, just a little. "The book said people who loved each other did that, and I couldn't! I don't love you enough!" I was crying properly now.

David put his hand on my leg and said, "Stop it, Donovan! Stop that right now! I know I love you, and I know you love me! Otherwise you wouldn't be crying." He wiped my tears away with his hands. "I think we just need to learn how to do it properly, that's all. I think we missed something."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I think we need to go back to the library and look at the A encyclopedia and read it properly this time. I think we missed something. If we stay in the reference section, we shouldn't get in trouble. And if that doesn't work, I'll ask the librarian for help to keep her busy while you find that book with the pictures, and we can read it in the young reader section. That book has everything in it. They'll never know. What do you think?"

I had stopped crying. "Then you really do still love me?" He kissed me softly and nodded slowly, showing me his love with his powerful eyes.

The bedroom door flew open after two sudden knocks. "Boys, come on. It's time to leave," said Mom. She'd come in so quick I was sure she wanted to catch us in the act of something, but we were just sitting on my bed.

"Ok," I said, keeping my back to her as we grabbed our rockets. I felt incredibly happy that David still loved me, but it was still hard to smile and show him my happiness with Mom there.

***

We said bye to Mom and walked under the canopy tent to see Dr. Apfelheinz for our regular morning chat. I brought a different rocket that I was sure was a nuclear missile too, called a Nike Ajax, and I'd decided to put a huge engine in it and launch it into orbit, or at least so high I would never see it again. It turns out that the rocket was only meant to fly up and catch bomber planes that were trying to drop nuclear bombs on us, so it was more for protection. I decided to borrow a more sensible engine from David for that rocket. It was a really cool-looking rocket, and now that I knew it wasn't a nuclear missile, I liked it again.

We sat through our second lecture about preparedness for nuclear war. This time, Dr. Apfelheinz gave us multiple sheets of paper with recommendations for families to make a plan and what would be needed, a map of how the Twin Cities would probably be attacked, (a 20 megaton airburst over downtown Minneapolis, another one over St Paul, and a 10 megaton ground burst over the international airport, which should have been gross over-estimates in those days), with circles around each bomb blast showing where people would be vaporized, killed instantly, severely burned so they would die slowly, or hit by lethal doses of gamma radiation. It also showed where buildings would be vaporized, completely destroyed, set on fire, or possibly left standing. The third sheet of paper showed where fallout was expected, given our normal wind from the west. I was surprised to see that St. Albert was in the clear of the fallout, but our houses could be set on fire, and we could get serious burns, even deadly if we weren't protected during the blast.

However, my stepdad worked in downtown Minneapolis, Mom worked in Crystal, (a suburb of Minneapolis that was close to Downtown), David's mom worked at the university, and his dad worked in the control tower at the much smaller Crystal airport. My stepdad and the building he worked in would be vaporized. The university would be destroyed, and most people would be killed instantly, though there were lots of underground places for David's mom to take cover. All of Crystal would be completely destroyed as well, with about 80% fatalities immediately, and most of the survivors expected to be dead within two weeks to a month. David's mom might be able to survive if she was lucky enough to get into a basement shelter, but she might get fallout from the international airport if the wind went the wrong way. Dr. Apfelheinz said that was the bomb that would make the most fallout because that's something only ground bursts could do.

Launching rockets was no fun after listening to all of that. I wanted to put my C-6-8 engine into my Alpha III and shoot it into a tree trunk to see if it would vaporize, but Dr. Apfelheinz wouldn't allow it. "You don't want to do that to a tree," he said.

"Why not? They're all gonna be dead anyway when the bomb falls!"

"Oh no," he said with a smile. "Look at your map. See? Most buildings will survive out here, though we will have some fires, the trees will only burn down if they are very dry. We will need lots of trees if that happens. Don't forget where our fresh air comes from." It was 1983. That was what we knew.

David put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Dr. Apfelheinz, can I launch my Big John next?" It made me nervous when David touched me kindly in front of anyone, but it still felt good.

***

"Maybe we should see if we can go to the library tonight," I suggested to David with my mouth full of bologna and cheese on white bread. "You can eat here, and Mom will drive us. We can tell her we want to look up some stuff about rockets for Dr. Apfelheinz."

"Ok," he said. He called his mom at her office at the university to get permission, and we walked to the woods, to our hammock in the ravine.

"I think walking to the woods is almost my favorite part of being gay with you because I get so excited!" I was excited, "I mean almost my favorite."

"What's your favorite part?"

"Touching you," I replied, "and you touching me, knowing how much we love each other." He stopped and kissed me in a dangerously public place, which gave me a bit of a thrill.

We decided not to try anal sex again until we learned more about it. I couldn't get my cock into his ass the day before, and the more I tried, the more it hurt. It began to hurt him too. I had to stop when my cock was rubbed raw. I was ashamed, even though David held me and told me it was all ok. I was sure it meant we didn't love each other enough, but I realized a day later how ridiculous that was.

David had something else he wanted to try. I would lie on my back on the hammock, he would suck my cock, then he would arch his graceful leg across the hammock, over my head, and I could suck his cock at the same time. It was fantastic! My favorite part of it wasn't being sucked but sucking him. I could feel his body reacting, his soft, beautiful angel body. I let my legs dangle over the sides of the hammock and gently rocked us as we made love. I felt a lot better than I had after yesterday's debacle. We had tried something new, it was amazing, and we were still in love. The world was beautiful.

"That was a great idea," I said before kissing him. "I mean, we could both feel it at the same time! How did you think of it?"

"I think about you all the time, Donovan," he said. "I think about how I feel when I'm with you, the kind of person you are, and what will make us happier together." We kissed and kissed, then kissed some more. I gently pulled his head into my chest and stroked his soft cheek. We both drifted off to sleep like that.

***

When we got home to my house, I asked Mom if David could stay for supper and if she could bring us to the library. She agreed, but she called David's mom to see if she could pick us up afterward. Soon we found ourselves at the large table in the reference section, looking at volume A of the encyclopedia. We had both returned our embarrassing books from our previous visit. 'Copious lubricant is mandatory,' it said. We had to look up all three of those words in the unabridged dictionary, and at last, we understood.

"No wonder it didn't go in!" I'd forgotten to whisper. The grouchy librarian looked at us and marched over to us in her usual, stiff manner.

"Do you boys need help with something? Rules, perhaps? We are quiet in libraries. If you want to talk, go to the young reader section!"

"Actually," David said timidly, "I want to learn about rocket thrust and how much I need to lift a heavy model rocket. You see, my teacher, Dr. Apfelheinz…"

"Do you know how to use a card catalog?"

"Yes," he said, "but I couldn't find rocket thrust, only rockets, and I don't know any titles or authors."

"It will be in the 600 section," she said, sternly yet softening. David was doing great, "Can you tell me what the 600s are?"

"Applied science?" David suggested.

"Very good," she said. "You might need a book about physics or ballistics instead of rocketry. This is a much more suitable subject for boys your age than giggling at lurid pictures. Come with me, and I will help you look. NASA will always need new astronauts to fly the Space Shuttle."

"I'll meet you in the young reader section," I said.

"If you are not joining us, then yes, you will remain there," she said sternly, not softening at all.

I walked to a far corner of the crowded young reader section, hoping I could get lost among the other well-behaved children reading their age-appropriate books about girls' puberty and dress shops.

When I thought it was safe, I tiptoed to the gay books section, which was on the other side of the library from the books on rocketry, and quickly found A Pictorial Exploration of Men in Love, the book we wanted. I was back in the young reader section long before David returned with a book of his own called Engines for Model Rockets: A Guide to Selecting the Right Engine for Your Mission!

"It even shows what will happen if you take out your engine mount and put in a simple block for a D engine in your Alpha III!" He looked truly excited, but I felt excited in a different way. "Did you get the book?" he whispered.

"Right here," I said, showing it to him discreetly. We sat on the floor in the back corner with the gay book open to the pictures and the rocket engine book open in front of it so no one could see what we were really looking at.

David was breathing heavier, "I like looking at those men," he said.

"I like seeing the different things we can do together," I said. "Did you know it had a name? What we did today? It says it's called sixty-nine. What we tried to do yesterday is called the cowboy position–look at how big that is!"

"I can't wait till you're that big," he said with a shy smile.

"I won't ever get that big! You've seen it! It won't ever be like that."

"Yes," he said, "but it grows really big during puberty, and you're already bigger than most fifth graders. Haven't you seen the boys in eighth grade?" I smiled at him and pretended to blow him a tiny kiss.

We turned the pages to see what else we could learn. We stopped on a page that had the heading "AIDS: The Gay Plague."

"What if we give each other AIDS?" That fear had been in the back of my mind all week, but I hadn't dared bring it up. I turned a few more pages and saw pictures of men kissing really skinny men, and there was a portrait of a guy with dark blotches on his face looking at the camera with a defiant expression.

"I don't think we can," said David, "I think one of us has to have it already in order to give it to the other one."

"But I'm gay," I whispered, "How do you know I don't have it already?"

"Because you've never had sex before," he said. "Look at what it says. 'There have been no known cases of AIDS transmitted by oral or manual sex.' And here it says 'IV drug needle sharing, transfusions of tainted blood products, and anal sex with someone who has AIDS or ARC are the only known means of acquiring the disease, though vaginal transmission is also a suspected route.' You see?"

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know all of those words, but it means that if you've never shared needles for drugs, had a blood transfusion or had anal sex with someone who is already sick or infected or whatever, you won't have the disease."

"That's not what my stepdad says," I told him quietly, "He says faggots and queers just get it and pass it around wherever they go."

"But he's not a doctor," said David. "This is a library book, and look, it's written by two doctors. When your stepdad talks about faggots and queers, I think he hates them, and he'll say anything horrible. We love each other, and we know it's not horrible. This book is about love, and doctors wrote it. I think this is true, and your stepdad is just being mean and crabby."

We decided to take one more chance. I found two Encyclopedia Brown books and another book showing experiments we could do at home with electricity, and I put the books together, facing down, with the sex book second from the bottom. David got a few more books, as well. He would check out first.

A few years earlier, the St. Albert library switched to a new system that allowed the checkout librarian to scan a barcode on the back of the book. Usually, they just took our cards, scanned the books without really looking at them, and slid them into a plastic bag to protect them from rain. When David's mom arrived, he stacked his books just like mine, with three young reader books and his rocket engine book second from the bottom, all upside down.

"Oh, I see you're getting used to our new system here," said the much more cheerful checkout librarian. "You've got them all lined up for me!"

"Mine are all stacked and ready too," I said, with what I hoped would pass for a sincere smile.

"Oh, thanks, you helpful person!" She put my books in a plastic bag and said, "You boys do know that adult books are due in two weeks, and there's a fine of ten cents each day they're late, right?"

"Yeah, I know," I said, thinking only about making my escape.

"Thank you, ma'am," said David. "We know about the fines. Have a nice night!"

"One last thing, dear," she said to me, motioning me toward her. She leaned in close to my ear and said, "I think you're very brave learning about these things. It takes courage to look inside and find out who you really are. If you feel like you could use any help, or just someone friendly to talk to, here's a card with a helpline for gay youth, or for kids who are just questioning."

I stared straight through her. I'd been busted! However, she was nice, which really confused me. I took the card she offered and said, "Thanks, but please, could you please not tell that other librarian?"

I nodded in the direction of the crabby librarian, and the nice checkout librarian smiled kindly and said, "What you read is your business, not hers. What you read should be private. No one else has to know. Just promise me you'll be responsible?"

"I promise," I said.

"Is that boy, is he…" she began.

"No," I cut her off, but why had I done that? "Well, we kinda, I mean, maybe we might be, and I sure hope so, but I don't… I mean, I think so. I guess we're not sure yet. That's a secret too, ok?"

She handed me a second card. "Give that one to your friend. You know, just in case he feels confused or anything. He really is sweet," she said. "Boys like him are hard to find. I hope you two will always be friends, even if this, you know, doesn't feel right in the end."

"Me too!" I smiled at David, who was talking to his mom, then back at the checkout librarian. "Thanks! Thanks for everything! I'll give it to him later," then switching to a whisper, "you know when his mom's not around."

Chapter 8

Misery and Bliss

The next morning brought us a very unpleasant surprise. Dr. Apfelheinz wasn't there. Instead, the science teacher for seventh and eighth-grade students, Ms. Hammerschmid, greeted us with a smile, asked us our names, and put two check marks on her list. I looked at David, then back at her, then asked, "Where's Dr. Apfelheinz?"

"I'm afraid he is ill, Mr. Lang-a-vin," she said with a frown. "I will be taking over this program for the rest of the summer."

"It's LAHN-zhe-van," I protested. I never corrected people when they mispronounced my name, but she annoyed me from the start.

"He won't be back?"

"No, Mr. Chance," she said, "not at all, I'm afraid. He is ill. He has sown the seeds of an ill lifestyle, and now he shall reap."

"Reap?" I was confused, but I could tell she was saying something horrible about Dr. Apfelheinz without trying to be too obvious. She was using church-talk. "What do you mean? How sick is he? Is reaping like cancer?"

"You boys go to church," she said. "You know what a depraved lifestyle can lead to, and so did he. Now he must face his consequences."

"But he's really nice," said David.

"How was he deprived?" I asked, "and how does that make you sick? Dr. Apfelheinz taught us last week that you have to have a bacteria or a virus to get sick like that. It's called the germ model. David's right, he's really nice, and not depraved, and you have to have a germ, not be deprived." I was trying to keep my cool, but this horrible woman was saying horrible things about my favorite teacher.

"For heaven's sake! Don't you boys see the news on television? Don't you have parents?" She was becoming angry too. This was not a good way to start off with a new teacher, but we were both angry. What was she saying about my favorite teacher? "We all suspected him, and several parents have refused to allow their children to attend this program because of him. Imagine someone like him teaching children."

"Why won't you answer me?" Now she knew I was angry. "What was he suspected of? How is he sick?"

"Very well," she said. "I shall spell it out for you. Dr. Apfelheinz is a homosexual, and he has AIDS. The school district thought it would be best not to allow him any further contact with you children."

"But we're not sharing needles, having blood transfusions, or having an… I mean, nobody's doing naughty things with him," said David, methodically and calmly running down his mental list from the library book. "How is it bad for him to have contact with us?"

I was glad he spoke because he was much better at speaking the truth while keeping his temper than I was. Even though I decided I was gay with David, I had no idea about Dr. Apfelheinz. I felt shocked. Not in a bad way, but really surprised. I'd never suspected him. I figured it would probably take a long time to get used to being a real gay faggot boy.

"Because he is a bad influence on you," she shouted, "and he has already ensnared you! Listen to yourselves talking about the filthy man as if you love him! I suppose he taught you that you couldn't catch his filthy disease unless he… abuses you? Nobody knows how those people spread their disease!"

"By sharing needles, having blood transf…"

"Jesus says we're supposed to love everyone," I said in my snottiest tone. I hated hearing her talk about him that way, and I was so angry I didn't even realize I had interrupted David.

"Enough! We will discuss this no more, and your parents shall be hearing from me this evening."

She didn't know anything about model rockets (which was a lot more than she knew about gays and AIDS), so we changed to a unit on bird watching. The only good thing I could say about that morning was that we didn't have to hear any more about nuclear war.

***

"I'm not going back if she's teaching," I said to David, as we walked home to his house for lunch.

"She said such horrible things about Dr. Apfelheinz," David said sadly, "and she would say the same things about us if she knew!"

"She can't know," I said. "We can't ever let anyone know, David! All I need is you, but if people find out, I might lose you!" I kissed him, forgetting again that we were out in the open. "People seem to do stupid things when they find out someone's a gay faggot. Oh! Sorry, I forgot! I won't say that word anymore. But Mom probably wouldn't let me see you again!"

***

After lunch at David's, we packed a small bag and walked into the woods. I sat on the hammock, still in my clothes, and hung the bag on a low branch. As David reached to pull up his shirt, I took hold of his hands and said, "Let me do it."

We had both calmed down and put all thoughts of our disastrous morning behind us. David giggled cutely and pulled his hands back; I wanted to savor this. Loving David made me feel happy on a day when so much unhappiness had already happened. I'd asked David over lunch if he wanted to find out where Dr. Apfelheinz lived and visit him. David liked that idea, especially because we needed someone to talk to about being gay, and we'd rather talk to him than to some stranger on a gay hotline. We didn't know if we were doing it right, and we needed an experienced grown-up to teach us. We'd found his address in the phone book, (If any of you young people are reading this, that was a big book that used to list everybody in your area alphabetically, giving their address and phone number.), he lived about two miles from me, which was an easy bike ride.

As I slid my hands under David's shirt, feeling the soft skin of his waist and the relief of his gentle muscles, my awareness of everything else drifted away. There was just the two of us, and we were one, together. As I gently lifted his shirt over his head, I gave his left nipple a quick lick. I'd never done that before, and it made him jump back, bent over in giggles. "That tickles!"

I pulled the shirt over his head so I could see his floppy hair, but I left his arms in the sleeves. "It's part of your body, and I love all of you," I said, knowing I was cheating. "Besides, I saw them doing it here." I opened the gay sex book to a page I marked, showing one man licking another man's nipple.

"Ok then," he said, catching me completely by surprise, "But only if you do it very gently. My whole body loves you too." He gave me the cutest smile I'd ever seen. That filled me with such powerful thoughts of mischief, but I couldn't take advantage of my sweet David. I decided to stand up and kiss him until I calmed down. He left his arms in his sleeves. He was really letting me have my way with him.

I gave his neck a quick lick before I sat back down on the hammock. I kissed his chest gently in several places. I wanted this to be nice, not harsh. I opened my lips and touched my tongue to the bottom of his nipple. He gasped, so I left it there, not moving it a bit until he breathed steadily. Slowly I licked upward–I felt him tremble.

"Does it really tickle that much?"

"It's like tickling," he said, "but it's different. I don't know; it's nicer when you do it slowly. I like it."

I resumed gently. He tossed his head back, which made his thick, floppy hair fly back again, which has always been a turn-on for me. His arms were still in his shirtsleeves, but he held his elbows way back as if offering himself to me. His hands were at his waist, both in fists with the thumbs tucked inside the index fingers. In a few seconds, I was less gentle, but he seemed to like it. He lifted his foot and bent his left knee just a bit. I'm not sure he knew he was doing it. I reached down with my right hand and held his thigh, which he raised a little more so I could hold it properly.

I moved my mouth to his right nipple, and I had to start slow and gentle again. As soon as he got all excited, I stood up and kissed him passionately, licking his tongue the way those men in the book did. We didn't know if we were doing it right, but it felt like we were sharing the most private parts of our bodies when we did it.

"Are you going to leave my shirt like this?"

"Yeah," I said with more than a little mischief.

I loved the grin he gave me. This was something new for us. We were having a kind of sex, but we were also playing. I got to be the boss, and he had to do what I said. Maybe he would be the boss tomorrow. The gay sex book showed some men playing masters and slaves, like a game. I didn't think that would be fun, but this was fantastic! I sat back down on the hammock and rubbed his legs. He was wearing white socks without stripes. I remember them well because they somehow made his legs look even more soft and tan than usual. I was wearing my normal, out-of-date tube socks.

I opened my mouth wide and nibbled his hard cock through his white satin shorts. When he giggled, I put my thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and lowered them to his ankles, straightening his socks. He had to look perfect. I reached inside his underwear and stroked his cock a few times, which made him gasp. He was about to orgasm already! I was ok with that because, at age eleven, we could do that all day long, and each of us usually got three or four of them on a normal afternoon. I pulled the front of his underwear down below his balls and held it there while I licked the underside of his cock, which was pointed skyward. He grunted again, so I stopped right away.

"Not yet," I said. I held his cock gently in my teeth, pulled his underwear down to his knees, and left it there. I sucked his cock until his whole body suddenly snapped back, and he made a short, soft, high-pitched sound. I hugged him around his hips and ass, holding his cock still in my mouth.

After about a minute, I stood up and kissed him again. "I love you David," I said, "Do you like playing like this when we have sex?"

"Maybe," he said with a bashful smile that he was unable to hold back. He giggled and said, "I liked it a lot, but maybe not every time. I love you too, and maybe sometimes I might need love with no games, but I'm having a wonderful time today!"

"Then kneel down," I commanded, "in the sand." He tried to obey, but it wasn't easy with his elbows, ankles, and knees still bound by his clothing. So I helped him. He looked so out of balance when he tried by himself, and I didn't want him to fall. "Now it's your turn," I said, "to suck my cock. Go ahead."

He looked up at me and asked, "Are you going to pull your shorts down, or do you want me to do it?"

"You will do it," I said, "without your hands. Use your mouth."

We both laughed as he tugged with his teeth around the leg openings and the waistband of my shorts. Everything he tried felt funny to both of us, but he was slowly making progress. When he got them below my hips, he plunged his chin down the front and pulled them just enough to get his face all the way inside them, and that's how he pulled them down. He paused a bit to nibble on my cock through my underwear, as I had done to him earlier. Soon he had my underwear down in much the same way he'd taken my shorts down. We both cheered. Just as he reached for my cock with his mouth, I pulled it away, bent over and kissed him.

"I love you, my boy prisoner," I said. I was howling in ecstasy only a few seconds later.

I pulled David to his feet, pulled his shirt from his arms, pulled his underwear to his ankles and said, "That was fun, but I want to do it properly now, like in the book. What do you think?" I took off my shirt and then sat down on the hammock to remove my socks and shoes.

I hadn't noticed how nervous David looked until he spoke in a trembling voice. "Yes, yes, I think I'm ready. We've got some olive oil from the kitchen and a clean dishcloth here in the bag. The book said not to use oil with condoms, but we're not using condoms because we're both boys, so we can't get pregnant and neither of us has…"

"David, what's wrong?"

He took off his shoes and socks and cuddled with me on the hammock. "It's just, we both felt so bad on Monday," he said. "Donovan, I want it to be perfect the first time we really do it because I don't want to disappoint you again. You'll think I'll never be able to do it right."

"Don't be stupid," I said. "Yeah, Monday was weird. I felt awful too, but I thought it was my fault because I had to give up when my cock hurt; remember? I thought that meant I didn't love you enough or something. Talk about stupid! I've already been stupid enough for both of us, but now I say, so what if this doesn't work? The gay book said it was always difficult the first few times, and it was ok that we didn't get it right. The book says it's bad to expect everything to be perfect at first. We didn't know about lubricants. We can just laugh at ourselves if it doesn't work this time for being such klutzes, then maybe we can ask Dr. Apfelheinz what we're doing wrong when we see him. He'll know all about it, and he'll know how important it is to keep things secret."

We lay there in each other's embrace for what felt like a long time, though I have no idea how long. The wind in the treetops was so peaceful, and this warm bundle of heavenly love was joined to me in happiness forever. I didn't mind that we weren't getting it on yet. We had plenty of time. We had two more months before school started again.

David kissed me and smiled that cute, shy smile of his. Then, just as quickly, his smile vanished in what was obviously a flurry of nervousness. "Only if you're ready," I said, trying to sound reassuring.

"I'm sure I'm ready," he said, quite unsteadily. "Are you ready?"

It was at that instant the feelings of shame and failure from Monday suddenly became real again for me. It was easy to be brave for David when he was blaming himself and upset, but could I be brave for myself? Yes, I decided I would. I wasn't sure I could, but I would if I could. I never was much of a tough guy, and I don't think David would have liked me if I was. "Yeah, yeah, I am," I said.

He rolled off the hammock and got the clean dishcloth and the small bottle of oil. He sucked my cock before he did anything else. That calmed me down. Oh my god, was it calming! Nerves turned into excitement, and excitement gave way to passion, whenever I looked down and saw his face. He carefully poured some oil into his hand and then rubbed it over my cock. He seemed to do it with such loving care. My whole body jolted as he spread the oil by stroking my cock. He poured a little more oil into his hand and reached back to spread it around and up into his ass, just like the book had said. His eyelids fell halfway down, but he kept his eyes on mine. We were sharing every bit of this. We wanted to keep eye contact when we could. He poured the last bit of oil directly onto my cock, smeared it around with his finger, and wiped his hand with the dishcloth.

He stepped forward and kissed me sweetly, then arched his graceful leg over me, letting his knee rest against my ribs. Then he leaned sideways a bit to lift his other leg onto the hammock. I caressed his hips as he reached back to find my cock. Looking into my eyes the whole time, he guided it to the gates of heaven.

It was that simple, and that impossibly powerful. I tried to keep my gaze on him, but my eyes were fighting my effort to keep them open, and for the slightest moment, they won, crunching themselves closed as I let out a groan. I opened them to see David's eyes had also won their battle to roll back into his head as he threw his messy, floppy mane back again. We had done it. No matter what else happened, and a lot more would happen, we'd done it.

He leaned back and put his hands on my thighs to hold himself up. I tried to hold his hips in place so I could do the work. My cock fell out a few times, and I felt I could keep it in if I took charge. That seemed to turn him on more. I began to stroke his cock, and he gasped. His body was getting wiggly, and it was hard to keep him still.

The siren in St. Albert sounded, which always scared me. David leaned forward, put his hands on my shoulders, smiled, and reminded me it was the first Wednesday of the month, which was always the day Minnesota tested the sirens. July sixth. Nuclear war! AIDS! They didn't belong here! I was with my David! Fuck you all! I hated 1983! Except for David!

We were back in our stride after a few seconds of surprise. It worked best with David leaning back and me stroking his cock. He had a cute, pouting look on his face, and he was making sounds like a kitten, still looking me in the eye. I didn't want to have my orgasm yet because this was by far the best I'd ever felt, and I didn't want it to end. I didn't want it to pause. But I didn't think I could hold out much longer. David leaned forward again and put his hands back on my shoulder to look me in the eyes so we could cum together, face-to-face. He began to grunt loudly, and he lost control of his eyes again, rolling them back in that sexy way, throwing his hair back. That was it for me.

It was overwhelming! I must have passed out or something. There was a heavenly brightness all around us, even though my eyes were closed, which sometimes happened during my dreams. I felt a loving warmth from David that I'd never felt before. A jolting electric current passed between the two of us. I heard a scream in the distance, not knowing or caring if it was David or me. We were one.

Chapter 9

Where We Were

We all knew where we were… We all remember when… None of us can forget, but if you'll indulge an old man's pride, I think mine might have been more memorable than most. So very much more memorable.

***

David fell forward on me, my cock having fallen out of his ass, which I was caressing while desperately squeezing him with my arm as I felt the aftershocks. My eyes were still closed tight, but everything was still yellow-white, like if you push too hard on your eyes. But the screaming had become louder. Something was very wrong.

"What's the matter David? Are you ok?"

"Didn't you see it?" He was screaming in terror. I'd never heard that from him before. It didn't register.

"I saw heaven! It was all white everywhere. And it was just the two…"

"NO!!!" he screamed. "Get down Don! We only have a few seconds! That wasn't heaven! GET DOWN!!! Help me Don! I CAN'T SEE!!! We have to get DOWN!!! Down the bank! Into the stream! HELP ME!!!"

You can imagine how stupid I would have felt if I hadn't been so terrified about what was happening with David. I'd heard the "wives' tale" that masturbating could make you blind. Did he think anal sex could do that too? No, I still didn't get it yet. He suddenly grabbed my hair and rolled off the hammock, dragging me with him.

"Ow! David! What's…"

"Open your mouth!" I leaned in to kiss him, my mouth opened just a little, and feeling scared out of my mind. What was wrong with him? Maybe his orgasm was too powerful because it was his first anal sex? He turned his head away and shouted, "NO!!! Just open it!" I pouted at him because he wouldn't let me kiss him. Something was seriously wrong, and I was clueless. "Open your mouth wide! For Henry's sake!" (I will explain in a later chapter about Henry, but for now, I will say he was our friend who died when he was ten from a lung injury, but I didn't get the connection.)

Suddenly we heard the loudest pounding roar, like the growling belly of a hungry dragon the size of a planet exploding all at once. It punched me in my chest; my ears exploded with pain, then it suddenly got quieter, though I could still hear the roar of the trees bending in a sudden gust of wind to the northwest. Some small branches were flying on the wind, and some trees caught fire at their tops. I pulled David into the stream as he'd said. We lay in the cold, muddy water holding each other. Well, he was more curled up and I was wrapped around him. That seemed to calm him down, but what was going on? Why was everything suddenly quieter when tree branches were snapping apart and flying above us? Did my eardrums pop or something? Was this what they said in the bible about the end times? Why were the trees bending in a gust that was coming from the wrong direction, with branches flying over burning treetops? Then, after a split-second of calm, they bent back to the southeast in another gust, and small branches began to fly that way too.

That was when I realized the horrible truth. I had seen the films in school where all the trees bend over from the pressure wave, and then they bend the opposite direction as the air is drawn back in and up into the mushroom cloud. I held even more tightly to the only thing that mattered to me, my David. He had to be ok. One of the trees we'd tied the hammock to dropped a rather large, rotting old branch in the gust, landing almost on top of us, but we were ok. It landed across the narrow banks of the small stream, forming a kind of bridge that would be too weak to walk across.

The small fires on top of the trees went out quickly, just as Dr. Apfelheinz said they would. There had been plenty of rain recently. The stream banks and the deep ravine had protected us against the debris from the blast wave, or the pressure wave, as Dr. Apfelheinz called it. I thought the loud bang was the supersonic blast wave, and the wind was the pressure wave, but I confused those two. Why was I thinking such things??? This was nuclear war! My David! I tucked his small body into mine carefully. I had to protect him. I couldn't live without him! He had to be ok!

After about fifteen seconds, the wind subsided, and I realized it was quieter than it had ever been in those woods. "My ears definitely popped, and they kinda hurt." I didn't want to worry him, but I was in a lot of pain from my ears. The pain didn't last very long though. "Our clothes are all blown away up in trees and all over the woods," I said, at a total loss. "I like you in those white shorts too! But the bag's still here." I was no leader in a crisis.

"We can't worry about that now," he said urgently. I was glad I could hear his words ok. "We have to get to my house right now! I need your help. I can't see." With that, he began to sob.

"I can't hear right… Oh no David. If you're blind and I'm deaf, and we've got to get to safety, that would make a funny movie!" I was not the one with all the social skills.

"We still have to get to my house," he yelled, "and you have to help me. I'm completely blind right now, completely, and you can still hear me, and you can see ok, right? We have to GO! There might be more!"

"I can see fine, and I'm still wearing my glasses, and they're fine, still taped on the right temple over the hinge." I kept saying all the wrong things and trying to be funny or just talking nonsense. Why did I do that? Why was I talking about funny movies or the nerd tape on my glasses? I needed to help my David! I think I had a hard time dealing with serious feelings or something.

I grabbed the bag, which was somehow still hanging from the branch where I'd left it. I hoisted David up to carry him piggyback. He was slender and didn't weigh much, and I could see the branches and move more quickly, even in bare feet. Then another flash lit up the world. We were in the dense part of the woods by then, so we were shaded from the direct, blinding light, and when we hunkered down for the blast wave, somehow, it didn't seem as strong. I'll never forget that pounding in my chest though, but I remembered to open my mouth that time. The trees hardly moved at all when a light breeze blew from the southeast, then back again.

While we sheltered in the trees, there was a third flash, then a fourth, again with much milder blast waves. We saw at least two more flashes, but David was crying with an urgency that we had to get to his house. I picked up his frail body and ran. (He wasn't really frail, just blind, but I was so scared of him getting hurt that I thought of him that way).

I kept running through the next blast waves, nothing was getting through the trees, but the hot wind was terrifying. It didn't burn us, but some of the treetops briefly caught fire. We were almost there when the path through the woods opened onto the River Road, where David lived.

"I can hear we're out of the woods. Look at the clouds," he shouted. I set his light body down across the street in a protective copse of trees by the river. I needed a break for a few seconds anyway. "Can you tell which direction they're moving?"

We were no farm boys, but we lived in the country, on the edge of it anyway, and country boys know how to pay attention to the clouds. (It might be a long walk home if a storm was coming, and we had to know what to look for if there was a tornado watch.) I was panting and panicking or trying like hell to avoid panicking. We were more exposed when we were out of the woods, and we couldn't linger.

"I think they're going to the east," I said. "Yeah, definitely, a little south too."

"Good," he said. "Dr. Apfelheinz said if the winds were normal, or a little more toward the east, the fallout should stay away from us, but we have to hurry anyway. Can you keep going?"

"Yeah," I said. "Let's go." I hoisted him onto my back. We weren't safe from the blinding light or the burning heatwaves if we were on the road without cover when another bomb went off. We moved as fast as I could run, past what seemed a continuous grass fire on the north side of the road. I kept to the south side, where there was more shade from the trees running alongside the Crow River, and more cover from the bluffs on the south side of the river.

The only other house near David's was completely in flames. "Mr. and Mrs. Hendershott!" he cried when I told him about the house fire. I put him down next to a tree on the shaded south side of the road and told him to wait there while I shouted into the house to see if anyone was inside. I couldn't get close to it because the fire was so hot, the grass on their lawn was burning, and so were the weeds along the road. Great hot flames blasted out through the windows and skyward. If they were home, they couldn't still be alive. Everything was eerily muted. I might not have been able to hear them anyway with my bad ears.

"Come on Don! We've got to GO!!!"

"Ok," I said. "I'm coming." He had vomited. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother me, but this wasn't ordinary. This was a nuclear war. I picked him up again and ran as fast as I could the rest of the way to his house. He didn't ask me about the Hendershott's. He knew. We both knew. We also knew we had hardly any cover on that road, and we didn't want to die. But he was already sick.

Chapter 10

Our Shelter Corner

David's house seemed to be in perfect condition. Not one window was broken. A few branches had fallen in his yard, and I quickly threw the ones that were still burning into the narrow, muddy Crow River that flowed behind his house. His house was built on the riverbank, on the north side of the river, surrounded by woods except for his back yard. The low, rocky bluffs across the river and the thick trees covering them had shielded the house wonderfully. Several mallard ducks and about a dozen Canada geese were even wandering around in his yard, scrounging for food as usual.

Then the next problem presented itself. The doors were all locked, and David's house key had been in his shorts pocket. As our clothes had been blown away in the blast, we were both barefoot, naked, and muddy, and I had an oily cock.

"Let's go to my house," I said.

"Your house is out in the open," he said clearly but sadly, looking directly at me with his eyes that could no longer see, but could whisper so beautifully. "It'll be in flames, like the Hendershott's."

"How do you know?" I said, a bit taken aback.

"We can get in here," he said. "I know a way to sneak in through the basement window. We don't have time anyway. There could still be more bombs coming, and who knows where the fallout will end up. Hold my hand, and we'll walk around back."

This time he led me. He knew his way around his yard. He just kept one hand touching the house, and he found his way, even remembering to step over the rainspout. "This is it." He lay prone in the grass and reached into the single basement window well on that side of the house. He fiddled with something metal for a few seconds, and then pushed the window open. "You have to go in first," he said. "I can't see to climb down. You'll have to help me."

I was no leader, but David was completely different in a crisis. He was normally shy and nerdy and excessively kind, but in this emergency, he was like a soldier fighting for our lives, which was exactly what he was doing. I was so confused that when a sensible idea actually occurred to me, I acted on it, like finding that safe copse of trees for David while I looked at the clouds.

I crawled through the window a little way to have a look around. It was about a six-foot drop straight to the floor. After carrying David the whole way barefoot, I didn't like the idea of jumping that far. I had suddenly become aware of how much my feet hurt and how many rocks I must have stepped on with his weight and mine.

"There's a shelf to the left with tools on it," I said. "I'll try to move it closer to the window. Is it ok if most of the tools fall off?"

"I don't think Dad will mind," he said. I think he knew the full meaning of those words, but I didn't.

As I thought, the shelf was too heavy for me to drag toward the window, so I rocked it until the heaviest boxes and things fell from it. Then I was able to drag it into place. I backed out of the window and re-entered feet-first. "It worked, David," I said, "We'll be inside in no time. You'll need to roll onto your stomach and come through the window feet-first."

"You just want to see my ass up close again, I know." How could he joke at a time like that? But what else could we do? I didn't want him to be sick! He had to feel better! I'd seen the films at school!

I wiggled back into the window. It was a strain to bend my back and my neck enough to get my chin clear of the window well. I reached my right leg over until I found the shelf. My belly hurt as it scraped along the cement windowsill. I put my foot on the shelf so I could lift my body back a way, then settled onto my chest as I moved my leg around, feeling for the next shelf down. When I found it, I reached around with my right hand and grabbed the shelf. I was in!

"Give me two minutes!" I called. He couldn't get in the way I did. I couldn't reach him to help him in. I needed to make steps or find a ladder or something. "Does your dad drink beer in bottles?"

"Yes, but you can have some later!"

"Where does he keep his empties? I want to stack them up, so you have something to climb down on."

"His empties are way over to the left," he called, "by the door to the garage. His full cases are on the floor across from the window."

One good thing about 1983 was that beer was sold in cases of 24 returnable bottles, and those cases were so strong you could almost park a car on them when they were full of bottles.

My plan was coming together. I found a small, fuzzy rug in the basement bathroom. I stacked three empty beer cases against the wall, then two full cases, and one more full case. I climbed up the beer-case steps and laid the rug across the concrete windowsill. I didn't want David to get any more hurt than he was.

"Ok," I said. "The steps are ready. The top step is two or three feet below the window. I'll help you find it. You can start backing in now. Good. Keep the rug under your belly."

Soon he was backed into his hips, but the top step was still just a few inches below his toes, and his back and neck were straining upward against the window well. "Oh, dear David," I said, dripping with as much irony as I could muster, "I will have to make this one sacrifice for my love."

I reached around his legs and hugged his thighs, which felt strangely ordinary, not soft at all. I kissed each of his butt cheeks, then lifted him and pulled him back a few inches so he could reach the top step. I caressed his thighs, as I normally would have, even though they didn't feel quite right. I wanted him to feel beautiful. Yeah, even at a time like that. As he made his way down the beer case steps backward, I could see his lovely legs were simply filthy. I imagined I must be too, from all the mud in the creek.

"Come with me," he said loudly, taking my hand.

He led me to a corner to the right of the window we had just entered. We walked through a short, crooked, brick-walled passage into a windowless room surrounded by walls made of big bricks. "This was our plan," he said. "Our plan in case they dropped the bombs was to stay down here for a while until it was safe to come out. We call this our shelter corner."

There was a couch, a recliner, and a table. There were several shelves of things on every wall, including food, water, two radios, lots of batteries, a fan, some odd-looking electronic equipment, a small guitar, and a regular guitar, and something we needed very badly: a first aid kit, and it was big, the size of a suitcase.

"We'll spend most of our time in here," he said. "I'm sorry, Donovan, but we really need to get this mud hosed off of us before we sit anywhere." He led me to the place where the empty beer cases were stacked, next to the door to the garage. "There should be a coiled hose on the wall there and some towels on the shelf over there."

"We just turn on the hose? Won't everything get wet?"

"Some stuff will, I don't care," he said, sounding absolutely exhausted. "There's a drain in the floor where we need to stand. I'll go first. Just hold the hose over my head and help me find the mud."

He shivered out of habit, I think, as I turned the hose on him. He said it felt good when the water flowed from his hair over his butt. Playing 'spot the mud' made it a little more fun too.

"Where's the soap?"

"This is just for the mud," he said. "This area is meant for decontamination if we set it up. We can have a nice warm shower later. Your turn, be careful not to get water in your ears! It's probably best to keep your hair dry. That's very important. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

The water was cold, but it felt good after carrying David through the hot woods and past all those fires. The basement air was warm and humid, not cool like I had expected. I left my hair dry as I hosed down the rest of my body to keep my ears safe, and I tried to get the olive oil off my cock the best I could. I noticed my shoulders felt strange. They were a little rough, but they didn't hurt or anything. Maybe it would come out later with soap.

David looked amazingly cute, beautiful, lovely, and heart-wrenchingly worried, as he stood motionless, wrapped from his shoulders to his ankles in his over-sized bath towel. I took another towel and did my best to dry his thick mop of hair before taking an over-sized bath towel for myself. We made our way to the shelter corner. David sat on the couch. I turned on the fan to relieve the tropical heat. I heaved the massive first aid kit on the table and sat next to David. Two more blinding flashes filled our basement hideaway, followed by thunderous blasts and hurricane winds through the trees. We fell into each other's arms and we both cried hard.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!!!" he screamed.

We were safe for the time being. We had the luxury of thinking about our parents, who we knew we would never see again, though it was easy to forget as long as we felt we were fighting for our lives. We wondered who else in St. Albert had survived. Soon it was clear that David was in real pain. I reached for a light switch, and I was completely surprised when the light turned on. "You still have electricity!"

"Generator" was all I could hear him moan.

When I looked at David again, I could see his forehead was bright red. "David! Your head is burned! What did you do to it? It wasn't like that before."

"It really hurts," he said, "kinda like a bad sunburn, but the fan feels good on it. I think it was the radiation when I went blind."

"I'll help you," I said. "I found this first aid kit. It's so big; there must be something for a burned forehead in here."

"…book in there," I heard him say.

"What? I'm sorry David, but I can't hear you unless you talk loud, I guess."

"There is a book in there. It has information about disasters and first aid. There are medicines in there that you can't get at the pharmacy. Mom got them from the university. She was a doctor and a scientist. There's other medical equipment on the shelf too."

The case was packed full. There were three bottles of this brown liquid, several new packs of all kinds of batteries, even C batteries that no one really used anymore, IV bags and syringes with needles, big bandages, even surgical instruments.

"Ok, I see the book." I opened it to the table of contents. It was a very thick book, and it was arranged by disaster type. "Ok, nuclear explosion, chapter eight."

Somehow this book was making it real. I began to shake, and I was terrified! I turned to chapter eight, which had treatment of burns beginning on page 8-31. "I've got the page for burns, David. Hold on sweetie!"

I had never called anyone a pet name like that before, but I thought it might make him feel better. Doing something weird helped me focus too. "Ok, it says, first, determine whether the burn is first degree, s-second degree, or third degree. Oh! Oh, wow! I'm glad you don't have a third degree burn!" I sat next to David with the book, so I could compare the pictures with his forehead. Oh the relief!

"You have a first degree burn, but since it covers a lot of skin, you will need to be careful in helping it heal. It goes over your eyelids and down to your nose and upper lip. It's big, but otherwise, it doesn't look too bad." I took a bottle of water from the shelf, opened it, put it in his hand, and said, "Drink this. It says you'll need to drink lots of water, even when you don't feel like it. Drink at least eight of these a day. It says that's called 'forcing fluids.' And keep a warm blanket with you because you could go into mild shock. It says that means you start shaking and you feel cold. The most important thing is to drink lots of water, and if we pretend you're already twelve, you can take one or two Tylenol for the pain, ok?"

"Thank you, sweetie. Yes, I would like two Tylenol, please. This really hurts."

It took a while to find the Tylenol, but there were several bottles of it. "Ok, there you go," I said as I held his hand open and put the tablets into his palm. It didn't sound weird when he called me sweetie. It felt wonderful! For just a moment though. I had lots to do. "Now close your eyes," I said, shaking a spray can. "This should feel really good on your burn."

He gasped and said, "Oh yes! Thank you, that feels wonderful!"

"I need to read about your eyes and my ears now," I said. "But my shoulders feel funny. Do they… Oh, you can't, I'm sorry. David hunny, can I borrow your hand, please?" When he had taken his pills, I reached across him and took his right hand in my left. "This is my shoulder. That doesn't feel normal, does it?"

"No!" he said. "What on Earth did you do to it?"

"I don't know. The skin feels all thick and tough, and it's starting to hurt."

"I bet your shoulders are burned too," he said. "They were facing the same direction as my face; only you didn't move right away."

"But I was in the shade, wasn't I?"

"You were near the edge of the shadow, which was just below my eyes, I guess. Maybe you leaned up just when it happened? But Dr. Apfelheinz said the bad stuff, the gamma radiation, can go right through stone and soil and wood if it's not too thick. Or was he talking about fallout? Oh Donovan, I wish I could remember!" He kissed my shoulder and said, "I think we both have a really bad sunburn on certain parts of our bodies; that's all."

"Yeah, and you're blind, and I'm half deaf!" I was getting scared, really scared, but I wanted to stay strong for David. I could still hear, just not very well. He was completely blind and he was sick! I needed to be strong! He had been so strong for me in the woods when I really needed it.

"Donovan, love," he began, melting away all of the pain in my shoulders and bringing peace to my mind at the sound of those words, then reaching around until he found my cheek with his hand, "I finally have you. If I could have my eyes back but not have you, I'd never do it. Please don't get upset about my eyes. Read the book. Flash-blindness isn't supposed to be permanent. I know you didn't like listening to Dr. Apfelheinz during his preparedness talks, but that's ok. I listened, and my dad taught me a lot too. All I really need right now is you and a little love. Our burns will be fine in no time, my eyes will be fine probably in another hour or two, and I think even your eardrums should grow back on their own and be normal, but I can't remember how long that takes. Why don't you read those two sections out loud, and have some water!"

I slowly moved in for a kiss so he could tell I was there first. I instinctively wanted to kiss his forehead, but I decided that it was a bad idea.

"Wait," he said. "Do that again."

"Gladly," I said as I kissed him again.

"I could see the top of your head moving! I could see your hair, only the top, but I think I'm going to be better soon!" We kissed again and smiled. Such a small victory meant a great deal to us that day.

***

I took two Tylenols and drank two bottles of water. David told me that the house had well water, and the generator powered the well pump, so the tap water should be fine too. They used filters for their drinking water, but that was just for taste–it was all safe. I had only asked about water because I wanted to use the toilet.

When I was done, and after waiting fifteen minutes with the bathroom fan on (I'd had problems), we agreed that it was time for a proper shower, so we shared the one in the basement bathroom. There were wax earplugs in the first aid kit, so I put them in my ears first. I got to wash David because I was the one who could see the dirt. I didn't really see any; dirt doesn't stick to perfect boys, only mud.

I 'saw' enough dirt on him to make sure we were both hard. We just had to be careful not to get hot water on our burns. I sucked him off a bit, but he was giggling so hard, I was worried he was going to slip and fall. I was learning about minor burns, but I knew nothing about broken bones. After I washed my hair thoroughly, we dried off and grabbed a big, fluffy blanket to share. This was not how the nuclear war was supposed to be. We were clean; we had each other, we had a toilet, water, food, electricity, everything. This was luxury, not nuclear war.

Sometimes I let myself have those nice thoughts without thinking of my mom.

The first aid book said we should take these big purple iodide tablets because they would help prevent some kind of cancer. It also said my ears would start improving right away, but gradually. In a few weeks, my hearing should be about normal, maybe just a little less. I was sure it was already getting better, but maybe at first, I thought it was worse than it really was. It was serious hearing loss, but I only had to ask David to repeat himself a few times, and just as David had told me, I had to be careful to keep water out of my ears.

The book had grimmer news for David. His eyes should have been better by now. We found out that flash blindness was only supposed to last a few minutes, or it could be permanent. Clearly, David's blindness was neither. His upper field of vision had improved a little, but not his lower field of vision. I was the one who solved that mystery–why part of his vision was coming back, but part wasn't. For me it was easy, and I would never tell David this, but it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

"Do you remember where you were looking when the first bomb blew up? That really big one?"

"No," he said. "I just remember feeling like I was the one who was going to explode like we were that special kind of rocket fuel Dr. Apfelheinz told us about – hypergoblin… something like that. We touch, and we blast off!" He smiled and kissed me. He was getting a lot better at finding my mouth because he could see the top of my head, which gave him a general direction to aim for.

It felt awesome to hear him talk like that about our, well, our experience. It was the end of everything if you're a pessimist. For David, it was our first anal sex, which meant a lot more to us than it might have meant to other gay couples simply because we thought it meant more. We thought it had meant everything, that it was the last step we had to take to become gay boyfriends, almost like getting married. It was official–now we were complete. Almost as important was the fact that we knew how to do it now, and that it felt wonderful for both of us, (I still didn't think a man's big cock would feel good at all, but David was curious), but my mind was filling with darker thoughts.

Our moment of anal sex was also the last moment David was ever likely to see me. We knew it was the end of everything, our school, our town, our parents, everything normal. It was also the time I confused our shared orgasm with the fucking H-bomb. (Was anyone alive that stupid that day?) It was the time I didn't listen to David when he was trying to save my life. It had also been our last go at sex, but I knew there would be much more of that in our future. No, I should say I hoped there would be much more in our future. I didn't like to think of him being sick. At that time, I didn't know whether we had a future. I kept these dark thoughts to myself because David's happiness and optimism kept me alive, and the last thing I wanted to do was suffocate my only joy. He was my joy, and looking at him still made me smile.

"Well, I remember," I said with a forced smile I hoped he could hear.

"What?"

"You do this thing when you're about to lose it," I said. "It's sexy as hell too! You throw your head back, your gorgeous hair follows, and your eyes roll back as you close them halfway."

"I do that?"

"Yeah! And it's so hot! But think for a second. The bomb was the direction you were facing, but your head was nearly upright, and your eyes were rolled back. Where was the bomb?"

"Down, on the horizon. I was looking up, so the bomb was down in my eyes. Yes, I remember that!"

"That's what I think anyway," I said. "Seeing you like that made me orgasm, and that's when the bomb went off. I came for you," (I sang that last sentence from a song my mom liked.) "It was you who made me orgasm. I hope you understand that, and that's why I think you burned your retinas, but only across the bottom. I think your eyes will keep healing a little more, but they won't be the same as they were, and I think that your orgasm saved your vision. If you hadn't thrown back your head and rolled your eyes, maybe you would have had the full flash over your whole retinas."

"Saved by sex," he said. That's how I wanted him to see it.

"I was saved by love," I said. "You saved me."

"Don't be silly!"

"It hurt when you pulled me by the hair…"

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he interrupted. "I was worried you might die!"

"That's what I'm talking about, goofball! You pulled me down to safety just before the pressure wave hit."

"You would have been fine, I'm sure. We were well below ground level."

"Oh, really? You didn't see the huge branch that fell over the stream and just missed us while we were on the ground."

"You had your strong body around me, protecting me."

"The most precious part of this whole world? You bet!"

Chapter 11

Our World

We had been doing a nice job focusing on the here and now, the reality in front of us, but we decided it was for the best to look at the world around us. He pointed me toward a Geiger counter and said, "See the knob that says sensitivity? Turn it from off to battery check. Is the needle in the green arc?"

"Yeah," I said. "Almost all the way to the top."

"Good. Now turn that same knob all the way to x-zero point one."

"It's ticking!" I said. "David! We're being… that means radiation!"

"No, it doesn't Hunny. Ooh I love calling you that!" he giggled. "You listen to me. There is always a little bit of radiation hitting us from outer space, the sun, the rocks in the ground, everywhere. You know all this! It's just a tiny amount. That's what you're hearing. That sound is always there. With this counter, we mostly listen for changes in that ticking sound."

"You mean if it gets faster like I saw on the Six Million Dollar Man?"

"Yes, exactly," he said. "And even then, we don't worry. We turn the switch one click back, and we start taking notes. If they hit Fargo, that was supposed to be a ground burst, because Dr. Apfelheinz said they would probably target their big airport runway, and that almost has to be a ground burst. So if the wind changes more to the south, we might start getting some fallout."

He had me switch on another very large Geiger counter that was sitting on a shelf, which he called the outdoor monitor. It sensed radiation outside the house. It was actually seven different Geiger counters in one, so there were seven switches, but only one battery test, which didn't matter because it was plugged in. That would help us decide when it was safe to go outside. David said he actually helped his dad make that outdoor monitor himself, and I would learn in time just how clever he was. His dad had also said their shelter corner should keep out 99% of the fallout radiation, but listening to that ticking was like listening to the music in a horror movie just before the guy jumps out with the knife and eats some poor teenager.

Next, we decided we should try the radio to see if we could learn what really happened. (We actually believed what they told us in those days. Not for long though, maybe the next five minutes.) We didn't really want to know about our families and friends yet, but we wanted to know what had happened, and if it was over. I tuned one of the radios to 830 AM, a station that I was sure would be on the air. It was the biggest and most important AM radio station in Minnesota.

'CCO 830 broadcasting from one of several undisclosed transmitters in the region. Again, this station is cooperating with the White House and other federal authorities to provide you with news and official information in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area during this national emergency. If you are not in the Twin Cities area, you should tune to a station near you.

Here is a rundown of what we have so far. I'll repeat this from the most recent release by the US Defense Department. 'At three-ten PM Eastern Daylight Time today, the Soviet Union launched a first-strike attack consisting of well over three thousand nuclear missiles against the United States, our worldwide military installations, foreign embassies, ships at sea, and many other American assets abroad, including commercial, governmental, and military. The Soviets also launched more than a thousand additional nuclear missiles against our allies in the northern and in the southern hemisphere. The attack was not directed at NATO targets exclusively, though the attack was launched apparently in reaction to NATO exercises in international waters of the North and Baltic Seas and on land along the East German border. Some intelligence officials, who we will not name at this time, also believe this attack came as a sign of Soviet displeasure with the American deployment of intermediate-range Pershing II and cruise missiles in West Germany. Their objective was clearly the complete destruction and demolition of the United States of America before we could mount a counterstrike. As none of the Pershing II missiles in West Germany were operational at the time, US rapid counterstrikes originated from submarine fleets in the Black Sea and in the Arctic Ocean. None of these missiles were launched from assets involved with today's NATO exercise. We must emphasize that this was a legitimate exercise in international waters, conducted according to the treaty, properly reported in advance to the Soviets, and fully monitored by the Soviets according to treaty agreement. The world needs to know our integrity as a nation remains sound. Our treaty remains our bond. Today's exercises were perfectly consistent with the letter and the intent of every treaty the US and NATO have with the Soviet Union.

'The rapid counterstrikes launched from US submarines destroyed strategic targets in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Nizhny Novgorod. Also destroyed were the Baikonur Cosmodrome missile research complex and numerous other strategical targets, including many launch facilities whose missiles were still resting in their silos. Residents of these cities and facilities were unable to know the outcome of their attack on the US before our rapid counterstrikes destroyed them. Within minutes of the rapid counterstrikes, an unspecified number of American Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles destroyed their targets throughout the Soviet Union and their military assets abroad. Every nation hosting Soviet military assets, regardless of whether they were used in today's attack against the United States, has suffered similar counterstrikes. At this moment, we believe the enemy is no longer able to wage a war of any kind against the United States of America.'

That's from the US Department of Defense. 'We believe the enemy is no longer able to wage a war of any kind against the USA.' No confirmation yet whether that definitely means there will be no more incoming missiles, but it gives us reason to hope. In fifteen minutes, we expect to hear from the president, who is now aboard Air Force One at an undisclosed location. We will, of course, bring that to you live.

That's the, uh, that's the war, what we know of it so far. Yes? Yes, I understand we are going to go live now for a message from Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor Marlene Johnson. We'll go to that now.

…have suffered a great tragedy this day. It is with the deepest sorrow that I must report that in the State of Minnesota, at least thirteen confirmed nuclear weapons have been detonated. The first is believed to have been a single airburst with an estimated yield of forty to fifty megatons, located somewhere above the State Fairgrounds. We believe this was intended to wipe out the entire Twin Cities Area in the event their other devices failed, and that it was also intended as the Soviets' primary electromagnetic pulse weapon against the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. Both Minneapolis and Saint Paul were again hit with massive detonations, presumed to have been airbursts of unknown yield, over the downtowns, along with a fourth detonation near western Bloomington, believed to be a ground burst at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. A fifth device was detonated at the location of the abandoned missile silos near Farmington, though Soviet officials had previously verified that they had been decommissioned many years ago. Clearly, we will need the assistance of federal officials to understand that specific detonation more clearly

.

Two detonations were observed in Duluth, in the Port of Duluth and over the airport. The eighth device was detonated on the surface of Camp Ripley near Little Falls, the ninth over Downtown Rochester, and the tenth over the Rochester airport. The three remaining confirmed detonations were secondary strikes on Camp Ripley, the Duluth International Airport, and Downtown Rochester. We have unconfirmed reports of lower-yield blasts near the transmission towers in Shoreview and over Saint Paul Downtown Airport.

In addition to these attacks, nuclear detonations have been observed along the Minnesota borders with North and South Dakota in the vicinity of Grand Forks, Fargo, and Sioux Falls. Other nuclear weapons may also have detonated over Minnesota, including the possible strikes on Saint Paul Downtown Airport and the transmission towers in Shoreview, but the thirteen I have listed are the ones we have confirmed through state and county officials.

We have reason to expect that many low-yield devices have been directed at the numerous power plants in Minnesota, but I caution you, no such attacks have been confirmed. I must also caution you that we have not been able to confirm which of these were airbursts and which were groundbursts, so statewide disaster response agencies will, for now, assume they have all been groundbursts, with the attendant downwind fallout. I urge everyone who can hear my voice to find shelter of some sort. Any shelter is better than no shelter.

Please remain in a safe place, as we cannot tell you whether the attack is over. We await word from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give you advice and official instructions concerning your health, sheltering, food supplies, fallout patterns, radiation levels, and when it is safe to emerge from your places of safety. The Minnesota Department of Health, the Minnesota Air National Guard, and the Army National Guard have teams in the field at this moment to assess statewide fallout and to develop strategies for statewide maintenance of food, water, and health care delivery. I have determined that if we have received no information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency by five o'clock this afternoon, the State of Minnesota will assume these vital duties until relieved by FEMA, at which time we will, of course, assist them any way we can. If our teams in the field find reliable evidence of fallout conditions within Minnesota before five o'clock, we will, of course, pass that information to you via this radio station immediately, so please keep your radio tuned where it is.

Again, Governor Perpich has not yet been located. As soon as he can be reached, he will assume statewide control of this situation, but you should know that we have not been sitting still while we wait. All members of the Minnesota state militia have been called to muster, and many have already been brought into action. The Minnesota National Guard and Air National Guard have been mobilized, and I can confirm that all combat and specialty aircraft stationed at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport were able to leave the ground before the attack, though an unknown number of military transport aircraft were left behind.

We have no official confirmation, but we have every reason to believe all military aircraft were also able to depart the Duluth International Airport and Camp Ripley before the attack. I expect confirmation at any moment. I have established communications with commanders of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard stationed deep in their Twin Cities bunker, and following my order, they have verified to me that our combat aircraft, which include jet fighters and helicopter gunships, are currently flying combat air patrol missions over the state, and they will continue to do so until ordered to stand down. Do not be alarmed if you see aircraft overhead. Those are our boys up there.

Our state has been devastated, and a terrible road lies ahead. I would not disrespect those we have lost today or offend your sensibilities as Minnesotans by denying that, or by trying to understate our horrific losses and our dreadful condition at this moment. We Minnesotans have a long tradition of helping each other out, of sharing what we have, and of rebuilding. We are alive – We have survived. That was our only duty during the attack – to stay alive. Now we must remember that we are strong together, and we will rise from these ashes.

We must continue to survive and help each other out. The time for rebuilding will come soon enough, but for now, please stay safe while our emergency professionals go about the tremendous work of rescuing those who can be rescued. If you pray, as I do, now would be a good time. If you do not pray, I ask you to keep in your hearts the needs of those around you. Wish them well. They are not your enemies. They are your neighbors. A kind heart and kind wishes are likely the only things most of us can offer each other, for now, and for now, that is enough. I thank you very much. I will report to you, the people of Minnesota, via this radio station, every thirty minutes until Governor Perpich assumes control. Thank you.

After an uncomfortable pause in which David and I could ponder the nightmare just described by the lieutenant governor, the radio announcer's voice returned to say:

This just being handed to me… Ok. Now with news from here at home, news concerning the impact of this attack on our nation and our defenses against the attack, we read to you a release issued just moments ago by General Alexander Bramford of the United States Air Force, Commander of NORAD. It reads, 'As we all mourn and grieve in our hearts for the sad, countless losses of American lives, we must remember that today is a day of which all Americans shall forever be proud. The Soviet Union, in an unprovoked first-strike attack, launched over three thousand nuclear missiles, targeted toward American soil. The United States Air Force is responsible for repelling this kind of attack, and repel it we did, with our two-pronged defensive strategy. This strategy consisted of directing all of our anti-ballistic missile defenses at inbound targets whose trajectories would bring them to our large, non-strategic population centers, and launching an overwhelming number of American intercontinental ballistic missiles on their targets before incoming enemy missiles had the opportunity to destroy them on the ground. We are pleased to announce that fewer than one in every hundred of our Minuteman III missiles failed to launch. These launch failures were mostly due to scheduled maintenance and various mechanical issues, many of which were being worked on at the time of the attack. Due to the redundancies in the US missile defense targeting system, every enemy target has been hit, nearly all by two or more warheads, and every enemy target has been destroyed. We have completely destroyed the greatest enemy the United States of America and the free world have ever known. We are also pleased to announce that the enemy severely underestimated the efficacy of America's anti-ballistic missile defenses. For each Soviet missile launched at a non-strategic population center, at least ten anti-ballistic missiles were sent up to destroy it, and destroy them we did, with greater than ninety-five percent efficacy. America stands tall, America stands proud, and America stands victorious. God bless the United States of America.'

As he read the release, the announcer read faster and faster, as if racing to the end.

Ok, that's from the US Air Force. Very… very patriotic, I think. Still waiting to hear from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so we'll bring it to you as soon as we get it. We just heard from Lieutenant Governor Marlene Johnson that at least thirteen nuclear detonations have taken place in Minnesota, and perhaps as many as eight in the Twin Cities area. Eight? No, I'm sorry, that's seven by my count. I beg your pardon. As yet, we have no confirmations from administration officials concerning which Soviet nuclear weapons have hit cities outside of Minnesota.

"He didn't mean that at all," David said. "Patriotic, I mean. I don't think the guy liked reading that at all. Dr. Apfelheinz had a word for that kind of talk. Something like… they're being janglists or something. Besides, if we shot down all their missiles, why did we have thirteen of them hit Minnesota? I think it was a bunch of lies. Do you want to listen to the President?"

"Not really," I said, feeling very disappointed that even after the world nearly ended, our government was lying to us, as always.

"Me either," said David. "Can you get anything else on the radio?"

I found one other station at 1390 on the AM dial, which I knew was KXSS in St. Cloud. It had a much weaker signal than it usually had, and it was playing the exact same stuff we heard on 830, but I found some music at 104.7 on the FM dial, KCLD. It also had a weak signal, but it was enough to get David excited.

"Oh, I like this song!" David stood up, throwing the blanket aside, and began to dance. He sang along, "Cuz life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." I loved that song too, but I didn't feel like dancing to it. I wasn't going to stop David though, as long as he knew where the table was and he didn't hurt himself by bumping into something.

My mind was going to that dark place again. David had to know that the song was about nuclear war! Didn't he? How the world was going to end tonight because of nuclear war instead of in 1999, when it was supposed to end? He looked so beautiful and carefree, dancing and being happy even though he was blind, even though Doomsday had finally arrived, even though the song was making fun of our exact situation. Was he being stupid? Was he pretending nothing happened? Was I being silly? David was usually the smart one. Did I need to cheer up? The world just blew itself up! The military people said we were fine, but the lady on the radio from Minnesota said something very different. I was in pain, and my sweet David was blind. We'd both been hit by some kind of burning radiation, so we both might die. My mom… She was already dead. David's parents too. Everyone was… I began to cry just as the same song began to play again on the radio.

I didn't want David to hear me, but he did. He sat next to me and told me to turn off the radio. "Can you tell me about it, Donovan sweetie?" I couldn't say anything. I couldn't even nod or shake my head. He snuggled under the blanket and put his arm around my chest. He whispered into my ear, "I love you very much Donovan. I love you very much. That's why we can be ok after all this. I love you very much, and I know you love me just as much." I couldn't turn my head, but I managed the slightest nod. Then I realized he wouldn't be able to see it anyway.

***

What could any of us do that day? Absolutely nothing but survive, like the lieutenant governor said, but why bother? It was completely overwhelming. I'm nobody special, just some sad old guy telling his war stories from long ago. It was like that for everybody right away. If you're reading this, that means you lived through it too. Or your parents did. If you were born after the war, there's a good chance you had at least one of your own parents to help you grow up. That's a wonderful change that I hope we can continue. Our parents were gone, like so many kids. There might have been more orphans than adults that day, or in the weeks that followed. I don't think anyone bothered taking a census. So, I'm just one of a million others, but as I told you from the beginning, I was fortunate; I found love – I found David.

Maybe I am special. It makes me feel special to say that I was the one David was in love with. So, I am special, and so are you, or so you will be when you find love. I had him to strengthen me through those impossible times, and I only hope I was a quarter as much help to him. I loved him, and I know what it feels like to be loved by the one I loved, especially during the worst time everyone in the entire world has ever known. How many others were able to smile occasionally?

Chapter 12

Excuses for Happiness

I was lucky. I would say the glass was 99% empty, and David would say "Look, Don! There's still a splash of water in there! Would you like it?" His optimism was ridiculous, but it was as if he was a naturally happy person who was constantly in search of the slenderest excuse to act as happy as he seemed to feel, but this was not an ordinary time. We were sure we'd lost our parents (though we hadn't dared talk about it yet), he was blind, and the human race had just blown itself up an hour or two earlier. (I had no idea.) I never wanted to see him hurt, but it worried me that he might be cracking up if he didn't show some sort of horror or something. I was crying with no hope of the pain stopping, and he was comforting me as if everything was going to be ok. Nothing mattered because there was nothing left to matter. It had all been blown up. After maybe twenty minutes of me crying, I said so to David.

"All of it?" He pushed my hair away from my forehead, sounding positively joyous. "Donovan, nothing has ever mattered more to me than you, and here you are, sitting with me, naked, sharing a blanket, taking care of me. We have a whole house that seems to be ours now. We have electricity and running water, and the stream up the ravine has the best tasting water anywhere in case we lose the water here. We have all my clothes, and my mom and dad's clothes too if we're still here when we grow up, we have Mom's vegetable garden in the back yard if the fallout stays away, a refrigerator and two freezers full of food, plus all kinds of food on the shelves, and you seem to be pretty good as a doctor. And we can have anal sex now! We have our whole lives left, and we can have them together. Those are a few things that haven't been blown up. Right now, does anything else matter?"

I couldn't argue with him even if I'd wanted to. I was sure he'd been thinking of all those things to say to me ever since the bomb fell. You know, like raindrops on roses. I wasn't happy, but I was less devastated – a little. When you get a little bit of 'David joy,' you know a little more will make you feel much better.

"You mean, we can… now? Like right now?" He knew I was pretending I hadn't heard anything but the part about anal sex, but he was David.

His nose bumped into mine. Then he felt his way around to my lips and kissed me softly. He smiled and said, "That's not what I meant" with an air of innocence that would give anyone a big boner. "Why? Did you want to? I mean, right now? Because I'd…" I took his hand and gently placed it on my hard cock and silenced him with a kiss.

We found a hand towel in the linen closet next to the bathroom and a bottle of oil from one of the many shelves of food. I lay across the couch with my head on the arm. Suddenly this felt difficult. Very difficult. We had just done this maybe an hour or two ago, and it ended with the most horrific calamity ever. Soon I realized that, even though I was feeling scared and miserable, when a boy like David begins working your cock, it's not possible to lose your boner, and soon there was no more nightmare. There was David, and we were one.

He straddled me gracefully and easily and leaned forward for a kiss, like we'd done on the hammock, with his hands on my shoulders. "Ow!" I said. "My shoulders kinda hurt." He looked mortified and apologized excessively. "I guess we just need to adapt a little. It falls out anyway when you lean forward. Let's try it again with you leaning back."

"Ok," he said. "I'm really sorry," he repeated. He knelt upright, took my slippery cock into his hand, and guided it into his soft tunnel of love. It slid in easily, with shocks of pleasure through my body. I was only eleven, so my cock wasn't so thick that he needed stretching or anything. It felt so nice! He leaned back slightly, holding himself up with his hands on my thighs, and I caressed his hips, just as we had done on the hammock.

I felt just a little sick when the dark thoughts intruded. I stopped for a moment and said, "David, this is just how it was. You know, when it happened. I don't want to think about that. Maybe we could do something different?"

"I feel like that too," he said. "I remember more of the last things I ever saw clearly, and the one I remember most is you. I think now is the time we need to chase away the bad memories and not let them steal such an important part of our love. This is a great way to make love, it works for both of us, and we need it to mean something different, something other than all the bad things that have happened. I think the sooner, the better. Let's make this our special, favorite way to make love instead of remembering it as that thing we were doing when it all happened. Do you think we can do that, Donovan sweetie?"

I moved my cock around slightly in his ass, which felt very nice. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I'd like that." He leaned forward to kiss me again, and my cock popped out. "Oh! I just remembered!"

"What?"

"My uncle told me what to do in case of fallout!"

"That sounds important," he said, "but the Geiger counter…"

"Put it back in and take shorter strokes!" I had to explain my joke to him, but he was happy (and I was surprised) that I was also able to be light-humored too. He put it back in, and I took short, powerful strokes. We went slowly, and for some reason, that felt even better than going fast. His hand was still covered in oil, so he stroked his own cock, just as slowly as we fucked. When his head flew back, it was like pulling my cock's trigger. He made his soft crying sound, and I made whatever loud grunt I made, and we stopped, remaining still.

"You're right," he said. "I do throw my head back and roll my eyes up."

"I know," I smiled, knowing he couldn't see it. "I think that will always make me orgasm, even if I'm just looking at you across the room with my clothes on." He leaned forward, my cock popped out, and he lay on top of me. I pulled the blanket over us and caressed his soft body.

Having a good, hard cry and then making love to an astonishingly beautiful boy can do a lot to improve one's mood. Everything in the world was still horrible, but that was the world outside. Inside, our little basement hideaway life was lovely, for the moment anyway.

***

I opened my eyes to the most beautiful sight the world has ever known. David was smiling at me. He kissed me when he saw I was awake. "How long have I been asleep? What time is it?"

"Just a few minutes," he said, "and I don't know."

Then I suddenly tried to sit, which didn't work out well with his lovely body lying on top of mine, right where I wanted it. I had realized something very important, and now I'd startled him. Had he really seen that I was awake? He was blind, but he seemed to notice when I opened my eyes. I gasped and asked him, "Could you see, I mean when my eyes opened, could you see my eyes open? I thought you were looking at me."

He smiled, keeping his eyes on mine. Holding his gaze, he gave me a quick kiss and said, "Yes, I can see a little more now. If I look you right in the eye, I can't see your iris or your pupil," which were two parts of the eye that Dr. Apfelheinz had taught us about in our first week that summer, "but I can see the very top of your eyelids. When your eyes are open, and we're almost close enough to kiss, I can see your eyelashes pointing up to your eyebrows. I never realized how beautiful your eyelashes were."

"Oh, David!" I pulled him in tightly to hug him, accidentally bumping his burned forehead. He didn't say anything. He just held on loosely as I almost squeezed the life out of him. "I'm so happy! Your eyes are getting better!"

"A little better, yes," he said in a calm voice that told me he was about to pee on my picnic, "but you read the first aid book. You know if it's nerve damage, it won't come back. It's permanent." I felt like a little boy being told by my mom not to get my expectations up. He was right, of course, but if he was improving, that meant we didn't know how bad the damage was to his retina.

"You saw me open my eyes," I said calmly. Suddenly I felt a tear roll from my eye. "You're getting better. Ok, you won't see like you used to, but if you can see my eyelids today, maybe you will see my eyes tomorrow. Or the next day?"

"I guess we'll know tomorrow or the next day," he said. "For now, I think I can find my way around the basement by myself if I keep my eyes pointing down. I think that's really good news!"

"Soon, you'll be peeing in the toilet, standing up again!"

We giggled and kissed for maybe a minute. We had made a rule that whenever we had good news, we would kiss. There was so much bad news, and we were only letting a little in at a time, but we didn't want it to bury our new happiness with each other. David was always so happy naturally – he was better at that than I was. "I think we should turn the radio on again, at least to find out what time it is," he said. "Besides, they might be able to tell us about Fargo. If the wind is off by just a little, we could get a bunch of fallout."

I took the radio from the table and turned it on just as Prince was singing, 'Everybody's got a bomb, we could all die any day.' Could I ever love that song again? 'But before I let that happen, gonna dance my life away.' I switched the radio back to AM, but I thought a minute before turning the dial to 830. That was David – that song. That verse anyway. He wasn't going to lie down and die just because the bomb went off. As long as he was alive, he was going to dance. As long as I was alive, I would dance with him. I would sure try.

I set the humming and hissing radio down and hugged him. I don't think he understood the effect he had on me. I still needed to feel scared and depressed for a little while longer, but I also needed him to give me something to strive for emotionally. I wanted to dance too. I decided right then that if I had that attitude just some of the time – that would be good. Soon I would try to have that attitude most of the time, but right then, some of the time was all I thought I could handle.

"Hang on," I said. "Be right back." Before tuning the radio in, I had to make an urgent dash to the toilet. There was no denying it. I had bad diarrhea, and it was getting worse. I was sick. David had thrown up; now, I had the runs. We both had radiation burns, and I couldn't remember the last time either of us ate anything. We were dying, and I knew it. But that was far too much to take in, so I adopted David's attitude and danced back into our little corner of paradise, singing, "Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999."

Chapter 13

Fargo

…830 on your AM dial, WCCO, your source for news and official information during this time of national emergency. It's four fifty-three in the Twin Cities…

"That's it!" David pointed to a shelf and said, "there are two wind-up alarm clocks there. Do you see them? You can set one of them now and wind it up."

"Wow, what kind of luck is that?" I asked. "We turn it on, and they give us the time right away!" I kissed David because that was a small bit of good news, turned the tiny knob on the back of the first clock until the hands pointed to the right time, and wound it up. "What's this little lever for? It has a turtle and a rabbit on it."

"I think that makes the clock go a little faster or slower," he said. "You know these wind-up clocks aren't very accurate."

"This one is perfectly accurate," I said in my nerdiest voice. "You mean…"

"Precise," we both said together. Any science nerd worth his salt knows the difference between accuracy and precision.

…heard from the president almost an hour ago that no more Soviet missiles were on their way, and that we expect no more launches, after having destroyed all known Soviet launch facilities. The president did not comment on Soviet missile submarines, Soviet bombers, or the position of the Chinese government after this major nuclear exchange between the two superpowers.

We've still had no word from the Federal Emergency Management Agency here in Minnesota, though we are coming up on five o'clock, which is the time Lieutenant Governor Johnson has set for state authorities to assume the roles usually served by FEMA. During her four thirty messages, the lieutenant governor gave word that a fallout cloud was spreading from Fargo to the southeast, moving on a compass heading of about one hundred twenty degrees, which means it will be approaching from the northwest from three hundred degrees on the compass. She has ordered two specially-equipped aircraft to monitor the development and movement of the fallout cloud, and teams on the ground are also keeping watch. If it maintains its current course, quoting from the lieutenant governor's four-thirty message now, 'areas to the north of the Twin Cities can expect the heaviest fallout, with more moderate fallout to the east, and lighter fallout to the west.' As of four-thirty, fallout had not been observed in the area surrounding the Twin Cities, and state forecasters didn't expect the fallout to reach the Twin Cities area for 'a few more hours,' as Lieutenant Governor Johnson put it, though currently severe fallout is believed to be affecting areas to the east and southeast of Saint Paul as a result of the ground bursts in and around the Twin Cities. We wish to emphasize that this is not a message that it is safe to go outside anywhere in the state. There are severe hazards and radiation from the original blasts. That caution coming from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department, who are currently coordinating all rescue efforts within Hennepin County.

Also from the lieutenant governor's four-thirty announcement concerning medical, rescue, and other safety personnel, she stated: 'All police officers and staff, all firefighters, emergency medical personnel, physicians, hospital staff, nurses, and all other healthcare workers, including public health workers and home care workers, are called to emergency duty. You are to report to your regular place of work. If you cannot get to your regular place of work, or if it is unsafe for you to do so, you are to report to the nearest fire station, police station, hospital, or local clinic. If you are an emergency worker or other healthcare worker, and your normal place of work is in downtown Minneapolis or Saint Paul, do not attempt to go to either downtown under any circumstances. The entire area within the I-494 and I-694 loop, except for the far western portion, as well as the area north of the Cities to a line extending from northern Brooklyn park to the north shore of White Bear Lake, and all areas east of the I-494 and I-694 loop to the Wisconsin border, has been designated as a hot zone, meaning rescue operations are unsafe. It is considered unsafe to enter this area under any circumstances. Lethal doses of radiation can be encountered with just a few minutes of exposure. I want to point out that, if persons currently in this hot zone are in fallout shelters, they are likely to be protected, even from the worst of this fallout. Yet I will not mislead you. Mortality rates are going to be very high in the hot zone.'

After a brief pause, as if to collect himself, the announcer continued reading.

'Very little is known about the area east of Saint Paul, though in Stillwater doses of more than three thousand rads per hour have been measured. The Hennepin County Sheriff's Department has established assembly points at the city halls of Osseo, Plymouth, and Edina for the Minneapolis emergency and healthcare workers I mentioned, and the city halls of Inver Grove Heights and White Bear Lake have been established in agreement with neighboring county authorities as assembly points for emergency and healthcare workers from Saint Paul. These locations are considered safe for rescue, and medical operations as the radiation in these locations are rapidly diminishing, and no further fallout expected. All fallout from the Twin Cities area is affecting western Wisconsin. No assembly point east of Saint Paul has been established due to this observed fallout. Please keep in mind as you make your way to an assembly point that there are numerous fires reported throughout the entire Twin Cities area so that caution will be necessary. Firefighters and rescue workers are to use their discretion in deciding whether to stop and conduct firefighting and rescue operations before reporting to their assembly points, but I urge you to consider the advantage of coordinating fire and rescue services centrally. I must caution you not to attempt independent firefighting and rescue operations for which you are not adequately equipped or trained, and you should have a plan for evacuation and care for any rescuees. You know your duty, and I trust your judgment. If you are an emergency worker or other healthcare worker, and your normal place of work is in downtown Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and if you can make it to one of these assembly points, please do so immediately. You are also instructed to bring any working emergency vehicles and equipment to which you might have access to the assembly points, and those who are able are requested to bring their own personal four-wheel-drive or other off-road vehicles if possible.' Emergency and healthcare workers have all been called into service statewide to perform heroic works as the state tries its best to recover from nuclear war.

Something the lieutenant governor said earlier bears repeating. In Minnesota, we have a tradition of helping each other out, sharing what we have, and of rebuilding. It's going to be a difficult road ahead, we all know that, and I hope those of us here at WCCO can be some sort of support as we rebuild together. We will continue to bring you all official releases and addresses from government officials, but we sincerely hope we can do more. Helping, sharing, and rebuilding – that sounds like a good motto. Never give up, folks. If you feel like giving up, tell someone a Sven and Ole joke. If there's no one around, tell it to yourself, and laugh out loud! Y'know, Minnesotans will often ask, 'What else ya gonna do? Sometimes ya just gotta laugh at the whole doggone thing.' Here's one to get you started: Ya sure, doncha know, Sven and Ole vent ice fishing last vinter. Ya know, Ole sat on da ice so long he got polar-oids! We're gonna get through this, Minnesota. We're gonna get through this.

By the way, as you could probably tell from that example, we could use your help compiling some higher quality Sven and Ole jokes here. Consider it your way of helping to preserve a deeply important part of our Minnesota heritage. Of course, our phone and fax lines are down, but we are monitoring CB radio channel eight and shortwave radio on the nineteen meter band at fifteen point five five megahertz. Our broadcast can also be heard on the forty-nine-meter band at six point zero five. We cannot pass on personal messages for everyone on our main broadcast, but we'll do what we can to connect you with others on the nineteen-meter band with our five hundred watt transmitter. Let us know if you have any important information that we should know about, or give us a CQ to say hi and let us know you're ok, and share your best Sven and Ole morale boosters. We usually do all the talking, but right now, it would be nice if we could hear from you.

Coming up on the top of the hour, we'll have a recap of everything we know so far, and of course, we'll bring you Lieutenant Governor Marlene Johnson's latest update live.

"I'm really starting to like this guy," I said. "He seems like he's struggling too, only he has to keep talking. I wonder if he ever gets a break to think about things."

"He might not want to think about things," David said gravely. "I like him because I think we can believe him. He reads that stuff from the government with a different tone when he thinks it's nonsense like he's trying to sound super-official. He talks more like a regular person if he believes it. Could you hear the sadness in his voice when he was reading that stuff about emergency workers?"

"Yeah," I said. "I couldn't do his job. I'd be screaming at those stupid people who did this to us!"

"And nobody would know when the fallout was coming or where the firemen needed to go."

"Yeah, but what about the fallout? He said a bunch was coming this way from Fargo," I said. "Did that mean it was coming here?"

"Not yet," he said calmly. "There are a few maps on that shelf, next to the flashlights. Let's see where it's going now."

I spread a map of Minnesota over the table, and David rummaged around in his dad's tool area. He returned with a large protractor. "This will help us watch the cloud."

We had used protractors in math class for the first time that year, and I was glad. I found Fargo, and I laid the dot at the center of the protractor's arc right over the city. "He said it was coming from three hundred degrees?" David nodded, and I scratched my head. "But, this only goes to one-eighty."

David giggled and said, "Only a month into summer vacation and you've forgotten everything!" He took the protractor in his hand, turned it around and pointed it a specific direction, then said, "You'll have to put it in the right position. Do you see the lines on the map that go straight up and down? Find a line that goes close to Fargo. Ok, put the middle of the protractor on that line, keep it there, and turn it, so you get the sixty-degree mark on the same line, right above."

"Ok, but why sixty degrees? The guy said three hundred?"

"We want to know the direction the cloud is going," he said calmly. "He said it was coming from three hundred, but that means it's moving toward one-twenty. The protractor covers one hundred eighty degrees. How do you get one-twenty from one-eighty?

"Subtract sixty!" I said, finally getting it.

"Oh, it's coming back now? You're going to lose your science nerd license if you're not careful." He gave me a nice sweet kiss. "Ok, keep the center of the protractor and the number sixty right on the line on the map, and move it up and down until the left edge goes over the Fargo airport. I think that one is south of the city. Oh no. Wait a minute. I'm not sure. It has a huge runway that goes north and south, almost three miles, I think."

I found the airport, and when I put the protractor over the line like David said, it looked like the edge of the protractor was pointing not far from us. David felt around in a small box on a shelf behind us and handed me a pencil. "Trace the straight line now across the bottom of the protractor," so I did. "Now move the protractor to the right, so it's over another line going up and down. Make sure the left side can reach the line you just traced. Now move it up or down until the edge meets the line, and retrace it. You should get a line that's twice as long but going the same direction."

"It goes right through Little Falls, then between Cambridge and Princeton. It's way north! It's gonna miss us!"

"I'm sorry, Donovan," he said. "That's just the middle of the cloud. They have to tell us how wide the cloud is, too, but I guess they don't know yet. We might get some fallout. Maybe you could measure how far we are from that line."

"Real close to thirty miles," I said, relieved to know we were nowhere near the line.

"I think we'd better plan for getting fallout then," he said. My heart sank, but he knew what he was talking about. In reality, I was the radiation and fallout expert, but I was in denial. "In that room with the tools on the floor," he said, "there should be some duct tape on the workbench somewhere. Can you find it?"

"Got it. One roll or two?"

"Better grab two," he said, standing in the doorway to that room. "Your job will be to go around the basement windows with that tape and make sure there are no openings to the outside, not even a little hole, ok?"

"Ok," I said. "I don't think I can reach them. They're too high. I'll just use the beer cases."

"There should be a ladder in the back of that room." I found it and got to work, using the beer case stairs for the first window. "I'm going to fill the bathtub with water," he said. "Not to drink, but if we lose our well water, we'll have water to wash our clothes and things."

"You're not gonna start wearing clothes, are you?" I don't think he could hear me with the water running. I couldn't hear his reply if he gave me one. I knew we couldn't be naked forever, even though I felt freer than ever, and seeing David's spectacular naked self made me feel better in that horrible situation.

I had just begun working on the second window when I gasped in a wonderful surprise as I felt a gentle hand squeeze my butt. "You snuck up on me!"

"I didn't sneak! You just can't hear me coming," he giggled devilishly. There must be a thousand ways a boy can giggle, and David knew them all. "I thought maybe this would go faster if I tore off pieces of tape and handed them to you. Just tell me how long." It did go much faster. We kept the Geiger counter close by in case the fallout came sooner than expected. Meanwhile, the outdoor monitor ticked merrily away in the shelter corner. "We also have to tape the two doors, the one to upstairs and the one to the garage, but first I think we should look through the garage to see if we need anything."

Chapter 14

Sven and Ole

"Oh! Is that my mom's car?"

"I dunno. It's blue with a white top."

"Yep," he said smiling. "That's hers. You might have to learn how to drive sometime."

"Why me?"

"I can't reach the pedals. I can't see either," he said, sticking his tongue out at me. He felt around the shelves and asked, "Do you see a folded-up vinyl car cover here? There's a cover for her car in case she keeps it outside. Dark red."

"Found it."

"Great! Dad told me it was essential in case there's fallout to cover the cars. Being in the garage isn't enough. The fallout dust can get in the vents. The cover keeps it all clean." Then he burst into a big smile, even for him. "I've got a great idea!"

He took a key off the hook on the garage wall and invited me into the car. "Put the key in and click it backward." The radio came on, but it was just a hiss. He managed to turn it off without difficulty. "Mom and Dad both have CB's in their cars," he said. "We can call that radio station!"

"Wow!" I said, not realizing such a cool thing was possible. I learned how to work a CB from my stepdad, and I knew most of the ten-codes and what they called CB slanguage. I turned on the power, switched to channel eight, and adjusted the squelch. People were talking! Most sounded like they were in pain or scared.

One female voice was very clear and calm in the din. "I'm sorry Hunny. I wish I had more information for you, but we've got nothing east of Saint Paul until the Stillwater and Oak Park Heights penitentiaries. They report the inmates are safe in deep underground shelters with access to food and medical care, they measure fallout at around three thousand rads per hour outside, and they are arranging for emergency work details of minimum security prisoners to help assist in whatever way the governor decides they are needed when the fallout subsides. That's all we know, but they promise they'll stay in contact with fallout reports."

"Ten-four. Ladybug on the side," replied the sad voice.

"CCO 830 is ten-ten."

"They're so scared and miserable," I said. "They need a joke! Quick!"

"I can't think of one," David said, his forehead wrinkled unusually from his burn.

I could only think of a few really bad ones, but we decided to call when there was a break, which happened quicker than we thought. "Breaker eight, breaker eight for CCO 830," I said, affecting a southern trucker accent like everybody else on the CB did.

"CCO 830, go ahead break."

"Yeah CCO 830, this is…"

"What's our handle?" I asked David urgently.

"Sven and Ole," he whispered.

"CCO 830 this is Sven and Ole with a joke for you."

"Sven and Ole, that's wonderful! We need a good laugh right now."

"Um, CCO 830, it's not the best, but it's the only one we could think of."

"Ok, Sven and Ole," she said, "go ahead with it. I'll record it here, and we'll see if we can get it on the air."

Now I affected my goofiest, stereotypical Norwegian accent, as is expected in Minnesota when telling a Sven and Ole joke (which is really half the fun) and said, "Vell hey dere, doncha know," which was always the proper greeting to open a Sven and Ole joke. "Sven and Ole, dey vas a-goin fishin, ya see. Ole bought dis here used boat wit a trailer; an dey decided dey vas gonna try it out, doncha know. So Ole hooks up de trailer an sits in da front seat off da car and hollers, 'Say Sven?' 'Ya Ole?' 'Would ya check dem turn signals dere an tell me if dey're verkin?' Sven goes an has himself a look. Den he calls out to Ole, 'Ya it verks! No it don't! Ya it verks! No it don't!' An den dey vent fishin, I guess. Dat's all. Over."

The response was far happier than I'd imagined. "Sven and Ole, Dat's a good vun dere! Say, we'll get dat one on ass soon ass vee can." Then in a serious voice, the woman asked, "Sven and Ole, would you mind giving your real name so we can put it on the radio that you're ok, in case anyone is looking for you?"

"You betcha, CCO 830. My name is Donovan Langevin, L-A-N-G-E-V-I-N (I was used to spelling it out), and my friend here is David Chance. We're eleven. We're at David's house in Saint Albert, and we're in his dad's shelter with lots of food and stuff."

"Are you two boys there alone?"

I paused and said, "No, we're here with each other." David kissed me on the cheek.

"Can you tell us how things are in Saint Albert? We haven't heard from anybody closer than Buffalo so far."

"Well, we only saw part of Saint Albert. The woods to the east of town caught fire with the bright flashes, but the fires seemed to go out every time. We were in a ravine when the first one went off, and that protected us, but I think I popped my eardrums or something, and I think David burned only part of his retinas. Huge trees and branches were flying everywhere. When we got on the River Road, everything on the north side of the road was burning, I mean the weeds and the grass, telephone poles, everything. The trees were all burnt, but they weren't on fire like the fire kept going out. Nothing was burning on the south side of the road, though. One house on the north side was burning bad, and I think the old couple who lived there died. I can tell you their names if you want."

"Are you absolutely certain they died?"

"No, ma'am," I said, wondering where my formality was suddenly coming from. I supposed information about life or death was super-serious.

"Ok, then if you tell me their names, we will show them as house destroyed by fire, whereabouts undetermined."

I gave the microphone to David so he could answer that question. "Hello, this is David Chance, and it was the Hendershotts, Gus and Gladys Hendershott, 254 River Road South in Saint Albert."

"Thank you, David. So there was no fire on the south side of the River Road?"

"No ma'am," he said, very naturally. "The whole river in our area was protected by the bluffs on the south side of the river. Even our geese and our ducks were ok. That's why our house was ok. But I think most of Saint Albert is gone, or else on fire, just because of how strong that first blast was, and how everything was burned everywhere that wasn't in the shade. I'm sorry ma'am, but I think it's probably pretty bad, but we've only seen a small part of the town, so I could be wrong."

"Thank you so much David and Donovan, for your cheerful joke, which really means a lot to us on such a sad day, and for your excellent report from Saint Albert. Do you have a quick message for anyone who might be looking for you?"

David gave the mic back to me, and I said, "um… we can't think of anything. Just, we're at David's house in the basement shelter, and we're doing ok I guess."

"Well, thank you very much, Sven and Ole, and take care of yourselves. CCO 830 is ten-ten."

"CCO 830, thank you too. We better save battery power here. Sven and Ole, ten-seven, we gone."

"Breaker eight for Sven and Ole! Before you go, thank you! You made us laugh, and it's good to know you boys are safe. Rat Tail Soup on the side."

"Breaker eight, that goes for me to, Sven and Ole! You made me smile! TJ on the side."

We listened to seven or eight of these messages before there was an opening. "Uh, all breaks, this is Sven and Ole. Uh, you're sure welcome. Good luck to everyone. Really, we gone now."

***

"You really mean you want me to drive your mom's car?"

"Maybe some day you'll need to," he said as if lost in a thousand other thoughts. "We also need these cans of gas to keep the generator going," he said, gesturing to a row of big red gas cans without looking at them. "We should leave one can here for the car, in case we need it. It made Mom nervous, but Dad put a pipe in so we can add gas to the generator from the basement without having to go outside. Oh! And I nearly forgot!" He stepped inside by himself and came back with an armload of wet blankets. "We have to push these up along the bottom of the garage door to keep the fallout from coming in. Dad says some will get in around the top and sides of the door, but the garage should stay mostly protected from the dust if we do just this."

We brought the gasoline inside and kept it in its own special bricked-in area to the left of the door to keep it safe from catching fire. "Your dad thought of everything," I said, thinking of my stepdad, who might have thought of everything, but all he did about it was complaining.

"He told me it was all to keep me safe," he said. "I hope he knows how well it's working."

I was so stunned by the casual way he'd just spoken of his dead father's last wish. When I looked at him, he had frozen, looking at me. It sounds so horrible of me, but I was glad to see his emotions find their way out. I walked him over to the couch with my arm around him. He held my hands as we sat down as if to make sure I wasn't going anywhere. I had seen him cry a few times before, but this was different. He looked so scared. He turned into me and put his head on my chest, and I held him as he bawled and howled. I had never heard this kind of cry from him before. It was scary, but I wanted him to give it all to me, to let me take his hurt away – et me feel it instead.

Chapter 15

Stocking Up and Hunkering Down

David's parents were awesome, and they loved him a lot. He really loved them too. I thought surely he'd lost a lot more than I had lost that day. My stepdad was a grouch with few redeeming features. He fed us, so he was in charge. He was a very simple man, and there wasn't much more to it. He never once got drunk and beat Mom though, and that was probably a first for her. My real dad was in Stillwater State Prison, doing a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. He had done a lot more than armed robbery, but that was the plea agreement. I wondered just how sheltered he really was from the severe fallout at the prison.

I loved my mom, but somehow I'd never been able to connect with her the way I thought a son should have. She always seemed somewhat distant. I could talk to David's mom easily, and she seemed happy to talk to me – that's what I wanted with my mom. Now that I'm an old man, I think my mom had so much horrible treatment from the men in her life that she was out of her element trying to raise a boy into a decent man. She didn't know what she needed to teach me as a boy, so I think she avoided the critical topics. I told you about how she tried to describe what being gay meant. I think she was so nervous and hesitant because she didn't want to cause me harm by teaching me the wrong way. She loved me. She didn't know how to raise me in what she considered the right way, so too often she avoided the topic. I don't blame myself anymore. I blame my dad. To a lesser extent, I blame her dad, but I won't be writing about him.

***

David's whole body shook, and he made tight fists. He opened them and closed them, sometimes grabbing and clawing at my body or my hair. I felt better when he did that because I knew I was, at last, helping him cope while he had his breakdown. I didn't think anyone could possibly hurt more than David did at that moment, but I think he also knew he was safe with me. He had done so much to help me keep my head that day. I couldn't have made it without him. I knew he must have been hurting terribly, really terribly. I felt I owed him my life, so it was ok if he wanted to claw at my flesh a bit.

The worst part about seeing David like this was the sound. There's crying because you're sad, crying because you're hurt, crying because you're scared, and then there was this. It wasn't even his voice – it was like a demon screaming through him. Nothing in my life mattered at that moment. Everybody was dead, and the world was all burning and radioactive. None of it meant anything to me when I heard that sound in his voice. It was absolute agony to see him like this and to feel it coming out of his body, but I was going to be brave and take it for my sweet David. I wouldn't let him suffer alone. I let a few of my own tears fall, but mostly I choked it back. It was his turn to fall apart right now. I rocked him gently and softly sang the only song I could think of, 'I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray…' He continued crying, but a little quieter, '…When I woke up this morning, could have sworn it was judgment day…' His cries became almost musical like he was trying to hum along. '…The sky was all purple, people were running everywhere…' He was definitely humming along. '…Tried to run from my destruction, you know I didn't even care.'

Then he sang a few words, "Two thousand zero zero, party over…" but that was it. He needed to keep crying, and I wasn't going to try to stop him. I kept singing and rocking him. It was all I could do, and now I believed it was helping. He'd tried to sing along.

The most wonderful thing in the world might be not feeling useless when the one you love needs you the most.

***

We brought in all the tools, hardware, and lumber we thought we could ever need from the garage, plus our chemistry sets (which we kept away from the gasoline), then sealed the door to the garage. One door left, and a whole house full of stuff we might want in our basement paradise.

We started in his room, carrying all of his clothes downstairs, along with games, toys, science stuff, his trombone, and his stuffed pterodactyl named Daryl. In his parents' room, we decided to take their clothes too, because I was sure none of David's clothes would fit me, and I didn't want to ruin them. (I didn't mind being naked with him though.) We took their clock radio too because we knew it would be more precise than the wind-up clocks in the shelter corner. His dad had shown him where he kept his lockbox and a place in one drawer where he always kept extra money and an extra set of keys. The last thing we moved to the basement from his parents' room disturbed me, and it disturbed David. It was six boxes of shotgun shells and six boxes of rifle bullets.

"We don't know how long we'll be here," he said. "We might have to hunt for food."

Dr. Apfelheinz had already told us why we should have guns after the bombs fell, and neither of us liked it. We had so much food to share, even room for a few more people if they didn't mind sharing with a couple of naked gay fag boys, but someone might try to hurt us anyway, maybe even while they're stealing something we would be happy to give them.

For the first time in my life, I knew I could do it. I could shoot someone and kill them. If I thought my David was in danger, there was nothing I wouldn't do to protect him, and that scared me. Can love make people more able to kill other people? Science nerds don't want to hurt people. I had to stop thinking about it.

"Dad's guns are in a case downstairs. The key is on this keychain." He swallowed. "Donovan, I don't want to!" We hugged, neither of us thrilled with the situation.

"We don't have to. Not now," I said. "We can just put these somewhere downstairs and talk about it another time. Right now, we're getting ready for fallout."

Next, we just grabbed everything from the upstairs bathroom and linen closet. Finally, we moved all the food from the kitchen downstairs. All of the frozen food fit in the deep freezer, but the only fridge we had downstairs was a small camping fridge that was mostly full of beer. We took the beer out and put the essential stuff in there first. Anything we could freeze, we just threw in the deep freezer. Whatever was left went in a big orange cooler chest, with the beer on top to keep the food cold. We got knives, spoons, forks, a few utensils, and two can openers (one electric, one manual) because the one downstairs looked cheap. We ran into a problem that I don't think his parents had thought through, though. There was a nice 500-watt microwave oven in the basement, but no stove or anything else to cook on. David said they had a camping stove that they left at their cabin up north. Maybe that was supposed to be part of their plan, and they forgot. I carried the other microwave downstairs from the kitchen so we'd have a backup. Neither of us boys really knew how to cook anyway. We knew our food was going to be somewhat experimental for a while.

When we were finally convinced we had everything we needed from upstairs, I taped the doorway, sealing off our last connection to the outside world.

We were greeted with two surprises as we descended the stairs. The basement was so cluttered and packed with stuff that we could hardly move around, and the Geiger counters were going crazy! "Sounds like we finished just in time," he said.

"Just in time??? Even I can hear those things going nuts! We're dying of fallout!"

"Donovan," he said sharply. "Listen to me. Pick up the Geiger counter and set the sensitivity to x-one." I did as he said, and it sounded nearly normal again. "Now, check the outdoor monitor."

"The outdoor monitor is already at x-one, all seven of those switches," I said. "That was the lowest it would go."

"That's right where it should be," he said. "It sounds pretty normal. What does the needle on the outdoor monitor read now on the red arc?"

"It's at the bottom, jumping up to one, but mostly between zero and one."

"What is the select switch pointed to?"

"Uh," I hadn't noticed a select switch before. Some settings indicated S-MON, N, E, S, W, R, K, and G. "Oh, it says… it says S-dash-M-O-N. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," he said calmly. "That's exactly where it should be. There is a row of seven LEDs across the top. Do you see them? Are any of them lit?"

"Oh! The first one is lit," I said. "It has a letter S under it. Is that bad?"

"No, that just means the needle is showing the reading from the probe on the south side of the house. That's the side with the window we crawled through to get in. The house doesn't really face north and south, but that's the side that faces Minneapolis and the river. It's really southeast. It's also the side of the house that our shelter corner is on, so it's the most important side for us to monitor." I did mention that thing was clever. "What does the needle on the Geiger counter read now?"

"It's the same; only the red arc says point one, not one. No, it's less. It's barely budging now."

"Good! No crisis yet," he said with a smile, "but now we need to take measurements every so often and write them down. This will be the time we record for the first arrival of fallout. We could live outside in that tiny bit of fallout. It's barely any, but it means the edge of the cloud has reached us. We should also listen to the radio at least every half-hour or so when they do the updates. And we should stay inside the shelter room unless there's a good reason to go out."

"Like using the bathroom?"

"Yes, Don, like using the bathroom."

I turned on the radio to listen for any fallout updates, and to my surprise, I heard my own voice finishing that Sven and Ole joke!

Oh, what a gem that was. That's a replay of a recording you heard earlier if you were tuned in, a submission from a couple of young boys in good spirits with the CB handle Sven and Ole, checking in on CB channel eight. I sure needed that. The sound of a child's voice trying to bring a little happiness into our hearts in the middle of this… really bad day we're having. Thank you Sven and Ole, and remember to keep dem dere yokes a comin! Remember also, that's CB channel EIGHT, not nine, channel eight. Channel nine, of course, is reserved for emergency use only. I should also say that Sven and Ole are really two bright-spirited eleven-year-old boys in St Albert named David Chance and Donovan Langevin. I'm not quite sure which is Sven, and which is Ole. If you know them or are looking for them, they want you to know they are safe with plenty of food, and they are sheltering at David's house. Now there's a deal for you! Using their example, if anyone gives us a Sven and Ole joke that we use on the air, we'll pass on your name and a brief message to anyone who might be concerned about you, just like we did for Donovan and David. How about that? We obviously can't do that for everybody, but we need some good cheer to balance all the gloom, so contact us on CB channel eight, on shortwave on the nineteen meter…

"I sounded awful!" I think most people, especially kids, know that feeling of hearing their recorded voice for the first time. It doesn't sound anything like you thought it would. I was always easily embarrassed, but it was a particular challenge knowing that my voice had just been broadcast to everyone in Minnesota who was still alive.

My protestation about my voice made David smile and giggle in yet another new way. This new giggle reminded me that he definitely loved me, that he didn't want to hurt my feelings, but that there was something wonderful that I was missing.

"Don! You're supposed to sound funny when you tell a joke! And the lady on the CB radio laughed! You heard all those people saying you made them smile on the CB, and that guy just now! I think you were brilliant!" He kissed me.

I took a new notebook from the shelf and wrote:

'Radiation Log: 5:00 PM, outside <1 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour. Fallout begins.'

Chapter 16

Blue Ball

The radio had no good news for us. The fallout cloud was moving even closer, which meant we might get 10-100 rads per hour outside. That was serious radiation, and we could even die if we went outside in that for more than a few hours. For sure we'd get radiation sickness, but since we already had that, I wondered why we should worry about anything.

"I wish we could have your mom's CB radio inside with us," I said.

David hit his hand to his forehead and, after yelping in pain, said, "We've got one! Dad's base station!"

"What's that?"

"It's a powerful CB radio you use at home. It sits on a desk or something. Maybe he forgot to bring the stove back from the cabin, but he remembered the base station." He paused. "But it's in the garage, on the shelf. We looked right past it!"

"I looked right past it! You can't see, remember?"

"Well, you didn't know what it was, and I forgot about it."

"That sounds fair."

"We'll have to hurry, and you'll have to redo your work with the tape."

Ten minutes later, I finished re-taping the door and carried the surprisingly heavy black metal box with knobs to our shelter corner. "David, some of these plug-in sockets are red, and some are white? Which should I use?"

"Oh, the red ones are on all the time, even when the generator is off," he explained. "Dad hooked up this system of twenty car batteries next to the generator, and they get charged during the day. Then when we shut the generator off, the freezer can stay on and anything else, as long as the generator starts again within about a day."

"So which color?"

"Red, I think." He paused. "Yeah, red. If we have an emergency at night, we'll be able to turn it on and just use it."

"Ok." He guided me through the setup process, which was really easy. The only hard part was finding the connection to the nine-foot antenna on the roof.

"It's always a good idea to do a radio check first," he said.

"Ten-four, good buddy." I turned it on and switched to channel 8. The woman from WCCO was very busy with people who had desperate questions. "I'll try channel nineteen," I said. Channel nineteen was known nationwide as the channel for truck drivers and for people who wished they were truck drivers. Usually, it was the busiest of all channels. Non-truckers had turned it into a sort of meeting place. I listened for about half a minute, then said to David, "That's really quiet."

"I've never heard it like this," he said.

I decided to try it. "Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, Sven and Ole for a radio check," I said in my affected southern trucker accent.

After a few seconds of silence, I was about to try again, but then I heard what sounded like clunking noises followed by a very tired-sounding voice. "Hello? Yeah? Go ahead… who'd you – I mean, what's yer handle?"

"This is Sven and Ole. How are you reading us?"

"I gotcha five by five, Sven and Ole, and boy am I glad to hear yer voice!"

"Oh!" I said. "Well, thanks for the radio check."

"Now hang on just a minute," he said. "Yer not leaving right away, are yeh?"

"Um…" I asked David what to do. His opinion was, why not talk to him? "No, we don't have to leave right away. What's your handle?"

"This here's Blue Ball, and I'm from Cookeville, Tennessee."

"Hi, Blue Ball. Um, we're in Saint Albert, Minnesota. You're not in Tennessee now, are you?"

"Heck no," he said, "but I bet they can hear yer base station down there!"

"Well, what's yer twenty?" I asked.

"You got a forty?" he asked.

"Ten-four," I said.

"Well, let's go to three-six, all right?"

"Sven and Ole going to three-six, we gone." All of those last transmissions meant I asked where he was; he asked if our base station was a forty-channel CB radio. I told him it was, and he suggested we switch to channel 36 for our chat. This was a routine courtesy to everyone else who wanted to use channel nineteen – to find a different channel and chat there.

"Break three-six, break three-six, Sven and Ole, you got yer ears on?"

"Ten-four," I said. "We're here. What's yer twenty?"

"I'm in Rogers, 'bout 3 miles from you boys in Saint Albert." The nicer car CB radios had a standard range of about five miles, but the ones used by truckers could do much better. "Sven and Ole, does that mean there are two of you boys?"

"Ten-four. I'm Sven and Ole is next to me here."

"Well hello Ole, good buddy!"

I handed the mic to David. He keyed the mic and said, "Hello Blue Ball. How are you?"

"Dunn good, dunn good. Been better. I was in front of the Happy Chef when the first one went off. You know where that is, right?"

"Yes, I do! I mean, ten-four."

"Well, the building shaded me from the flash. Blew my rig over, but I got lucky. Part of that front brick wall from the restaurant covered the passenger side window, so the next flash missed me too. But when the blast came, all them bricks broke, broke apart, and they sorta landed on me."

"Oh no, that must have hurt," David said. "Are you hurt? Cause we've got stuff that can help, medicines and bandages, everything."

"Aw thank yeh, but I got no way a-gittin to yeh. Prolly got all kinds of food too, I spect."

"Yeah, my parents left tons of food here."

"Maybe some other time, lil friend. I'm still… I'm still stuck under this big-ol' pile-a bricks fer now. I called on nine, but I couldn't reach no one. They'll come fer me when they can, I 'spect." David had his head on my chest. We were on the couch under a warm blanket again. I could tell David was hurting for the poor man. "Say, y'all ain't heard 'bout any kinda fallout round here, have yeh?"

David handed me the mic, and I said, "We started getting some here in Saint Albert a few minutes ago, but it's only one rad per hour."

David and I were both feeling chilly, even under the blanket. I brushed some of David's beautiful hair aside so I could see his face while we waited for Blue Ball's reply. Suddenly he had to run to the bathroom and throw up again. Then the horror really set in. A bunch of David's beautiful hair had come out in my hand!

"Oh, oh, no… I gotta go!" I said quickly. "I'll call for you on nine from the base. Sven and Ole ten-seven, we gone, bye bye." I had almost shouted the last part.

"No wait, don't call…"

I didn't hear the rest. I just clicked off the radio. It was too much. Radiation burns, not eating, vomiting, and now his hair was falling out. I was going to lose my David to a horrible sickness that was untreatable!

I began shaking. I felt so cold and alone. I tried my best to collect myself before he came back, but I couldn't stop shaking. "What's wrong, Donovan?"

"Dunno, I just feel so cold all of a sudden. But you'll make me feel warmer." And he did, after turning the fan off.

"It's your burns!" he said. "The book said we could go into mild shock from our burns, which would feel cold and we would shiver. I bet that's what's happening to you. You need to drink lots of water quickly!"

In a way, it was helpful to be shivering. I could hide my feelings in my shaky, shivering voice. I couldn't tell him about his hair!

"Is there a way for me to drink this warm? Do you have something to mix with it and heat it up, like hot cocoa or apple cider? It just makes me colder to drink it like this."

Two minutes later, I was drinking mug after mug of warm apple cider. It felt good inside my body to be warm again, at least in my stomach, and soon the rest of my body felt a little better, though I was still so cold, I couldn't let any part of my body slip out from under the blanket. When I stopped shivering, I looked at the first aid book again. I wanted to know more about burns and shock. What I found scared me. I learned that shock is very serious and even fatal if it goes too far. All my shivering was a bad sign.

"It says there are some medications that can help," I told David. "But look, caffeine is one of them. Maybe that would be the safest? I think these others are only for doctors normally." I thought I was still in danger, and I didn't want to go to sleep and die and leave David to die on his own.

"We have instant coffee here," he said. "Would you like me to make you a cup?"

"Yeah." I felt loved.

He didn't go to the microwave first. "I'm sorry, sweetie," he said, "but I have to, and so do you." David had gotten up, and instead of making my coffee, he was putting clothes on – sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and slippers. "I'm too cold to be naked without being under the blanket with you."

"It's ok hun," I said. "I love you even through your clothes, and I have x-ray vision!"

He put a small mug of water in the microwave, then he went through his dad's clothes to get the same stuff for me to wear – sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and slippers. I had to stay under the blanket while I put them on, and still I felt too cold to put the blanket down. "Being in shock sucks!"

"Oh here, sweetie," he said, turning around. "I put cream and sugar in it for you. That makes it taste better."

"Thanks," I said to him, giving him a little kiss. "I've never tasted this before, and Mom says I would think it tasted awful. Just 'cause she doesn't like it." I realized I was talking about Mom in the present tense. David didn't say anything, and neither did I. "Here goes." I took a slow, hesitant sip, and Mom was right. I didn't like it, but it wasn't terrible. "I like the cream," I said, hoping not to sound ungrateful.

David made a cup for himself and rejoined me under the blanket. "I don't like the coffee either, but I like the cream and sugar, but a cup of cream and sugar doesn't taste right without coffee. I used to have a cup sometimes in the morning when we were up north, camping in a tent, and it was really cold in the morning. It does warm you up, doesn't it?"

I finished my coffee as soon as I could and drank some more apple cider to wash the coffee taste out of my mouth. I was feeling better already. "It does," I said with genuine surprise. "We have to remember this. Coffee helps for when you're in shock."

"We'll probably be up all night now," he said.

How could anyone in the whole world sleep ever again? "I think I'd be up all night anyway." Then suddenly I remembered. I'd become so upset about David's hair I forgot to call for an ambulance for Blue Ball, and I knew right where he was too!

I filled in David as I turned the radio back on and switched to channel nine, the emergency-only channel. It was busy with people calling for help, but after about 30 seconds, we got an opening. "Breaker nine, breaker nine, this is Sven and Ole with a medical emergency."

The nice thing about base stations was that they were so powerful, you always knew someone would hear you. "Sven and Ole, this is Wright County Sheriff's Deputy four-three-one. Please do not use CB slang while we talk. In plain English, what is your emergency?"

"We just spoke with a guy called Blue Ball, and he's in his semi-truck in front of the Happy Chef, or where the Happy Chef was in Rogers, and his truck is on its side, and he's buried in bricks. Please send help!"

"Ok, Sven and Ole," the stern voice said, getting slower and more forceful. "Listen to me very carefully." Was he going to yell at us for calling for help? "Thank you for trying to help, but we know Blue Ball, and he is very dangerous. He is not hurt. He is driving around in his car with a direction finder right now. When you key your microphone, his instrument will point to your location. I need you to say as little as possible. Do not talk to him again; is that clear? Only answer yes or no."

I thought I was already scared, but this was a different kind of scared. "Yes sir."

"When you are finished talking with me, I need you to turn your radio off and don't turn it back on unless you have an emergency of your own. Do you understand? Yes or no only."

"Yes sir," I cried.

"Is there an adult with you? Yes or no."

"No sir."

"Are there two of you there?"

"Yes sir."

"Did you tell him about your location? Only yes or no."

"Yes sir," I whimpered.

"Did you give him your address or specific directions to find you?"

"No sir."

"Good. Never give that information to anyone on the radio. So… Did you tell him the name of the town where you live? Yes or no please."

"Yes sir."

"Is the name of your town the only information you gave him about your location?"

"Yes sir."

"Ok, Sven and Ole, this is the only question I will ask that requires an answer other than yes or no. I need you to tell me the name of your town, exactly as you told him. Nothing else."

"Saint Albert, sir."

I could hear him sigh as he said, "Is there a weapon where you are? A shotgun, maybe?"

"No!" David was trying not to cry all over me and let me talk.

"Yes, yes sir, there is a shotgun here in the basement."

"Do you know how to use it? And please answer only yes or no."

"Yes… I mean, y-yes sir."

"Do you have ammunition for it? Yes or no please."

"Yes sir."

"That's good, son. You need to stay as calm as possible right now. I know this is a scary situation, and it's ok to feel scared, but I need you to act as if you are calm, and think as if you are calm. We can keep you safe. We need to hurry now because he might be on this channel tracking you as we speak. He can only track you when you key the mic. That's why I want only short yes or no answers. It makes it difficult for him to track you. When you shut the radio off, the very first thing I want you to do is to load the shotgun and keep it with you from now on, with the safety ON. Can you do that?"

I hesitated and said weakly as David cried, "Yes sir."

"Good. Our goal is to keep you safe. And remember, it's crucial to act calm, even though this is scary for you. Pretend you are calm. We need to end this conversation now. Trust me, this man has killed several children before, and he prefers boys. We have been looking for him for a long time. If he finds you, you need to shoot him, or you and your friend will both be dead very quickly. I'm sure you understand that is the only reason ever to shoot someone. If you don't shoot him, you and your friend will not survive. If you hear anyone outside, or if anyone comes to your door, turn your radio back on and call us immediately. Don't do anything else but call us. That is an emergency. I am sorry I have to scare you with all this, but we have to hurry. Do you understand everything I've just said, including his danger to you? Yes or no."

I couldn't move. David took the microphone from me and said with a shaky voice, "Yes sir."

"Ok, this is my last transmission to you. I do not want you to answer me at all. That allows him to track you. If you see him, or if he tries to get into your house, you need to use the shotgun. You need to shoot him without hesitating. He is very short for a man, overweight, bald head in front, long brown hair in the back, usually not very clean, and he normally wears glasses, though today, we can't be sure. Again, if anyone approaches your house, turn on your radio and call us immediately on this channel. If it's him, you must shoot. That's not going to be easy, but we've had a lot of reports about him tonight, and he's out looking for victims, taking advantage of the chaos. We will shoot him on sight, and you must do the same if he comes to you. Remember, short, overweight, bald in front, long brown hair in back. There is no other reason for a stranger looking like that to approach your house. Do not reply to me now. Shut your radio off now, leave your lights off when it gets dark, load the shotgun, SAFETY ON, and good luck. Goodbye."

"I can't!" David wailed. "I HATE guns and shooting! I would rather be killed!"

"Would you rather we were both killed?" I asked. "Because that's what the deputy said." He looked at me with scared eyes, and he stopped crying. He didn't say a thing. "Nobody is going to hurt my sweet David, and that's that."

Chapter 17

Conspiracy

'5:30 PM, outside 4 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

We were being tested; I was sure of it. None of this was real, not the bombs, not our sickness or David's blindness, not this Blue Ball guy, none of it. Somebody had decided to run an experiment to see how two kids would handle the most extreme fear possible, and they must have chosen us because they found out we were gay, and they thought it was ok to do this to a couple of faggot boys.

We were sitting on the couch again with the loaded shotgun on the table in front of us, scaring me even more. I knew I would have to be the one to use it because I was the only one who could still see, and David had a strong conscience against shooting someone. So did I, but I had realized earlier that I could do it. I could shoot a person if he tried to hurt my sweet David, no question. If Blue Ball really was a child killer who preferred boys, I had to remember that he was coming for David, not for me. If he was coming for me, I might be too scared, but if he was coming for David, I would not be afraid. I knew I could concentrate, take a steady aim (which is not easy to do with a heavy shotgun, but I'd do it), and I could look him in the eyes as I shot him dead. No one would ever hurt my David; but there really was no Blue Ball. This was all fake. They were just watching us to see what we would do.

***

"Donovan, I love you," said David, after I shared my theory about being tested with him, "but please stay with me, ok? There is no test. I'm really mostly blind, and you know what happened to your ears. We saw the flashes, and you saw all the trees blowing over us and catching fire. How could they fake that?"

"They must be really good at it," I said, still preferring my explanation to reality. "They do it in movies all the time!"

"Yes, Donovan, but that's all special effects," he insisted. "They don't actually blow whole forests up. Those are models." He was speaking calmly, so I was listening. "And there is no other way to make a light that bright, so bright that it burns us like this. Nobody can do that except with a nuclear explosion."

"But it can't all be true!" I insisted though I could feel my resistance crumbling. David was the smart one, and I trusted him completely. Unless I was being irrational, that is. "The whole world is all blown up, and at the same time, this horror movie guy is looking for kids to murder, and he found us, but we can't leave here because the fallout's started? That's nuts!"

"Donovan sweetie," he said calmly but seriously, "think like a scientist. Look at the facts. What would Dr. Apfelheinz say? What is the evidence? I think there are two questions here, nuclear war and Blue Ball. Are they real? Let's start with nuclear war. My hypothesis is that we have just survived a nuclear war, ok?"

"Ok." He had my attention. I was proud of my ability to think like a scientist.

"How can we test my hypothesis?"

"Predictions," I said. "A hypothesis has to predict something."

"That's right," he said, feeling the table surface to find the notebook and pencil. "So if someone just survived a nuclear war, what would you expect they would see? I think you should write those things down. You know how scientists always take lots of notes."

I took the notebook and pencil, turned to a clean page, and began to scribble down the things I was saying. "Well, of course, all the bright flashes, blast waves, fires, radiation, all that stuff."

"What about communications?"

"They would talk about it on the radio," I said, "and mostly, there wouldn't be much radio because the transmitters would have been knocked out."

"Would we hear the regular radio people only? Would we hear voices we recognized?"

I had to think. They played it, the governor's voice, but I wouldn't have recognized her. We turned off the radio just before, "The president!" I said. "We know what he sounds like, definitely."

"Can you think of anyone else?"

I wrinkled my forehead because sometimes that helped me think. "No, I can't. Just the announcer guy, but he could be in on it."

"That's fine," he said. "What about other kinds of communication?"

"The phones wouldn't work."

"And?"

I thought more. "The CB?"

"What about the CB radio?"

"Well, for a start, channel nineteen wouldn't be normal, and it wasn't," I said. "I think channel nine would be full of calls for help from people who are hurt and trapped, and we heard that too."

"We'll get to the evidence in a minute," he said calmly. "Remember, science is a system. It's something we do."

"Ok," I said, thinking harder. "Channel eight would have people calling WCCO."

"Did you know that before this happened?"

"Well no," I said, "but that's what they did."

"Sorry Don," he said, "but we can only write things down that we would have predicted before all this started." I crossed that one out. "You mentioned radiation," he said. "How would a person know if there was radiation?"

"With a Geiger counter, of course," I said, beginning to feel like he was talking to me as if I was in third grade or something. "A person would see the needle move higher."

"Great. Can you think of any other predictions?"

"We probably wouldn't see anyone outside, or any cars driving around if the blast was as big as that first one." I thought more. "And you!" I said. "You're smart, and you would never have acted that way when the bombs were going off unless they did."

"Ok, so no people, and no cars, but we can't use my reaction, and I think you know why."

I smacked my forehead. "Of course. That's objective! Only you know why you acted that way, and you're one of the scientists."

"Yes sweetie," he said, "but I think you mean subjective."

"Is subjective the one where the person sees something in a way that other people might not?"

"Yes," he smiled. "I'm glad you remember some of what Dr. Apfelheinz taught us." I stuck my tongue out at him, which he of course couldn't see. Of course he was right. I was surprised at how poor a scientist I had become when I got scared. "Can you think of any other predictions?"

I could, but I didn't want to tell him. I would predict that his mom and dad would not be home at their usual times of 4:45 and 5:15 PM on a Wednesday. "No, that's all I can think of."

We went down my list of predictions to see how they matched our evidence. "We both observed the first flash, and you observed a bunch more with your eyes. We both also observed a bunch of blast waves, and you saw all the debris." I knew that in science, an observation really meant that we saw something with any of our senses, so David observed the blast waves by hearing them and feeling them. "You also saw all the fires on the north side of the River Road, and I felt them. Are there alternate explanations for these observations?"

"Maybe they invented some kind of new flash laser machine for this test, and maybe they will use it in movies. Or maybe it's something they want to use against the Soviets?"

"Ok, that's the flash," he said. I knew where this conversation was going, and I already knew he was right, but I played along because doing science felt like a good distraction from panicking about everything. "What about the blast waves?"

"Uh, maybe there was a freak tornado," I said, "or maybe they figured out how to control a tornado, and they had that come through right after the flashes. Tornadoes make trees fly one way first and then the other. And that huge boom at the beginning of the blast, maybe that was a real, huge explosion they set off?"

The next item on our list was radiation, and we had seen the Geiger counter and the outdoor monitor both going up a little. I offered some sort of radio control mechanism being installed in our devices so they would display exactly what the bad guys wanted them to show. Then came communications.

"The evidence we have for your predictions about radio and CB broadcasts is that we heard exactly what we would have expected. Can you think of another explanation for that besides nuclear war?"

"Well yeah! That's easy," I said. "If they were doing an experiment on us, and they could do all these other things, they could easily block radio reception around us and only let us hear what they wanted us to hear. They would be making up their own radio news and everything. And we've only heard the one guy on the radio! Maybe he's the only guy from WCCO that would go along with their plan!"

"And the CB radio?"

"All actors!"

"What about the phones? They're not working either," he said.

"That's even easier! They just cut the lines."

"We haven't seen anybody since we first went into the woods, not on the roads, nowhere. No cars either."

"Another easy one," I said. "They just set up a roadblock. Besides, the only people who ever come by here are the people who live here." That was true. In that area, the Crow River was a narrow, brown, kinda smelly, muddy river with a few carp and bullheads that nobody wanted on their hook, and since it was within the city limits, no one was allowed to hunt in the woods.

"We haven't seen them either," David said softly, "the people who live here."

"Just a roadblock," I said, equally softly. I didn't want to press the point about the Hendershotts, his dead neighbors.

We had reached the end of my list. "Do you remember Dr. Apfelheinz talking about two kinds of experiments, one looking back in time and one looking forward? I think they were retroactive and proactive studies."

I very proudly said, "You mean retrospective and prospective." It wasn't often that I knew something or remembered something that David didn't.

"That's it, sweetie." He kissed me and said, "So far, we're doing a retrospective study, and you know they're not as strong as prospective studies, but there is still a prospective experiment we can do – let's finish this one though. We've gone over the evidence, and it matches your predictions, but there are other explanations, right? Can you tell me all the other explanations again?"

"Let's see, they made a great big laser flash machine, learned how to control tornadoes, or a tornado came at just the right time. They rewired the Geiger counter, and outdoor monitor for radio control, and they blocked all radio reception around us. They're making their own broadcasts with lots of actors, they cut the phone lines, and they set up roadblocks," I said.

Then David said, "Occam's razor?" I knew that Occam was a science philosopher or something who lived a long time ago. He figured out that if two theories explain the same set of observations, all other things being equal, the more straightforward theory tends to be the correct one. David was asking me whether all of my absurd explanations more simply described the evidence than nuclear war.

"Nuclear war," I said quietly. "But what was that prospective experiment you were talking about?"

"Ah," he said slyly. He was really good at science. I liked shooting stoppers down the driveway, building radios, and launching rockets, but he really understood science. "You made one prediction that we have not observed yet. My hypothesis is that there has been a nuclear war. If my hypothesis is true, you have predicted that we would hear President Reagan's voice on the radio."

"But we heard he was on," I said.

"We shut off the radio, silly! We didn't want to hear him. So if we actually hear his voice talking about the nuclear war…"

"That will be good, prospective evidence to support your hypothesis," I finished, "along with all the weaker retrospective evidence."

"Would you like to listen to the radio some more?" he asked me.

"No," I said. "I give in." I kissed him. "I knew you were right almost as soon as we started talking about this, but it's too scary to believe sometimes."

"Was I the strong one this time?" he asked.

"Your brain is always strong," I said. "I feel better when I have something else to talk about, and your experiment idea really helped."

"I think we should keep looking for ways to think about other things. Would you like to play chess?"

Not only did I suffer from an intense dislike for chess, but I was also terrible at it. "How about Clue?"

"Only if I can be Professor Plumb!"

I giggled and said seductively, "Ok, I'm Ms. Scarlet."

Chapter 18

Who's Behind the Door?

'6:00 PM, outside 4 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

It was Mr. Green in the library with the rope. I moved the pieces around the board, but the best news was that when David pointed his eyes down, he could just make out the big pictures on his cards. He decided he was also content playing without a clue sheet. That seemed ridiculously difficult, and I thought it gave me a chance actually to win for once! We played at a leisurely pace, continuing to take our regular radiation measurements, but he still beat me.

'6:30 PM, outside 7 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

"That's not right," said David. "The counts shouldn't be this high at least until later tonight."

"Is that bad?"

"It's confusing. Since the wind direction really hasn't changed, and it's slowed down in the last hour, I don't think this is the fallout from Fargo. I think something else might have happened."

***

I had to run to the toilet twice while we were playing Clue. David threw up again too. I tried to be vigilant in brushing his hair away from his face; I didn't want him to realize it had been falling out. All this confusion about the fallout and we were both dying, and there was a killer who liked boys trying to find us. I had to run to the bathroom again, only this time I didn't know which end to point at the toilet. I sat on the toilet just in time, and I tried my best to throw up into the sink. We had just found our love, and young love is the strongest kind, but we weren't going to be alive very much longer, and we'd just be getting sicker. The experiment and playing Clue were nice distractions, but sometimes distractions aren't enough.

I did my best to clean up my mess in the bathroom. That gave me time to have another cry without upsetting David. His eyesight had definitely been getting a little better. That was good news, so I tried to focus on that. In fact, I told myself that right now maybe it was better he couldn't see so well. What if I missed something while cleaning up my mess? I tried my best though. I was sharing that bathroom with my sweet David, and he didn't deserve to see my mess or experience it somehow.

When I was done cleaning, I sat next to him on the couch and kissed him. I couldn't help it; I had another cry. After a minute, he said, "I've been thinking, Don. I think we're both sick, and we're probably going to die." He choked up, only briefly, and continued, "so we can live this last part of our lives in love and as happy as we can be, which isn't going to be all the time, or we can just die right now."

"David! What are you saying?" I was genuinely terrified, though actually I didn't know what he meant. Did he mean… the guns?

"Oh, nothing horrible, I promise." He looked worried. He hadn't meant to scare me. "I just mean, we can be mostly happy if we want. It's horrible outside, but right now, in here, I think we can be happy if we want to, together. We still have everything that made us feel so good a minute before the first bomb. The two of us alone in a forest, the two of us alone in here, it's still the two of us together, and I think all these bricks should keep everything out, whatever's going on out there, the sadness and all the crying. I think these bricks can work for other things besides fallout. I don't know if I'm making sense Donovan. I just think we can help each other feel happy again. At least sometimes, not all the time, but like right now. Hang on." He picked up a little model jet from a shelf right behind him. He knew exactly where it was. We both knew it wasn't an HL-10, but young boys have vivid imaginations. "Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom…" That was my cue, and I knew it!

He was right. I could still smile over little things. Nothing got me charged up like those booming timpani. I gave him another huge unseen smile and said, "You're looking good, NASA-One."

"I'm coming forward with the side-stick."

"All looks good," I responded. We knew this routine. We were true nerds, and we were no longer ashamed of it!

"Ah, roger. I've gotta blowout, damper three!"

"Get yer pitch to zero."

"Engine's out. I can't hold altitude."

"Correction, alpha hold is off, trip select is emergency."

"Flightcom! I can't hold it! She's breaking up! She's break…..crshhhhhh aaaaggghhh!!!"

David got to be Steve Austin, so I got to be Oscar Goldman. (That's who we thought the next voice was supposed to be, but we were never sure.) "Blip-ip-ip-ip-ip, blip-ip-ip-ip-ip… David Chance, my gay lover, a boy with barely an eye. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him…" David had a really cute giggle when I said that. "We have the technology. We can make the world's first bionic boy. David Chance will be that boy. He'll see better than he could before. Better, farther, uh, clearer!" That was what he meant. He knew we still needed to play.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! "Hello? David? Are you in there? Donovan? Can you hear me? Hello?" BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! David and I were scared out of our minds by the sudden booming, which I could feel more than hear.

"Oh shit, David! Oh shit! Do I have to shoot him?"

"Not yet, but you have to hold onto it. Remember what Deputy four three one told us? He said to call them immediately, and just pretend to be calm. You need to turn the CB on again and call right now. Make sure the safety is on, ok?"

I did exactly as he asked. I keyed the microphone on channel nine, remembering to speak plain English, and quickly said, "Wright County Sheriff, this is Sven and Ole, and someone's pounding on our door! He knows our names!" I wasn't pretending very well.

"This is Wright County Sheriff's Deputy four three one," came the reply. "We spoke earlier. You boys have done very, very well. Am I speaking to David or Donovan?"

"I shouldn't say, should I?"

"No, you're right, that's probably safer," he said. "We got Blue Ball. I repeat, we got Blue Ball. We caught up with him in Hanover. You are now safe from him. You should put your shotgun back in its proper storage place with the safety on."

"You mean you guys shot him?" I asked quietly.

"Listen, Sven and Ole, We've received four calls about him tonight. He would have gotten to one of you. He was going to kill, and the way things are today, we had to make a terrible decision, but that decision means you and all those other kids are safe. When we found him, he was in front of a house where a nine-year-old boy was sheltering with his twelve-year-old sister. Yes, Blue Ball is dead. We sent several patrols to Saint Albert after your call to look for him. We knew what his car looked like. He wasn't difficult to find, but we couldn't have found him without your help."

I stared blankly again, lost to the real world. David took the microphone and said, "Then who is knocking at our door?" He really was calm, or he was pretending very well. After hearing the news of a man being shot dead for our sake, I suspect the latter.

"We received a message about ten minutes ago that apparently came from someone you know. The only name we have is Klaus, but we think that might be incorrect. Do you know anyone named Klaus?"

"I don't know anyone but Santa Klaus," I said to David.

"No sir, we don't."

"Ok," said the deputy. "This person said he knew you very well, and he gave us your full names in the message. That was why we asked about your name just now. He gave the message to a passing motorist, well, several of them apparently, and one of them got the message to a truck driver who had been monitoring us on channel nine earlier. The trucker heard our entire conversation. So as soon as he got the message, he called us on his CB. A few details might be wrong because the message was passed so many times, but he insisted that we get your names right. The truck driver also said he recognized your names from a radio broadcast earlier. The original message was that this man, this Klaus, was going to try to reach you and make sure you were all right. But if you don't know anybody named Klaus, I'd like to check him out before you let him in. We know your address from the names he gave us, and I'm headed toward your house right now. I can be there in about three minutes. Will you please wait for me before letting him in?"

"Yes sir," said David.

"Ok, I'm on my way. I will be staying in my car to avoid the fallout, so you and I won't meet in person, but I will call you again on this channel after I talk to him. I'll be using my PA speaker to talk to him, so don't be alarmed when you hear my loud voice. I'll probably sound like I'm mean to him too, but that's only meant to keep us safe. There are a lot of desperate people doing a lot of desperate things tonight."

"Ok, we'll be ten-ten on the side," said David. "Oh! I'm sorry! I mean, we'll keep listening."

BOOM BOOM BOOM! "David? It's Mr. Kettering! Can you hear me?"

"Oh! It's Mr. Kettering!" David said with a huge smile. "There's an intercom by the door to the garage."

"I think we should tell the deputy first," I said. "They need to know he's a friend, and not a bad guy."

"That's a good idea."

"Deputy four three one," I called, "this is Sven and Ole, and he's our gym teacher! We know him! Please be nice to him 'cause he's a good guy!"

"That's great news," said the deputy, "but since I'm just about there, I'd like you to wait for me to clear him anyway. What's his name, and what does he look like?"

"His name is Mr. Kettering, and he's very tall with wavy blond hair and a mustache. He's got lots of muscles too because he's our gym teacher."

"Do you know his first name? Is it Klaus?"

"No, we don't know sir. We always have to call him Mister Kettering because he's a teacher."

"Ok, I'm in front of your house right now, and I see him at your front door. He appears to match your description, but please wait until I call you back."

"Mr. Kettering!" I said to David, letting the relief finally find its way out. "I'm so glad it's him! But why would he come here?"

"Put your hands up!" said the angry voice over the very loudspeaker outside. "Turn around with your back toward my car and take ten steps backward. Tell me your first and last name. Shout when you speak." We couldn't hear the reply. "Do you have identification? Just nod or shake your head. Which pocket is it in? Slowly take your right hand, place it in that pocket, and take out your wallet. Hold your wallet in the air. Now turn around to face my car, hands in the air." And that was the last we heard from the car speaker.

"Sven and Ole, this is Wright County Sheriff's Deputy four three one, are you there?"

I picked up the mic and said, "I'm here. I mean, we're here."

"The man fits your description, and his ID says he lives in Saint Albert. His name is Niklaus Kettering, and he identified himself as your gym teacher. He is unarmed and appears quite happy to know you are safe. He has a bag with him, and I could find no weapons in the bag. Can one of you come to a window for a few seconds and identify him please?"

I ran to the other side of the basement where there was a window facing the front yard, stood on a case of empty beer bottles, and waved to our gym teacher, but I don't think he saw me. He didn't wave back. "Deputy four three one, that's him!" I said after running back to the shelter corner. "That's Mr. Kettering, and he's our gym teacher!"

"Boy, am I happy to hear that," he replied. "I'll be on my way then. You should consider some sort of decontamination before he comes in the house – maybe hosing him off in front of the house or something. Make sure he has control of your shotgun once he gets inside. Guns should be handled by adults if possible. You boys know where to reach us if there's any more trouble. You've done very well this evening, and I'm proud of you both."

"Thank you so much, Officer! This is Sven and Ole ten-seven, we gone!"

Chapter 19

Everything Is Different Now

'7:00 PM, outside 5 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

I put the shotgun on the table, pointed toward the wall, with the safety on. I hoped I'd never have to touch it again. David led me by the hand to a panel by the door to the garage. It had a speaker and two unmarked buttons. "Would you please press the top button and hold it down?" He was being formal again because a teacher was around. "Hello, Mr. Kettering! We're here," he said, "and we have an intercom. Do you want to come inside?"

"Oh, David! I'm so happy to hear your voice," he said, "but I can't come in unless you have somewhere I can clean off. I've been outside for a while now, and the deputy said that we've been getting some fallout already."

"Oh, that's not a problem," David said with his natural smile. "We have everything set up inside, even a decontamination area." After asking me to press the bottom button, which I could hear was a garage door opener, he said, "Please walk around to the back of the house and come inside the garage, Mr. Kettering. And…" he hesitated. "And please don't… don't…" He had never made such a request from a teacher before.

"Don't touch anything, right?"

"Yes, I'm sorry sir."

"It's the proper thing to do."

"If you could just wait in the garage for about five minutes, we'll get the decontamination shower ready for you."

"Take your time boys. I couldn't be happier! I really couldn't!"

When we could hear him in the garage, David asked me to close the garage door. The intercom only worked at the front door.

I found out the decontamination shower was a lot more than a simple water hose over the floor drain. We assembled a plastic frame that was big enough for a very tall man to stand inside, which was good because Mr. Kettering was a very tall man, and it had a flat piece of plastic to go across the top to protect the ceiling from radioactive splashing water. David took out some fuzzy kind of curtains, not flannel, but something like that, and we hung them around the frame. One side open, facing the door to the garage, and the opposite side was closed. I thought he was doing very well finding things with his eyes still almost blind. He handed me an assortment of scrub brushes, two with long handles, and a bottle of something called Lift Away Hair and Body Decontaminant. It looked like a clear shampoo.

Once we'd gotten the decontamination facility ready, David said, "We need to put some protective gear on before he comes in." In an instant, David was out of his clothes, flashing that soft ass of his that gave me a head-rush every time I saw it. He pulled on a pair of baggy safety pants that looked like they were made out of meat wrapping paper. "You too Don." He handed me a jacket and pants to get me started.

David knocked on the door and asked, "Are you there, Mr. Kettering?"

"I'm definitely here, and I can't thank you enough!"

"Well, sir…" David seemed really anxious for some reason. "Before you come inside, we have to, I mean you can't wear… you can't bring anything inside but yourself, ok?"

I began removing the tape from around the door when Mr. Kettering said, "It's ok. We have to do it that way. We did decontamination drills in the Army. I understand. I'm already ready. It's nothing new for us, right?" David and I looked at each other curiously, and I opened the door.

There he was, completely naked, standing barefoot on his inside-out t-shirt. "May I come in?" he asked with a huge smile, which I'm sure was a smile of relief, but just then, it felt creepy.

"Of course, Mr. Kettering," David said, stepping back quickly.

"I put the blankets back along the bottom of your garage door," said Mr. Kettering. "I thought that was a good idea because they must be a little contaminated anyway, so no big deal if I touched them. I took off my shoes to do that because I didn't think I'd track anything around the garage with my socks. I left my shoes and the rest of my things right next to the garage door."

"Oh Don! We need the goggles too!" said David. "Sometimes I forget things when I'm nervous."

"We all forget things when we're nervous," he said, "so let's all try to help each other to be less nervous, and let's all try to help each other remember things, ok?" We both nodded. "You should have face masks, rubber gloves, protective coats and pants of some kind, shoe covers, and hair covers," he said.

"And goggles," David said.

Once we had everything on, David said, "Donovan, there should be some plastic wrap and rubber bands in the supplies for the shower. Can you see them?"

"Yeah, right here."

"Ok, then take a piece of plastic wrap and cover the end of the Geiger counter probe, please. Don't fold it, and try not to let it crease. Then put a rubber band around it to hold it in place. We can't let a radioactive droplet of water get into the probe. That would make the whole thing useless for a long time. Oh, and one more thing. We need that tape that you used around the windows." Soon I was taping his sleeves to his gloves and the cuffs of his pants to his shoe covers, and he asked me to do likewise. (I also used that time to tape around the door yet again.) I made sure to tuck all of his beautiful, cute, messy black hair up under his hair cover. After that it was just the goggles, and we were ready.

"Why don't we keep the probe covered all the time then?" I asked. "If this is the only one we've got, shouldn't we protect it?"

"Oh, there's another one on the shelf, but it's not as sensitive as this one. It's a backup. And we could keep this probe covered. We're only expecting gamma radiation in here, like x-rays, and this plastic won't hurt our gamma readings. But when Mr. Kettering is done decontaminating, we need to check whether he's got an alpha or beta radiation anywhere, and the plastic can interfere with those readings."

That much I knew. I was really the radiation expert between us when I wasn't in a panic, but I had tried to learn from David not to cut people off to sound smart. I wasn't a great student in that regard, but I tried. "And if we leave the house, when we leave the house, we'll want to know the complete picture, radiation-wise." Was that another David word, or did he just make it up? "The probes for the outdoor monitor are always covered because their only job is to tell us about gamma radiation outside during fallout. That's because gamma radiation is the only kind that can get inside the house."

"You boys really know what you're doing!"

"My mom was a doctor and a scientist, and my dad wanted to be sure I knew what to do if…"

Sensing an impending lapse into tears, Mr. Kettering said: "in case you have a naked gym teacher in your basement, and Dad's not around, right?" We all had a good laugh at that. It was an absurd situation, but there had already been so many, I was kinda getting used to them.

David opened the fuzzy curtain all the way, then spread his arms and legs and asked Mr. Kettering to stand the same way. He had me run the Geiger counter all around the naked man's body, and I mean everywhere. "Don't be shy, Donovan. Everything is different now," said Mr. Kettering. His whole head was radioactive (which we called "hot"), and so were his hands, but when he told me not to be shy, I lifted his penis and passed the probe around it. It was hot too! Mostly on the top, but also around the bottom, back by his scrotum.

"What? Will you please recheck it?" he asked. He watched closely as I moved the probe over and around his penis again, and there was no mistake; it was definitely radioactive. It wasn't as hot as his hair, but there it was. "Well," he said, "I need to be fully decontaminated. That's all there is to it. I'm sorry. This is a little embarrassing, but as I've told you boys a hundred times, safety always comes first, there's nothing wrong with the human body or any of its parts, and everything will be different now."

***

David showed me a pamphlet that came with the decontamination shower. It gave each step we had to take. "I knew those first steps," he said. "Dad and I rehearsed them all the time, it seems, but you'll have to read the rest of the steps."

I drizzled some Lift Away into the palm of Mr. Kettering's hand, and for a moment, I remembered putting a few Tylenol tablets in the palm of David's hand earlier that day. That seemed so long ago already. "It says you need to scrub your hands together throughly… uh, thoroughly for one minute. Do not use a scrub brush or a cloth yet." Then we both leaned way down next to the floor drain while David turned the water on to just a trickle so I could rinse Mr. Kettering's hands into the drain without splashing. While he was leaned over, I ran the hose over his hair, slowly soaking all of it.

Still crouching down low, I handed him a small, fine, stiff brush and dropped another bit of Lift Away in his other hand and told him, "Now you're supposed to use this brush thing to clean under your nails, vigorously." Then I handed him a towel and said, "You're supposed to do that under this towel and near the drain because droplets of water can spray away from the brush."

When that was done, I leaned down and rinsed his hands again, and I re-wetted his hair. Then I squirted the Lift Away in a circle around his head. "It says it's ok to stand up while you wash your hair slowly unless you have long hair because then you'd splash too much. Oh, and you're supposed to be aggreve… no, I mean ag-gres-sive with your scalp, but don't splash." I used tongs to put the towel he had used into a laundry basket with a red plastic bag and a lid that said "CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE."

While he was washing his hair, I couldn't help looking at his cock. It was beautiful! It seemed to have the perfect size and shape to complement his perfect man's body. I'd seen him naked a few times using the teachers' shower, and during the swimming unit he used the boys' shower with us because he didn't want to walk across the locker room floor all dripping wet. That was a safety rule for gym teachers at the school, he told us, but I'd never seen his cock so close before. I had this sudden urge to grab it and play with it, but that would have been really wrong! Besides, he hadn't decontaminated it yet. Still, I wondered how big it could get. Would David want it in his butt if he could see up close how big it was? I felt sad for David now. There was this beautiful naked man with a sexy naked cock standing right here, and he couldn't see.

We bent over again to rinse his hair, then stood up. "Now we have to… um…" I stammered.

"What's the procedure, Doc?" he asked cheerfully. "We can't afford to be shy anymore. Things have changed."

"Well, it says the same thing for every body part that's contaminated. I give you a squirt of this stuff, and you scrub it thoroughly, with a brush or a washcloth if necessary." He held out his hand, I squirted another splat of the Lift Away goop into it, and without hesitating, he smeared it all over his cock, then he suddenly froze and held it as if he were peeing.

"I can't believe," he said motionlessly. "How stupid of me!"

"What is it?" David asked.

"About an hour ago, I stepped up to a tree because I had to go. I mean pee," he said. "There were weeds. There was dust, and my hands were hot already!" He looked embarrassed, and I didn't know what to do. He resumed scrubbing his penis. "Shit!"

I had never heard a teacher say that before. "What?" David and I asked again.

"Ah, you probably shouldn't look," he said, turning his back to us.

But I'd already seen it. "Oh," I said. "You've got a boner! We get them all the time, don't we David?"

I was just trying to make Mr. Kettering feel better, and I didn't realize what I'd just said. David was too embarrassed to speak, but Mr. Kettering asked, "When you're together, you mean?"

"Sometimes, but…" I realized I'd said too much! "I mean, but, you know, I try to hide it so no one can see." Quick thinking, if I do say so myself.

He gave me a long look and said, "So you must understand how I feel now."

"I guess," I said. I suspected he knew there was more to the story, though.

"Just like with you boys, when men have erections, it doesn't always mean we're thinking about sex, even if I'm naked. I am trying to show you that we have to be casual about being naked and unashamed of our bodies, that's all, but it happened anyway. I guess my job right now is to show you that I really mean it, even if I have an accidental erection." I secretly wished it wasn't an accident. He continued scrubbing his cock, even with his boner. "I guess nothing is secret anymore now, is it?"

I looked at him with my eyes wide. All I could do was shake my head slowly, then rinse off his hard cock with cold water. I had never seen any man with an erection.

After a few more swipes with the Geiger counter and a few more scrubs here and there, I rinsed the wet floor around Mr. Kettering's feet with another kind of Lift Away general cleaner spray so all the contaminated dust could go down the drain. I told Mr. Kettering he could close the fuzzy curtain the rest of the way and have a regular shower now, but the pamphlet said to scrub his skin everywhere, and pay close attention to the hairy parts and the bottom of his feet.

"It says it's normal for your skin to feel raw, and even a little painful when you're done," I told him, "but you should feel fine in a half hour. David, the water can go all the way on now."

David and I left him alone in the decontamination shower so we could talk things over. "People had to be ok with us as we are, right?" I said. "That's what we decided. It's scary, but we were both thinking more clearly then. Let's tell him about us. Then we can go back to being naked again," I winked, which he couldn't see. David grinned another new grin for me. His smile said, yeah, let's do it, but he also seemed to be feeling a small sense of thrill. Every new grin made me want to kiss him all over.

I opened the opposite side of the fuzzy shower curtain, the side facing into the rest of the basement. While our gym teacher toweled off, I removed the plastic film from the Geiger counter's probe and checked him one last time, just in case he had any of those particles of beta emitters, or anything else that might not have made it through the plastic film, still stuck to his skin. Then I measured the radiation on the floor around the shower and over the drain.

"The floor's clean, but the drain is point five rads per hour at one inch above it, and less than point one rad per hour three inches up."

David found a pair of his much smaller father's stretchable running shorts for Mr. Kettering to squeeze into. I laid the hose on the floor and left the water on, a little more than a trickle, so it could flow down the drain for the next hour and give it a good rinse to see if we could clear the remaining contamination. It wasn't necessary because the radioactivity there was so low, but I thought it was good practice. We also decided it was a good time to fill up every bucket, pail, jug, jar, pot, and whatever else we could think of with tap water because the fallout might possibly get into the well water. It was a very deep well, David had told me because they didn't want to take chances with any sort of pollution in the river, but there was always the possibility. David called it an artesian well. I didn't know what that meant, but when I visited David's house, my favorite beverage was a cold glass of their tap water.

Chapter 20

St. Albert

'7:30 PM, outside 2 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

Mr. Kettering was full of information we didn't already know. It seemed he had his transistor radio on since the first blast, and he heard our Sven and Ole joke a few times. That's how he knew we were ok, and that we had a shelter with food. David and I sat on the couch, back in our sweatpants and shirts, and Mr. Kettering sat in the recliner with a towel around his neck, looking rather uncomfortable in those shorts that looked as if they were about to burst. His big penis and balls were getting squished flat! We could see everything.

"This is a terrible thing for an adult to ask from a kid," he said, looking very troubled, "but I have nothing now except a few things in a bag I left in your garage. I was at the school when the first bomb went off. I was very lucky. I was working out in the weight room after my summer swimming classes, and since that's in the basement, I survived both the flash and the blast. But you know the school building. It was made of wood, and in a hurry, three years ago. It was only meant to be used for five years while they built the new middle school, on the other side of the pool." He seemed to be taking his time to tell his story, but David and I wanted to know everything.

"You know the locker rooms and the pool, but I don't think you boys have used the weight room, right? That's just for eighth graders and kids in school sports."

"Nuh-uh."

"No Sir. We've never used it, but we could see inside if the door was open."

"David, thank you for the respect, but please stop calling me sir. We have a different relationship now. I am no longer your teacher. I am a man who needs help, very badly, from two young boys. You can keep calling me Mr. Kettering if you prefer because that's how we've always known each other, but my first name is Niklaus, and I'd like it if you called me Klaus. You too, Donovan."

"Ok Klaus!" I felt a rush of excitement with yet another new liberty.

"Ok Mr. Kettering."

"Ok," he smiled. "Now where was I… the weight room. Anyway, it's like the locker room and the pool. There are no windows anywhere in the basement level of the school. I didn't see a flash or anything. My radio buzzed and quit working; then the lights went out. There had been no warning at all on the radio. None! A few seconds after that, well, you can imagine. The whole building blew to pieces and flew away, leaving me in a hole in the ground."

"The whole school?" I asked.

"All gone," he said. "Well, everything but the basement. I had my gym bag, and my desk was still there in the office, so I grabbed a few things from it before leaving to find better cover. That's what's in my bag in the garage. The stuff inside the bag should be clean, but the outside of the bag will be as hot as my hair was before the decontamination shower. Oh, I've got a first aid kit in there. Maybe I've got something to help with your burns."

"Thanks," said David, "but Mom made sure our first aid kit here had a whole hospital full of supplies."

"Oh! I didn't notice it on the floor. The table's in the way, I guess. That's a huge first aid kit." After a short pause, he continued with his story. "Well, I knew the first bomb had to be huge to cause so much damage way out here, so I guessed that if they had more for us, anything that survived the first bomb would probably survive the smaller ones they would use for precision follow-up attacks. You boys know what that means, right?" We both nodded. I was sure they'd talked about precision bomb attacks in an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, or maybe some other TV show. "It just means the big massive bomb comes first, and the little ones follow to make sure the most critical targets are knocked out in case the big huge one doesn't do the job.

"So I stood on the weight bench and looked over the basement wall at Saint Albert. Most of the buildings were crumbling or smashed up pretty bad, and everything, I mean everything, was on fire. My face felt hot from the fires when I stood up, but you wouldn't believe it – the old St. Albert's Church is still standing! Even the big spire! I could swear the whole spire was bent back just a little, but if you can believe it, it's still standing tall. They built churches to last back then." He paused a moment before asking, "Do you boys go to church?"

"Yeah, we go to St. Alphonsus Catholic Church," I said. "Well, except for my mom."

"We're with the Society of Friends," said David. I looked at him curiously. "We're Quakers," he clarified.

"Like the oatmeal?"

"Yes," he said, "like the oatmeal, only we don't dress up like that."

"I never knew," I said, wondering why I never knew.

"I think it's important for you boys to do something every day, or at least once a week, maybe every Sunday, to study your faith, to keep it alive. I see you have a lot of books down here."

"Oh yes, Mr. Kettering. Dad liked religious books. He has at least twelve versions of the Bible down here, but he's got holy books from all kinds of religions too. He's also got books written by professors that teach about all kinds of religions. He said I could borrow any of them if I liked them. He didn't tell me how to be religious. He said I should find my own way, and that he would help me if he could."

"I'm just ordinary Catholic," I said. "We say our prayer before we eat supper, and we go to church when we have to. That's really it."

"Well, I think there's enough material here to keep you busy if you want to learn more. After what's happened, I think we need something to believe in, now more than ever."

"So did you go into the church, Mr. Kettering?"

"Well, first I sat down on the floor against the wall and thought about what I should do. Where would I go? Was there anyone left in Saint Albert? Then came the second flash. It was brighter than anything I ever imagined. I had made sure to sit against a wall with my back to the Cities, so I wasn't looking at it, but it still took a few seconds to see again. As soon as I could see, the blast wave came and blew trees and debris all over the place, but it all flew over my head and collected on the other side of the school, mostly in the pool, which was nice because it helped keep the fire down. When things calmed down, I realized there could be a lot more bombs coming at any time, so I decided not to risk running to the church, even though it was just across the driveway." The middle school had once belonged to the church, so it was built right next to it. "I had survived two big blasts right where I was. I pulled my desk out of the office and put it against the wall in the weight room, and I crawled under it with my gym bag. I turned on my radio and looked for WCCO, but it was quite a while before they were back on the air. I don't know how many bombs there were. They said seven or eight I guess, but when the president said there were no more expected, I decided it was safe to go into the church."

"Did you need to pray?" I asked.

"That's not why I went into the church," he said, "but yes, I did say a prayer for the first time in many years while I was inside." He paused before continuing. "You wouldn't believe the state of that place. It was incredible. All the gold and statues, the organ pipes, even the candlesticks at the altar were right where they should be. The side door leading to the vestry had a broken window. That's the only damage I could see, aside from the spire that might have been bent."

"That sounds like it might be a miracle," I said.

"It might be. Who am I to say?" He sighed heavily and continued. "I took two bottles of communion wine and two bags of the communion host wafers and put them in my bag. I had nothing to eat or drink, and that was all I could find. I know it sounds horrible," he said to me, the only Catholic in the room, "but they haven't been blessed or anything, so it's just ordinary bread wafers and wine. Do you understand that, Donovan?" I nodded, wondering why he was so concerned. I liked the communion hosts. When I had communion in church, I always sucked on mine until it dissolved in my mouth. I thought they would be great dipped in peanut butter.

He paused before continuing. "Anyway, there was no one at all in the building, the only completely safe building in town, and there was no one safe inside, not a priest, not a secretary, not a cleaner, no one. The vicarage house wasn't just destroyed, but completely gone. I think Father Dreyfuss must have died. I really do hope he went to the place he believed in. I hope everybody did. My thoughts got real ugly and horrible just then," he said. "You must not let that happen to you! If you start thinking about this thing, you can never make sense of it because it doesn't make sense, and there is already more pain than we can handle if we look for it. You have to find ways to cheer each other up if you can and not stay stuck in the ugliness."

"Oh, we've talked about that, Mr. Kettering."

"I'm glad to hear it. I think that gloomy despair can be worse than radiation."

I thought about David and me, him with his hair falling out, throwing up all the time, and mostly blind. Me, with my diarrhea and partial deafness. How could despair be worse than knowing we're about to die?

"It was then, just when I was feeling so hopeless, I heard a voice…"

"Was it Jesus?" I asked.

"No," he said with the brightest smile I'd seen on his face since he arrived. "It was you!"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you! Remember, I had my radio on, and they played your Sven and Ole joke. I'd never felt so happy in my life! You two had survived, and you were safe! And…" he came to a pause, his smile disappearing. "And you had a shelter with food. I had the church for shelter, but only communion wafers, wine, and whatever came out of the drinking fountain, and I suppose holy water if I was desperate, but I didn't want to take anything the parishioners would have considered sacred, not even if they were all dead. I don't think you boys can appreciate how terrible it is for a grown man to realize he needs to beg for help from two kids, his own students. But," he sobbed, "I didn't want to die!"

David reached out and found his knee. He rested his hand on it and said, "It's ok, Klaus. We need you here, and we have plenty of food to share. No one wants to die, and no one should have to die if they don't need to, and you didn't need to. You can share everything here. That's what you need. And you can be… I guess the grown-up who knows what to do, and who can protect us if we need it, or maybe if we get scared…"

"Thank you David," he sniffed. "I will not eat your food, but as long as your tap water is good, I'd like to drink that."

"No, you won't," I said, standing. I pulled out a bottle of beer from the cooler full of cold stuff we'd taken out of the fridge, opened it, and handed it to him. "We've got five full cases of this, plus a few more bottles in the cooler here," I said.

"My god," he said calmly. "You boys are the miracle. Maybe the church was a miracle, too, but you… I can't tell you what this means…" He broke off again for a quick sob. Then he raised his bottle of beer to us and said, "To the greatest of all miracles, two of them, named David and Donovan, who saved my life tonight," followed by a great, refreshing swig.

I gave David a bottle of water and grabbed one for myself. I held mine up and said, "To lots of other miracles! Especially Mr. Kettering, who will probably find lots of ways to save our lives too, and who has come to stay with us!"

"Here here," said David as we all took a swig.

"I'm strong, and I think you know from gym class that I'm quite fit. I will work. I will care for you. I will try to be like… not a father, I can never replace anybody's father, but maybe a guardian to you. It will be my responsibility to care for you and protect you. That is the only way I can accept this generosity of yours. I will be your guardian, and if there is a government left, I will become your legal guardian if you'll have me. Deal?"

Of all the grown-ups to come into our lives at that awful moment in time, we were very fortunate to have Klaus. "Deal!" we said, again raising our bottles and taking a swig.

Chapter 21

Secrets Revealed

'8:00 PM, outside 4 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

"We have a couple of things to tell you," I said. "About us, I mean. I guess you should know some things before you're sure you want to be our guardian."

"Go ahead. I'm listening."

"First, we're dying, Klaus. You will probably have this place all to yourself soon."

He abruptly stood up and said, "What? What makes you think you're dying?"

"We've got radiation sickness. We can't eat anything," said David. "I keep throwing up, and Don has terrible diarrhea. You can see we've both got radiation burns, and my hair is falling out," said David, pulling out a few more strands from the front. He had known all along. "We've got all the signs."

"Let me see," said Klaus, bending over to examine David's forehead.

"That's a nasty burn all right," he said, "and it explains why your hair is falling out in front. Part of your scalp is burned. A burned scalp doesn't hold onto hair very well, and if your hair was falling out because of radiation sickness, it wouldn't happen so soon after the blast. That takes days to happen; besides, these aren't radiation burns – they're ordinary burns. You can't get radiation burns even from the biggest H-bomb way out here. People who are close enough to get radiation burns from an H-bomb are also close enough to die instantly from the heat flash – they would vaporize or be burned into charcoal. Vomiting and diarrhea can happen when you feel stress, and today I think the whole world has felt more stress than ever before. You're not dying; your burns are the worst thing I can see on your bodies – aside from your eyes and Donovan's ears."

"But I feel so sick," I protested.

"So do I," he smiled, "That's perfectly normal at a time like this."

"You mean?"

"I mean neither of you is sick because of radiation poisoning – It's not possible. You couldn't have been irradiated from the bomb this far away from the blast, and you've been very carefully sealed in this basement since the fallout began. They call those thermal burns. They are the same as a bad sunburn. Oh David, I can see some blistering now along your hairline…"

David and I hugged and cried. Then I kissed him before I knew what I was doing. I was suddenly horrified, but Klaus didn't react at all.

"Well," said David, "I guess you know the other thing we were going to tell you."

"That you two are in love? I've known that all year long. Teachers can tell, gym teachers especially."

"You KNEW?" I yelled.

"Yep, a lot of us knew, and a few of us have been looking out for any signs of trouble with the other students."

"The five-minute penalty for that boy who called us fags?"

"Yep. When I know a student is gay, I don't tolerate any of that bullying or name-calling. I should be the one to stop it. If you mishandle it, it could make things much worse for you, and very quickly. It's my job to enforce discipline, so nobody thinks anything of it when I do it. Can you imagine a worse response than if you'd said, 'We are not!' Adolescents are beautiful people, but they can be brutally unfair. There is nothing you can say to make that go away if someone thinks it's true."

"But who told you, Mr. Kettering? How did you know? We didn't even know!"

"No one had to tell me, David. I just knew boys in love look at each other a certain way, even when they don't realize they're in love."

"My mom!" I shouted.

"She might have suspected. I don't know. Parents usually don't spend much time with gym teachers during parent-teacher conferences, so I never got to know her."

In response to David's worried look, he said, "Your parents definitely knew your relationship with Donovan was more than best friends. They brought it up with me once, but that was long after I'd already worked it out. They thought it was best to let you discover yourself in your own time. They had suspected you were gay already for a few years, and they loved their gay son very much. Or their straight son. They didn't honestly know yet, but it didn't matter to them, only that they would have to have a different kind of talk with you eventually. They thought maybe when you were twelve they might have that talk, but they wanted my opinion as your health and sex education teacher. They were never quite sure when would be best, but you never had to hide anything from them. Your mom was a doctor – she understood. They were good Quakers; they really did understand, both of them."

David sat dumbfounded at this revelation about his parents. "The Society of Friends teaches tolerance and acceptance of all people," he said, "but I was never sure. People talked about gay rights and AIDS a lot at our meetings, but I was never sure about being a gay Quaker."

"There are a lot of gay Quakers," Klaus said. "The Quakers are very accepting and supportive of gay members. A lot of gay Christians become Quakers because they no longer feel Christianity is a good fit for them. It's hard to feel welcome in a church that teaches you constantly that you are evil for being who you are."

How would he know that? He hadn't prayed in years. Was he talking about himself? I was about to ask him when David said, "That's what they keep saying, but it would be so terrible if people knew!"

"David, a lot of old ways of thinking need to change right now. They had begun to change slowly already, but now, everything will be different. I don't know if there will be schools again in your lifetime, but you will choose the people you spend time with, and I think it would be rather foolish of you to spend time with anyone who hates you because you're gay. Straight people need to accept friends wherever they find them because survival as a group is more important than ever now."

"Thank you Klaus," said David, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek.

"So we're gay now," I said, "and we're gonna be gay while you're here. We're gonna kiss and cuddle, and we've been naked most of the time we've been down here."

"And you want your privacy?"

"No, that's not what I mean. I just mean that you hafta be ok with all that while you're here. I mean seeing us kiss and be naked and cuddle and stuff." David looked at me suddenly. I don't think that was exactly his understanding of what we'd talked about earlier.

"That's not a problem at all," he said. "In fact, if I can't find something that fits me better than these shorts, I might have to go without clothes too, or just a towel. It's all ok. We've all seen each other naked, lots of times, and it's no big deal, right?"

"Right"

"Yes, that's right, Mr. Kettering."

"Well," I said to David, "It's a pretty big deal when I see you naked." I kissed him with a smile, but I don't think that's what he meant.

Chapter 22

Beautiful Bodies in Cramped Quarters

'8:30 PM, outside 6 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

David and I went back out to the decontamination area to shut off the hose. He sprayed the end of it with Lift Away, just to be sure. "Up here," he said, feeling around on the shelf, "somewhere here, there should be a valve that screws on to the end of this hose."

"Is this it?" I asked, handing him what I'd found.

"That's it," he said. "There should also be a large box next to where this was. It says Nano-Pure on the side, in red letters. Please grab that. We'll want all that in the shelter corner."

He sprayed the whole valve carefully with Lift Away and rinsed it off with the hose. Then he screwed a cartridge from the Nano-Pure box on to the end of the hose and the valve onto the cartridge. He pressed a lever on the valve that made water flow out slowly. It landed somewhere near the floor drain, which he said was fine.

For a guy with almost no vision, and only for a few hours, I thought he was doing really well. "We'll take this into the shelter corner with us, so we have clean water in there. These filters will make sure the water is clean, and they will also give us a way to know if the well water has been contaminated, because any particle of fallout dust in the water will become trapped in the filter, and we can scan it with the Geiger counter. We can always still drink Nano-Pure water, even if it's contaminated with fallout because not even the tiniest virus or protein fragment can get through these filters. In Mom's lab, this grade of Nano-Pure water was considered sterile, but if the well water does become contaminated, we need to know, because we won't be able to use it for much besides flushing the toilet."

***

Klaus was the boys' health teacher, which was the other class gym teachers had to teach, so he knew a lot about the human body. I didn't know it before, but he was also a medic in the Army more than ten years earlier, so he knew a lot. He wasn't a people medic, though. He was a dog medic in Vietnam. They had lots of dogs in the Army for sniffing out bombs and land mines. They had to have years of training, so it was essential to the Army that they had the best medical care they could get. Well, veterinary care, I suppose, but Klaus had to take all the regular people medic training too, so he learned a lot. Then he went to college and learned even more, but he decided teaching boys Phys Ed would make him the happiest because he loved boys' bodies so much.

Klaus turned off the lights and looked at David's eyes with a small flashlight to see how badly they were burned. "Yup, that flash got you good, didn't it," he said. "Look up at the ceiling for me, please, David. Yes, the only obvious burns are around the top edge."

"The top?"

"Yes, David. Our eyes work upside-down. The top of your retina is what sees downward, and the bottom of your retina sees upward."

I knew that, and it took a lot of restraint not to jump in and show off. If people had problems with me for the socially inappropriate things I said and did, how much more they would loathe me if they knew the things I so badly wanted to say and do.

"What this means is that the very bottom of what you could see before, you won't get that back. I'm sorry but burned retina tissue can't grow back, but then there is a pale, pinkish area going from that burn almost all the way down to your fovea. That's the place where you see straight ahead, and you have the clearest vision. That's the part of your eye that you use to read. I don't know what that pale area means, David. I'm sorry. It's just beyond my training, but fingers crossed, it might be erythema, which means your eye is trying to heal itself. Erythema is like redness or swelling. Your vision might get better, or it might not. I just don't know. I think I always need to be honest with you, and I honestly don't know. There are blood vessels in that area that appear normal, so there's hope. We should know within a week; I think if you'll be getting vision back from that pink area, or part of it."

Next, he turned on the light and poked a small, black, plastic, funnel-looking thing into my left ear. He shined his small light into it and said, "Yep, tympanic rupture. That's the fancy language that means your eardrum has a small tear because of the pressure from the blast wave. That's better news than I had for David, and I think you already know this. Your hearing should be much better in two weeks, and your eardrums should be healed and back to normal in maybe a month."

He checked my right ear quickly and said, "Yep, same thing over here. The tears really aren't very big on either side, and I've seen much worse heal completely, in dogs and in soldiers. You see a lot of this sort of injury among combat soldiers. I think we should give you some antibiotic eardrops every day for a week or so. There's no hospital to take you to if things get worse, so I think we should treat everything aggressively right here." He rummaged around in the first aid kit until he found the eardrops. I tilted my head to each side while he put two drops in each ear.

"Thanks Klaus," I said as he helped me off the table. He was able to find out a lot more about David's eyes than I ever could, but we already knew most of what he said about my ears. Still, it was nice to have him check to see if we were right. I had lost a lot of faith in my skill as a doctor after finding out we weren't dying of radiation poisoning.

"If you take off your shirt," he said, "I'll hit your shoulders again with that lidocaine spray." Oh, it felt so good! I didn't know my burns hurt so much until he made it feel better.

"You know, it's my job to teach you about your bodies and to help you keep them healthy, but I seldom get to see your bodies up close. I see you're developing quite a bit of muscle on your back and around your waist." He traced his fingers around the areas he was talking about, which tickled! "Your legs are doing really well, I see, but your arms and chest muscles are lagging a little behind, but you're still very early in puberty. It's too early to tell how your muscles will develop, but I love watching them grow in you, boys." He lightly pinched my hip and said, "Your fat content is just about right too, but with things the way they are, a little extra fat might be better."

I hadn't heard anything he said about my fat. "I'm not in puberty yet!" I pulled down the front of the sweatpants I was again wearing and said, "Look, I don't have any pubic hair, so that means I'm not in puberty yet."

He ran his fingers gently above my cock and said, "Nope, no sign of hair, but look at the size of your penis." He let it rest across two of his fingers. "Your penis has already begun its growth spurt, and your testes are much bigger than they were last year, I bet."

He was looking me in the eye with a kind smile, and suddenly I was aware I was getting a boner. "That's a sign too," he said. "When boys enter puberty, they often get erections when they really don't want them, or with the slightest sensation." He didn't know yet that showing him my penis was a big turn-on for me. He only had to touch it.

"I don't mind having a boner now," I said. "You had one earlier, so it's ok, right?"

"It's just fine," he said, giving it a few tugs and letting go.

"I'm not putting the sweatshirt back on. My shoulders feel better without the shirt rubbing against them."

He sat back in the chair and said, "That sounds like a good idea; besides, you look better this way." But as he sat, the crotch seam on the little shorts he was wearing split wide open. "Oh damn," he said. Would you boys feel better if I wore a towel around my waist, or should I just take these off and be done?"

"I don't mind," said David. "I can't see you, anyway."

"I think you look better that way," I said.

He grinned at me and said, "You are a little gay boy, aren't you, Donovan Langevin!"

I giggled shyly, but David laughed out loud. "David looks way better than I do," I said.

"I don't know why you think that," David said, "I'm just a skinny, plain-looking, ordinary boy."

"Oh no," I said, "Show Klaus!"

Without hesitating, David was out of his sweatshirt and sweatpants in seconds. "See?" he said. "Skinny and ordinary, just as I've always been."

Klaus chuckled and said, "Permit me to disagree." He rubbed his hand gently over David's belly and said, "you have excellent tone and definition for a boy of only eleven," he said.

"See! I've been telling you!"

"That's true all over your body," which is where Klaus was now placing his hands. "I bet you can get an erection if you want, David." It took only a second. "Your erect penis looks exactly the size it should be, and it has a lovely shape," he said, caressing it gently for a few seconds. Klaus had David turn around to face me. "Oh my, I have seen this many times in the locker room," he said. "Your glutes are absolutely perfect. You even have the dimples on the sides, and you have the longest legs for a boy your height I've ever seen, and they are slender, well-toned, and not at all skinny. David, your body is a thing of beauty!"

"Stop," he said, blushing, "It is not."

"Your boyfriend thinks it is, don't you, Donovan?"

"More than beauty," I said, "But I don't know a stronger word."

"Why don't you show him how much you love his body, Don? I think he needs convincing."

With one hand on each ass cheek, I pulled David in and slurped his cock into my mouth. I caressed every part of his body I could reach. "You're sure you don't mind, Klaus?"

"Of course I'm sure," he said. "Things are different now, and I have to be ok with seeing you like this.

We lay across the couch in the 69 position. David had to pull my pants down first, and I kicked them off. I'd forgotten how soft his thighs were when they were clean! That's what a Donovan heaven would look like – soft, curvy, tan vistas of smooth David flesh. I held him tight, and we both orgasmed pretty quickly.

"That was so beautiful," said Klaus. "How could you boys ever think someone wouldn't want to see you love each other's bodies? There's nothing ugly about it."

We took our time sitting up and snuggling with each other again, back under the blanket. Then I said, "Klaus, um, there is this book from the library about being gay, and uh, it has lots of pictures…" David began nodding to him as I said this. "…and I think watching grown men loving each other's bodies is really beautiful too."

"Me too," said David very softly.

"Oh! I'd love to see that book," he said. I handed it to him, and he began to page through it. Then I watched as his cock slowly rose.

"You like watching naked men have sex?" I asked.

"Of course I do," he said. "Didn't I tell you? I'm gay too."

***

'9:00 PM, outside 7 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

David and I sat quietly, snuggling under the blanket and listening to the radio as Klaus looked through the book, occasionally giving comments such as "Oh yes," and "That's so true." He had an erection the whole time. It felt weird, really weird. It also felt really wonderful to see a grown man being sexual, even if it was just looking at him while he had a boner. Of course, it felt even more wonderful to know we weren't dying of radiation sickness.

We learned from the radio that the Monticello nuclear power plant had been hit, as well as the Becker coal plant a little way up the river from Monticello, each with low-yield ground bursts. The Minnesota Air National Guard had two special survey jets that flew through and around the radioactive cloud to help the meteorologists predict where the fallout was going to fall and how much.

"Have you ever seen a man masturbate?" asked Klaus.

"Not me," I said.

"No, Klaus," David said with the slightest, shyest grin I'd ever seen grace his face.

"Ok, I'll stay here, and if you like, you can watch."

David and I smiled at each other, almost bursting with excitement! This was no picture – this was a real live man, and his cock was big and beautiful! He looked at us and smiled, and then he looked back at the book, and back to us again. Mostly he seemed to be looking at us. I had a boner again, and I reached over and felt David had one too. Then I suddenly tugged at the blanket and pulled it off us so Klaus could see us playing with each other's cocks. He laughed, but he also began stroking faster. David and I looked at each other and giggled. I didn't want an orgasm, but this was fun!

Soon Klaus put the book down and looked only at us, stroking faster. David and I looked back at him smiling, with our tongues playing together in front of our mouths and our hands playing with each other's cocks. I had my right hand on David's cock and my left hand on whatever area of his skin I could caress. We both looked straight into his eyes the whole time, just like we did with each other when we were alone.

Klaus grunted and slumped down in the recliner. He closed his eyes and let his head rest on the back cushion of the chair as he slowed his strokes to maybe only one per second or two until he ejaculated over his belly.

"Thank you, boys."

***

"Wow! Did you see how much came out?" David could hardly wait for Klaus to get into the shower so we could talk privately.

"What would you do if he squirted all that in your mouth?"

"I dunno," he said. "I might ask him if I could try it and find out. I bet I could swallow it."

"I bet you couldn't!"

"Oh, don't be silly, sweetie," he said, kissing me. "It wasn't that much; it just went all over the place."

"Do you still want to try a big man's cock in your ass?"

"Well yeah," he said, still a bit shyly, "but not yet. I want to only have your cock in my ass for now. For today anyway. It's been our special thing, just us. Mm, maybe tomorrow!"

"Oh David," I said with a melting smile and a kiss, "It will always be our special thing, but maybe he'll do it for you. I know you want to try it with a man, and he's nice; he might let you."

Chapter 23

Sex, Love, and Fallout

'9:30 PM, outside 9 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

"You're bisexual!" I said to Klaus as he returned to his recliner, just as naked as when he left for his shower.

"Bisexual? No," he said. "What makes you say that?"

"I think you are," I said. "I'm bisexual too, and so is David." He nodded his head in agreement.

"I can assure you I'm not," said Klaus. David and I were stunned. We looked at each other, pouting in disappointment. "I'm gay. I just can't be with women as lovers."

"Well, we couldn't either," said David, "but I have some really nice friends who are girls."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"Us!" I said. "Don't you like us?"

"Of course I do," he said.

"Well, you like grown men, and you like us boys, so that means you're bisexual."

Klaus tried in vain to stifle a chuckle as he was drinking a sip of beer. I thought I saw some foam come out of his nose. "I'm sorry, boys! That's not what bisexual means," he said. "People who are bisexual are attracted to both their same sex and the opposite sex. If I was attracted to women as well as men, then I would be bisexual."

"You mean it has to be girls and boys both in order to be bisexual?" asked David.

"Yep. I think all three of us are attracted to both men and boys, am I right?"

David blushed, lowered his head down to his lap, and had an embarrassed giggle fit.

"Yep," I said. "David, you're never embarrassed! Why are you like that now?"

"I don't know," he giggled. "It's just strange! We're all sitting here naked, us with our gym teacher, talking about wanting sex with men and boys, when I've wanted to play with Mr. Kettering's penis since we started at Northview! Oh god! I hope it's ok that I said that! Oh, god…" I have never been sure he said that by accident.

"Calm down, David," said Klaus. "Everybody has people they secretly wish they could have sex with. From what you've told me, Donovan here was obsessed with you before you opened up to each other. It's not a bad thing."

"Sorry, Klaus," I said, not feeling sorry at all, "but he's in love with me." I stuck my tongue out at him in a snotty but unmistakably giggly way.

"You were always in love with him," Klaus said to me, "and you were also sexually attracted to him, both at once. That's a very powerful thing to feel, as you know. Some people say those are two different things. I think they're different feelings, and if I may speak for you," he said, looking at David, "I think you agree. Some people say they're the same. I think David loves you so much he couldn't imagine not spending the rest of his life with you."

David nodded and kissed me. "He might also feel attracted to other people, just for sex. I think you've experienced that too. You were turned on by the men in that book, but you were still in love with David, and only David. You seemed pretty turned on by watching me masturbate too. Maybe you even want to have sex with me." I stared blankly at him, hoping not to answer him with a look. "That's just sex. You still love David – Do you see the difference?" I did, and I told him so. "Some people call that play sex or just playing. If you two have sex, that's making love. If you have sex with me, that's playing."

"I never knew being gay was so complicated," I said.

"It's not sweetie! I love you, and you love me. That's what matters."

"I love you, you love me, ho-mo-sex-u-a-li-ty" I sang. It was something the badass cool kids in the back of the bus sang, and it stuck in my mind.

***

We turned on the radio to see if they had anything new to say. "…ya, dey vas goin bear huntin. Dere vas a curve in da road and a sign wit an arrow, sayin 'BEAR LEFT,' So Sven and Ole, dey turned around and dey vent home."

"Ugh! I knew that one when we called in, but it was too horrible to say out loud," I complained.

"It was pretty bad," Klaus agreed.

We put the call out about five hours ago, and I have to say, Minnesota, you're letting us down! We've had exactly three submissions since then. There are a lot of you out there that we're talking to on CB channel eight and on shortwave at fifteen point five five megahertz. Help us out! David and Donovan, if you're still listening, we need you! We've replayed your joke a half dozen times already, and we'll play it again until we get something new from you. A lot of people are telling us how happy they are to hear a couple smiling kids.

Meanwhile, back in 'CCO-Land, we have more updates and information. We heard a few minutes ago from Lieutenant Governor Marlene Johnson, and she had a few more confirmed detonations in Minnesota. The Twin Cities International Airport did sustain a direct hit, and the whole thing is a three hundred-foot deep crater, so no international airport, but members of the airport fire services were offsite and able to evacuate some of their equipment. They expect to be involved in the morning's hot zone operations. Confirmation also that the Saint Paul Downtown Airport took a direct hit, with similar damage. Also a confirmation – the lieutenant governor reported earlier that a warhead might have detonated over the Shoreview transmission towers. That device took out the transmission towers, but it was centered over Arden Hills, not Shoreview, though in the chaos of detonations, it seems no one is able to confirm now which were ground bursts and which were air bursts. Also both Minnesota nuclear power plants, Prairie Island and Monticello, confirmed by the governor to have suffered direct hits with lower-yield ground bursts, which have been playing havoc with our fallout forecasts due to the amounts of uranium, plutonium, and other highly radioactive material at both sites mixing with the usual fallout material. Forecasters tell us that the material in the fuel rods is very heavy, so the good news is that it's not expected to drift very far downwind from the plants unless it was completely vaporized, which is considered unlikely. Despite three to five-foot thick reinforced concrete casing surrounding the reactors and spent fuel pools, no design can withstand a direct hit, but with low-yield weapons, a slight miss can make all the difference. Also the coal power plant in Becker and the Black Dog coal power plant in Burnsville were both confirmed hit by low-yield groundbursts. Information from around the state is understandably slower to arrive, but the lieutenant governor expects to receive more reports of the state's coal power plants being hit as time passes.

For hot zone operations in the Twin Cities, again, provided current forecasts hold, at five AM, volunteer specialist rescue units from the National Guard will be permitted to enter certain regions within the hot zone for no more than two hours at a time, and no more than two shifts total. At noon, all emergency workers will be permitted access to western regions of the hot zone for a single four-hour shift, and after a twelve-hour rest, unlimited four-hour shifts with a minimum of eight hours rest between shifts, provided their accumulated exposure does not exceed fifty rads. At four PM, all emergency workers will be permitted access to most parts of the hot zone for a single eight-hour shift, and after a four-hour rest, unlimited twelve-hour shifts separated by twelve-hour rest periods, with a maximum accumulated exposure of fifty rads. Lieutenant Governor Johnson said this schedule is likely to change depending on actual conditions within the zone, including any potential contribution of the fallout cloud from Fargo. Ms. Johnson stressed the importance of preserving our emergency services workers by limiting exposure and limiting the consequences of inadequate rest, saying 'We don't have nearly enough emergency personnel, and we can't afford to risk those few who have the skills and the courage to save so many.' Folks, I appreciate all the work they're putting into this major undertaking of rescue planning, but I'm glad I'm not the one who has to keep track of everyone's hours. God bless 'em, every one of them.

***

"So you do like boys," I said. "I mean, having sex with boys. You like it, right?" Everything that was part of reality changed that day, and I had to make sure.

"Oh yes," he said with a broad smile, "I certainly do, but not just any boy. It's like men. I like having sex with men too, but not just any man."

"Oh," I said, not feeling any clearer about what I really wanted to know.

"I love boys' bodies, just as they reach puberty," he said. "That's why I decided to teach middle school Phys Ed. I can watch you grow and develop from your little child bodies into that perfect peak of perfection you reach, usually around age twelve, when you have that balanced blend of both child and man. I love your bodies, but there's a lot more. You are no longer children. You have some maturity, you two especially, and unlimited potential to carve out a wonderful life. I love boys… like a musician loves his instrument. The musician is required for the instrument to make music. Without the instrument, the musician can't make music. Without the musician, the instrument can't make music. You provide the beauty, and all I want to do is pluck your strings and listen to the beautiful music that comes from your heart."

"That's beautiful, Klaus," said David, looking as if he was going to cry again yet rotating his hips under the blanket. I didn't really understand any of it, but it sounded nice. I just wanted to know if he would let me play with his cock some time.

…fallout reports are now showing a lower-level wind shift to the east, blowing the fallout from the Monticello burst north of the Twin Cities and east of the Mississippi, where it is overlapping with the leading edge of the Fargo fallout cloud. However, upper-level winds are holding steady, which is bad news for the Twin Cities area.

The Fargo fallout cloud is following a centerline that passes about ten miles north of Minneapolis, loosely following the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, this cloud is wide. If you are in the area between Monticello and Minneapolis, and you are less than five miles south of the Mississippi River, or anywhere north of the river, all the way to Lake Mille Lacs, you can expect fallout measuring one hundred to one thousand rads per hour. These are new numbers we're all going to have to be familiar with, folks.

If you are exposed to two hundred rads total, you will be extremely sick, incapacitated, and some might even die. Four hundred rads total is considered lethal to everybody, though not immediately. The Minnesota Department of Health strongly recommends staying inside if the fallout exceeds two rads per hour. The good news is that this kind of fallout generally decays fast.

Health department officials tell us that after one day, the radiation levels outside are expected to decay to approximately one one-thousandth of what they were the same time the day before, as long as the fallout has stopped coming down. So if you get a thousand rads per hour, and no more falls, just wait a day, and it might be safe to walk outside, but that's the key. The countdown doesn't begin until the fallout stops falling.

Folks, I gotta tell ya, tomorrow will come. Sometimes it feels like time is dragging us through life, naked, over broken glass, because tomorrow keeps coming, whether we like it or not. We have suffered a calamity of unspeakable proportions, but tomorrow will still come. I expect it won't be a very good day for most people, but it will be a better day for people who plan for it.

We've had our nuclear war, but the world didn't come to an end like some of us assumed it would. Tomorrow is speeding down the road, headed right for us, and it will not be stopped. Think about rescue, safety, provisions, and quality of life, and what you can do to improve just one part of anybody's life, preferably your own. Then enjoy a moment of self-congratulation before finding the next thing you can do. It might not seem like much but look at the effect two boys from Saint Albert had on the whole Twin Cities area by telling a simple joke. I urge you to expect tomorrow and do one simple thing to make it better.

"That poor guy has been on the air since two hours before the bombs fell," said Klaus.

Chapter 24

Sharing a Beer

'10:00 PM, outside 14 rad/hour, inside .1 rad/hour.'

"Oh! Did you boys take any iodine?"

"Yes, we did," said David. "We each took a potassium iodide tablet sometime around five o'clock I think. We wrote it down in the first aid notebook. Mom told me iodide and iodine meant the same thing on a tablet or a bottle of tablets, but we know iodide is the ion, not the neutral atom. Regular iodine is a liquid, and it's hard to make that into a tablet." My sweet science nerd.

"Do you have enough to share?" asked Klaus.

"That's being stupid!" I said.

"He means, of course, we have plenty," said David. "Help yourself. You were outside in that fallout so that you might have breathed some of it in. I wish you'd said something earlier! It works best when you take it early, and you need it more than we do. Have as many as you like. We have hundreds of tablets."

"I don't mind telling you boys, when I realized I'd been walking through that fallout, I didn't know what I was breathing, and I was scared. Since you have so many…"

"Since we have so many," David corrected him.

"Ok, since there are so many here, I'll have two for now. Then it's one tablet each day for all of us. David, you might want only a half tablet every other day. A whole tablet each day could be too much. Donovan, you're bigger and taller than David, so one tablet each day should be fine."

"Will a half tablet every other day still be enough for me?" asked David.

"Well, it says the dose for children aged three to eleven is a half-tablet per day, but you're far bigger than a three-year-old. Donovan is clearly bigger than most twelve-year-olds, so I think he should get the twelve-year-old dose. You're right at the border. You're the average height for an eleven-year-old, but you're thinner than most…"

"He's slender and elegant!" I protested.

"Oh yes," said Klaus with a smile. "He certainly is that! His obvious beauty is not the issue –his body weight is. You know Donovan, there's a word for that kind of observation, where something is the same, no matter who observes it…"

"Empirical," I said proudly.

"That's the word! Anyway, if David were to step onto a scale, what we see on the scale is empirical…"

"What we see on the scale is the sexiest and most beautiful boy in the world!"

"I meant, what we read on the scale's indicator dial is empirical."

Of course, I knew what he meant. I just wanted to show David how beautiful and sexy I thought he was, and that I wouldn't stand down from that argument, not even with a teacher. I'm sure he didn't take it that way, of course. He just looked embarrassed.

"Anyway," he continued, "figuring out the right dose for someone should be based on empirical measurements."

"We don't have a scale down here," said David. "I'd rather take a whole tablet every day."

"Ok," said Klaus. "You know your own body just as well as I know my body. Make sure to speak up if you feel sick."

I looked over Klaus' body and said, "Will my penis be as big as yours when I'm grown up?" There seemed to be no such thing as a stupid question anymore, nor an inappropriate time to ask one.

"Mine's about average for my height, maybe a little longer, and I think yours is a little thicker than average for your age, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way through puberty. It's hard to say, but if you stay taller than average, like you are, you're likely to have a longer penis than average."

"Cool," I said, turning to David. "Then I can fuck you with a big man cock!"

"Sweetie," he said, "As long as it's your cock, it will always feel like some kind of, I don't know, a sort of love electricity inside of me, and I know no other boy could make me feel that good, ever. That's really it, you know. I feel you inside me, not your penis, and I know it's you inside me. That's what feels so incredible about us fucking."

"That's not fucking David," said Klaus, "That's making love. Fucking can be a wonderful, awesome experience, but it can never come close to making love."

"Oh, Klaus," I said, "it's all this gay stuff. We decided we wanted to be gay together, but we didn't really know how. We didn't know we already were gay, and that we were even already boyfriends, but while we were trying to learn all that stuff, we learned about all kinds of exciting things, and we wanted to try them all!"

"Almost all," said David, patting my cheek.

"Ok, I suppose some of that stuff looks kinda gross, but we have to do some of that stuff to be gay, right? What if we don't do enough, are we not gay anymore? Or what if we do enough, but then we want to do more stuff? Can I still be gay with David if you put your penis up his ass like he wants? Or if I…"

"Donovan!" David looked horrified. He got up, ran to the bathroom, and locked the door.

"Uh-oh," said Klaus. "I don't think he wanted you to tell me that."

I ran after David and said, "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! It's just, we could finally ask, and I forgot, and… I didn't mean to hurt you! I would never hurt you! I didn't realize… I was stupid. I'm sorry." I could hear him crying inside the bathroom. I slumped against the locked bathroom door and cried too. I could feel his body moving against the door as he cried; he was leaning against it on the inside.

I had finally found someone I could ask all these questions I'd always wanted to ask, and it was like I was exploding with questions and confusion, but while I was exploding, I embarrassed David without even thinking. When I think back on that night, I often think how oddly normal it was to be having something as ordinary as a lover's tiff while most of the world outside was dying horribly.

Klaus didn't disturb us. The rad count was still pretty low inside, and he seemed to think we needed to work things out on our own, and he was right. I could hear David moving around inside the bathroom, so I stood up and waited. He opened the door, and we fell into each other in another big, sloppy, snotty, tear-filled hug that needed no words. I think I understood what I had done, and I think he was convinced I understood, so we'd just needed to let our feelings calm down.

I had my arm around his shoulders with his head leaning against my chest as we walked back into the shelter corner and sat down with Klaus. It was weird to think David and I couldn't have our own private fights while we were sheltered with Klaus, but that was good in a way because it meant we had to talk things through as they came up.

Klaus went first. "Do you boys want to talk about this, or would you rather drop it?"

"Well, you know now," said David. "It's no good pretending he didn't say it, and I still want that, but not today, ok?"

"That's absolutely fine," said Klaus. "We won't pretend it wasn't said out loud, but I won't ask you about it. If you ever feel you'd like to give it a try, you will have to tell me, ok?"

"Thanks Mr. Kettering," said David, getting up and kissing him on the cheek.

***

Klaus had put a few bottles of beer in the deep freezer to cool them off. He brought three of them into the shelter corner and opened them all, giving one to me and one to David.

"I don't know if you've had this before, but I thought it would be nice if we all had a beer together. After a long and difficult day, I think it's a way to wind down and relax, something friendly to share, a tradition of brotherhood, a sharing of peace. Maybe it's just a silly custom, but it means something to me."

"This isn't so bad," I said. "My stepdad drinks Old Milwaukee, and Mom let me have a half a glass when I was eight. It was horrible! I wanted to spit it out!"

"Now I agree with you there, Donovan," said Klaus. "If I had that stuff in my mouth, I think I'd need dish soap to wash out the taste."

"My dad used to smoke," said David, "and that's how I felt when I inhaled the smoke from one of his cigarettes. He'd left it lit in the ashtray when he went into the kitchen, and I thought I'd sneak a puff. I wanted to know why older people liked them so much, and why they were keeping them from us kids. I always thought they just smelled bad. I didn't get it. Well, I inhaled, and right away, I started coughing like crazy. I almost threw up! Mom came into the room to see if I was ok. She saw the cigarette in my hand, and I don't know who was in more trouble, Dad or me. Anyway, as it worked out, that was something significant, though unpleasant, I shared with my dad, his very last cigarette. He gave them up to be a better dad for me. This is my very first beer, and it tastes better than that nasty cigarette. I hope this is the first beer of many that I share with you guys."

"Cheers," we all said, raising out beer bottles and taking a swig.

"I won't touch the stuff," said David, "but there's a cabinet near the stairway door with whiskey and vodka and gin, all that nasty liquor stuff. You can help yourself if you like."

"Thanks, David," Klaus said. "I might. I might in a little while. It's probably going to be difficult for anybody anywhere to get much sleep tonight, and sometimes a drink can help – Thank you. Maybe, now that you're in a safe and supervised environment, if you'd ever like to try some of that stuff, we can do that too. David, there are a lot of mixed drinks with a lot of wonderful flavors you might like a lot."

"I'd rather have strawberry Shasta," David said, "but Mom never let us have pop in the house because it was so full of sugar. Now look at us. We have five cases of beer, at least three cases of wine, you have a few bottles of communion wine, and a whole cabinet full of whiskey and gin, but not one stupid can of strawberry Shasta."

"Maybe that means we're supposed to grow up now," I said. "We've got to be grown-up about things now to stay alive."

"I told you already that you two are mature for your age," said Klaus. "Don't try to grow up any faster. I'll take care of you; you're not alone, and I never had any kids of my own. It's hard to have kids when you're gay, but stay young! You're my boys now, and I love you. You can't go back when you're a sad old man and do it over again; don't be in a hurry."

"I never thought about that, David," I said, "I always wanted to have kids."

"You're only eleven," said Klaus, "You have to follow your heart. You're not nearly old enough to have kids yet anyway, by the time you are old enough, there will probably be so many orphans in this world that they'll let anybody adopt. Or maybe you won't want to adopt, but you'll have options, be who you are."

Chapter 25

Lights Out

'10:30 PM, outside 17 rad/hour, inside .1 rad/hour.'

We shut off the generator, and the house power switched to batteries. "I'm so glad I'm not out in this stuff tonight," said Klaus. "You boys really, truly saved my life tonight."

"I need you here, Klaus," I said. "You understand us."

"Yes, we don't need a new dad right now, but we need you. We know you, and we trust you, and you know what you're doing. I think you can keep us alive. If anything happened to this place, we'd be goners without you."

Without the generator, the water pump was on battery power, and it used tons of electricity. So we had to remember not to flush the toilet if we got up to pee at night. If we had to go number two, as we used to say, there were several buckets next to the bathtub full of water that we could just pour into the toilet.

"The couch folds out into a bed, right?" Klaus asked.

"Yes, a queen-size bed," said David.

"Good. You two can share the bed, and I'll sleep on the recliner."

"It's a queen-size bed," David repeated, "and Donovan and I don't take up much room when we're snuggled up close together."

"I'll feel safer if you're with us," I said. It was such a childish thing to say, but he'd said he didn't want me to grow up yet, and I was suddenly feeling like a scared little boy again.

We moved the recliner into the corner and folded the table, then unfolded the bed. Klaus was on the right, David was on the left, and I insisted on being in the middle. I wanted to hold and cuddle with David all night, but if I got scared, I wanted to be next to Klaus.

David giggled softly as we climbed into bed. "I've never gone to bed naked," he said. "I've always had pajamas. It feels funny! But nice too, because I've got you instead of pajamas."

'11:00 PM, outside 19 rad/hour, inside .1 rad/hour.'

***

I wasn't sure if I woke up or if I'd never really fallen asleep. How could David not understand how beautiful his body was? He was so soft and warm, with springy curves and the world's cutest butt. It felt wonderful to caress him, even though he was asleep. I wished I could have talked with him about anything.

Quiet time felt like very dangerous time in my mind. Soon, I was thinking about everything horrible that had happened. Everything was so deathly silent at night with my bad hearing, and I had no one to talk to when everyone else was asleep. Touching David helped though.

I think Klaus sensed something because soon his big, warm hand was caressing my body, up and down my side. Maybe I could be his teddy bear, and maybe David could be mine? Since David was asleep, though, and Klaus was awake, I rolled over to face Klaus, holding his hand against my body to make sure he knew I wanted it there.

"Do you need a teddy bear?" I asked. "I could be your teddy bear if you're scared."

Klaus was lying on his side, facing me. "Who needs a teddy bear when I have a real boy like you with me?"

I felt protected, but still more scared and sad than I've ever felt. I also felt angry at the people who did this, who got into an argument and decided to blow up everything and almost everyone I loved instead of saying sorry and making up. This was too much at once. I leaned my head in and nuzzled against Klaus' chest for another cry. I tried to be quiet, but I could feel I was shaking the bed. I didn't want to wake David up. Sleep would be such a wonderful place to be. Klaus put one hand on my head and held it close, and his other hand on my back, caressing it like a lying down hug.

"I know it's terrible, awful," he whispered. "The best we can do is to try to focus on right now. You are in bed with the boy you love, and that's wonderful. You're in bed with me too, and I'm going to take care of you always. There really are lots of good things about right now. Can you tell me just one more good thing about right now?"

"Yeah, if the radiation keeps getting higher, we'll all die soon, and it'll all be over," I cried in a whisper.

He hugged me close and whispered, "I think you know that's not what I meant, but I can hear how miserable you feel, and I think it makes sense to feel miserable right now. I'll be honest. I feel miserable too, but I also have something to focus on right now that makes me feel good, and that's you boys. You saved my life, and in an unexpected way, this feels like the family I've always wanted. It doesn't mean the horrible stuff didn't happen. It just means that right now, I'm paying attention to what's good in my life, and there's a lot that's good right now. I think that's true for you too."

He was whispering right into my ear so I could hear him, and somehow that made his voice even more comforting. "Now I want you to try again, please. Tell me something that is really awesome about this moment, right now."

"You already said the best ones."

"Maybe, but there are a lot more. So many more."

"Ok," I whispered hesitantly. "I'll try. Um, David's dad left this great fallout shelter, and even though he died from the bombs, he's still protecting us really well. And his mom left us with all this medicine and stuff so we can help each other if we get badly hurt or even really sick."

"That's better," he whispered. "Even with all the horrible radiation outside, we have a safe place inside with everything we need to survive, and very few people can say that right now. We're very lucky to be so comfortable. It's a new world, and we're starting out very well."

"And I know how to be a gay boy now. I know how to love David, which is really simple, and I know how to have sex with him, and he likes having sex with me, and you're here too now, and we all like boys and men both. That's good."

"Yes," he whispered. "That's all very good, but remember, making love with David is far more important than having sex."

"But having sex is awesome too. I bet playing with this big cock of yours would be a lot of fun, and that would be just sex." Without thinking, I reached down to hold his cock. It grew.

"Is that what you want?"

"Yeah," I whispered, very quietly. "I've told David lots of times that I hoped someday you'd let me play with it." That wasn't strictly true, but it was close enough.

"Let you play with it?" He sounded confused. "I'd love you to play with it, of course! You know I love boys, you and David especially. It feels really nice to have your hand on it right now."

"I can tell," I whispered with a grin that he couldn't see in the dark. "Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"I'm not scared anymore. I'm thinking about right now, and right now, I have your big penis in my hand. That's something really nice about right now."

He kissed the top of my head and whispered, "That's something really nice about right now for me too."

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Can I play with your penis?"

"Oh yes, Donovan," he said slowly. "You can pretend it's your own toy if you like."

"Thanks Klaus."

I slid down under the blanket slowly – I didn't want to disturb David. I could smell when I reached his cock before I felt it; the smell excited me. It made me want to lick it and taste it, but not yet. I held his balls, one in each hand; I rolled them around in my fingers and felt every part. They were long, like football, not round like mine, and they were huge! I rubbed my cheek against his cock, and it was as soft as any skin on David's body. I turned my nose into his cock and took a deep sniff of that sexy smell. I touched the bottom of his shaft with my tongue. I tasted it.

That wasn't where the wonderful smell was coming from, but I wanted to lick it. I wanted to taste each part of it. I licked the front of his hairy balls. The smell seemed stronger there. I licked the back of his hairy balls. The taste was different, and the scent too. They were somehow more exotic. I spent a lot of time there, licking slowly. He lifted his right thigh so I could get in deeper between his legs. When I had licked the whole back of his scrotum, I wanted to keep going. To my tongue, it felt like his cock kept going, under his skin, way behind his balls. I kept licking and smelling, and the more I did that, the more I wanted to do it!

I felt his body twitch, and I realized my tongue was on his anus. How did I get that far without knowing it? I didn't smell or taste anything poopy, just that scent that seemed to come from all around his cock. Since it didn't taste bad, and I could still smell that wonderful scent, I decided to keep going. He slid the blanket off himself and me and put his hand gently on my head, just caressing my hair. He spread his legs wide open, and I licked around his anus in circles. I licked deeper and deeper until my tongue was all the way inside, or as far as I could get it anyway.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Does it feel good when I do this?"

"Yes Donovan. Yes, it feels very, very good."

I let go of his balls but kept my tongue inside his anus. I put my hands on his penis and rubbed it up and down. The hair from his balls tickled my nose. I could feel the muscles in his thighs get big and hard as I moved my hands up and down his cock.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Can I stick it in my mouth?"

"If you like," he said.

I opened my mouth really wide and covered the head of his cock with my lips. The taste was wonderful! I put his whole cock head in my mouth and sucked it and licked every part of it, even the pee hole.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"I love your penis! I love it a lot!"

"My penis loves you a lot too. Do you know what it would really like?"

"What, Klaus?"

"See how much of it you can get inside your mouth. The deeper it goes, the better it feels."

"Ok," I said.

I opened my mouth all the way again and sucked his cock back into my mouth. This time it was much more than just his cock head. I couldn't keep licking him when I did this, but I heard him gasp, so I knew it felt good. I wanted to make him feel good. I tried to open wider and push it in deeper, but suddenly I thought I was going to throw up!

"Donovan?"

"Yes Klaus?"

"Try sucking it in deep, then pulling it back a ways, then sucking it in deeper if you can. Keep going in and out like that, just try to go a little bit more each time."

"Ok."

I opened wide and sucked him in all the way, and then I backed out like he said. I tried to go deeper each time. I could feel I was moving the whole bed, and I didn't want to wake David up! Then Klaus held my head still with both his hands and moved himself in and out. That was much better. I played with his balls a little more with my left hand while holding my own cock with my right. It didn't feel right that he was doing all the work. I was the one who wanted to play with his big penis, and now it was like his big penis was playing with my head. I leaned my head back and he let go immediately.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Are you gonna squirt that stuff from your penis?"

"I think so, Donovan."

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Will you squirt it in my mouth?"

"Only if you want me to. Do you want me to do that?"

"Yes please," I said. "I want to see if I can swallow all of it."

"Ok Donovan, if you're sure."

"I'm sure."

I held both his balls again, one in each hand, and opened my mouth. With both hands on my head, he moved me back into position and pushed his cock all the way in. He kept his cock inside my mouth between thrusts so his whole cock head never left my mouth. He began to go faster, and I squeezed his balls, just a little. I didn't want it to hurt. As he got faster, I squeezed harder without trying.

"Get ready, Donovan," he said. "Any second." Suddenly he slowed down, very slow. "Nice and smooth now," he said. "Here you g… ohh."

He stopped when only his cock head was in my mouth. I could feel his warm liquid fill my mouth. I swallowed most of it right away because there was so much, and it came out so fast. The taste… Then more came out, and a little more. I swallowed again, but not all of it. I pulled his cock in deep again, then in and out, trying to see if I could suck just a little more from him and I did. Not much, but it was good.

I lay there for a while with a bit of his semen in my mouth, along with his softening cock. I sucked and slurped on it once in a while because it made him gasp.

"Donovan?"

"Hmm?"

"I think that's enough for tonight."

"Hmmmmmm." I swallowed what was left in my mouth and sucked his penis clean before he popped it out of my sucking mouth.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"I never got to play with a man's penis before. Thanks!"

"Oh, you're welcome. Most men like having someone play with their penis. Thank you for making me feel so good tonight."

"Can I play with your penis again some time?"

"Any time."

"Ok. Thanks." I slithered my way back up to my pillow, and Klaus pulled the blanket back over us.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"I shouldn't have said it, but remember when I accidentally said David wanted to put your penis up his butt?"

"Yes Donovan."

"Can I try that with you too?"

"Of course you can," he said kindly. I had definitely found something to focus on that felt good enough to drive my worries away.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"Can I just hold your penis in my hand?"

"Sure, Donovan. That feels nice."

I still had a tiny bit of his semen in my mouth, and I swirled my tongue around to taste it as much as I could. What a wonderful taste; it was almost like the wonderful smell he had down there, only in taste form. Well, not really, but kinda.

"Klaus?"

"Yes Donovan?"

"I'm really not scared anymore."

Chapter 26

Sleepless Night, Playful Night

I woke up again a few hours later. I was lying on my back with Klaus' soft cock still in my right hand, his right hand on my belly, David's left hand on my chest, his left leg wrapped around mine, and I had to pee. How was I supposed to do that without waking everybody up?

I couldn't. You see, when a boy has to pee, he tends to get rather wiggly. Before long, David and Klaus were both awake, asking me what was wrong. "Nothing," I said, suddenly realizing how nice it felt to have our bodies all positioned so pleasantly. I was as annoyed as they were because I had to pee, but actually, they were both really sweet, and I might have been the only one who was annoyed.

'2:47 AM, outside 67 rad/hour, inside .3 rad/hour.'

When I came back from the bathroom, holding my flashlight, Klaus passed me going the other way with the Geiger counter, and it was ticking really fast.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I saw his entry in the radiation log and had a guess. "How bad is it?"

"We can't leave this shelter room now unless it's really quick, and really important," he said. "I'm reading seven rads per hour all over the basement except the shelter. That's still point three." On the next line of the radiation log he wrote:

'2:50 AM, outside 68 rad/hour, basement 7.0 rad/hour, inside .3 rad/hour.'

"David, your dad did a fantastic job with this shelter," said Klaus, "but I think that hot cloud from Fargo is coming down on us harder than they expected, or just sooner. It's getting hot outside, and who knows where it will top out. Like I said, for now, we can only leave this shelter room if it's really quick and really important."

"Going to the bathroom is quick and important, right?" I asked.

"That should still be fine," he said, "but I want you to check the Geiger counter first to make sure it hasn't gone higher, and then take no more than one minute for number one, and three minutes for number two. That should be harmless enough. Just keep in mind that you boys are still growing, so radiation can be more harmful to you. I need to do the rest of the ordinary tasks, like getting food from the freezer." He sniffed the air and said, "Yes, he did a great job with this shelter, your dad. Whatever he did for filtering the air is working very well."

"He put a big filter in the other room. He connected it to that vent on the wall, so the fresh air goes through here first. Dad was smart. I was lucky."

"We're all lucky he was smart," I said.

"Mom was smart too; she was a doctor and a professor."

"What kind of doctor was she?" Klaus asked.

"She was a neurologist," he said, "She worked on people's brains mostly, but she did other stuff too. She made sure she kept enough supplies here in the shelter so she could help other people with lots of problems, but she said she'd probably have to leave Dad & me here and help at the clinic in town if we ever had a nuclear war."

"I'm sorry to say, but there is no clinic in town anymore," said Klaus. "Nobody expected that first bomb to be as big as it was. They said on the radio it was at least forty megatons, maybe fifty. Nobody thought the Soviets would actually use those monstrosities. This first aid kit is probably the best-equipped medical center left in Saint Albert, and it's stuck right here, without a doctor."

"But you know a lot about the body," I said, "and that book in there is really big. It says a lot about using drugs and first aid, even emergency surgery. I think there's even stuff in there for making babies."

"Well, you need a woman for that," said Klaus. We knew he taught sex education as part of health class. David laughed because he got the joke. I didn't get it because I didn't realize what I'd actually said.

"He means delivering babies!" said David, with another cute grin. He held his hands up toward me and puckered. In the dark, I could hardly see better than he could, but I still had my flashlight. Eventually I made it to him and we kissed.

"If you boys don't mind," said Klaus as he sat in the recliner, "I'd like to listen to the latest news about this fallout. I'll keep it low if you'd like to go back to sleep." We were still kissing and didn't respond.

As David and I kissed, I was overwhelmed with love and joy, and at the same time, overwhelmed with our horrible situation, wondering how bad it was everywhere else. I had so much more love than ever before, and I'd lost so much more than ever before. I sobbed and giggled, which I'd never done at the same time before. I pulled David into a hug. It didn't feel right, sobbing and giggling in his mouth like that.

"I love you so much," I whispered in his ear with a shaky voice. When all around was confusion, danger, contradiction, and suffering, in the safety of his small, warm arms, that's one thing I knew I could hold on to. Our love was real, and it wasn't going away.

***

"I can't sleep," David spoke softly into my ear. My best guess was that it had been ten minutes since Klaus had gone to the recliner to listen to the radio through an earphone he found on the shelf. My guess was about three o'clock. We all knew it would be a long night, though Klaus and I had gotten off to a very nice start.

"It's hard at night when it's so quiet," I agreed.

"I'm getting scared again," he said, "And really sad. All those people… And what's going to happen to us? This food will last a few months, I don't know, maybe even a year, depending on how many people we find to share it with, and oh Donovan, with so many people starving, I do hope we can share it with some of them, even if they're mean. It's not fair that we should have so much when so many people will be starving soon."

I kissed him. "Everybody at school knows that about you. They say, 'David Chance? Oh, he's such a nice boy!' Well, the girls all say that. I bet you could have had any of them if you weren't gay, you know, but you know boys. They never say stuff like that. The teachers say it all the time. I've always known that about you, ever since we first met, how nice you are."

"Well, it just makes sense," he said, "doesn't it? I mean, if everybody was nice, there wouldn't have been this stupid, stupid war!" His voice began to break, but he didn't stop talking. "There wouldn't be bullies, and your real dad wouldn't have hurt anyone, so he'd have been taking care of you. Everything would be better if people were nicer."

"You're right," I said. "I wish people were as nice as us, the three of us, I mean, but you're even nice when the mean kids are picking on you. You never get upset. How do you do that?"

"I don't think it's fun being mean," he replied, "and I don't think those kids are happy at all. They think they need to be horrible to people to make friends of their own. That must be awful; besides, it's no big deal. They hit me and call me a fag or whatever, but they don't hit very hard when they're just picking on you. Walking away and not worrying about it is so much easier than getting upset."

"They hit hard enough," I said.

"Yes, I know. It's not fun, but you just walk away, and they usually don't follow you."

"But they keep shouting things and calling you fag."

"Those are just words," he said. "They don't have to hurt unless I let them hurt. I just try to ignore them."

"But all the other kids – they see people treating you like that, and they hear you being called nasty things, and you don't do anything! Aren't you worried the other kids will think those things are true? That you're really a wuss, or a pussy, or a fag?"

"Remember, sweetie," he kissed me, "I didn't know what a fag was until you told me; besides, I don't need friends who believe what bullies say about me. They could never be true friends. You never believed them, did you?"

"Of course not!" I was indignant. "I love you, and you've always been my best friend. I knew you weren't those things."

"See? You knew who I really was, even if the bullies said those things. That's one way to tell whether someone can be a true friend."

"Being nice never changes how bullies treat you," I said. "Sometimes, I think it makes them think you really are a wuss."

"If being a wuss means I'm a nice person," he began, "Why would I ever be upset? I can never change them; they can only change themselves. The Friends say that we have to be good people ourselves, and by showing what good people look like, others might like what they see. If we're lucky, some of them might even try to be more like us."

"The Friends?"

"I mean the Quakers. We call ourselves the Friends because that's what we try to be always."

"They teach Catholic kids to be nice, but a lot of Catholics are horrible. Some of the nuns who teach Catechism are mean! I tried to be an altar boy for a week, and the priest scared me! I didn't know what he wanted from me, but Mom said I didn't have to go back. Father Dreyfuss at Saint Albert shouted if you didn't do what he said, even though I couldn't understand him. Some of them were much nicer at Saint Alphonsus, though. I think that's why we went there. Well, it was my stepdad's church when Mom and him got married, but she likes it. Well, she quit going, but she still thought that, for being a church, it was a nice one, but I'm not gonna be an altar boy ever again!"

"I'm sorry to hear that," David said. "Your church should be a happy place where people love you, and you feel good there, and it should be like that every time you go there. That's sad."

"I think it's getting better. You know what, they teach that the Earth goes around the sun now!"

***

We both had a small laugh. "I really love you, Donovan Langevin," he said as he moved in and gave me a long, soft kiss. I held his soft hip, caressing it lightly as we kissed. I didn't want to stop. I loved him too, and it felt so nice to be connected through our lips. I don't know why, but when we kissed, it seemed to make a connection between our hearts.

Soon his head disappeared under the blanket, and I gasped as he began to suck my penis. I knew why they taught to love in churches, but I couldn't understand why this kind of love was supposed to be the bad kind.

"Oh David," I said, my hands playing gently with his floppy hair. Like Klaus had done just a couple hours earlier, I pulled the blanket off and set it to the side. I turned around so we could do 69. That was a special position for me because we both felt the same thing on our bodies as we did in our hearts. Also, when he was on top, I was almost covered in his soft skin, all over my body, with his thighs hugging my face – then I remembered.

"Oh, David! I want to show you something," I said. "You need to be on your back, and your head back up on your pillow. Yep, just like that."

"What is this?" he giggled.

"You'll see, and I think you're gonna like it a lot!" I slid down and pulled his soft legs apart. I took his penis in my mouth and sucked for a little while, but that was the warm-up. I moved down and licked his balls like I'd done with Klaus, and soon I reached his anus. His whole body jumped as he yelped.

"What are you doing?"

"Something I think you'll like, but you have to relax, ok?"

"Ok," he said.

I moved his thighs apart and pushed them up a little, and then I lightly ran my tongue up and down over his anus. He giggled softly, and I could feel his muscles twitching. I circled around his anus, and just like I did with Klaus, I started to circle in deeper and deeper. His whole pelvis lifted as he took in a huge gasp. Soon I was in as far as I could go, which somehow felt deeper than with Klaus. I took his penis in my hand and gently stroked it up and down as I poked my tongue in and out. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard Klaus shifting in his chair, and the chair sounded like it was wobbling a bit. That was ok. We shared our moments now.

After a few minutes of licking David's ass, I slid back up and moved in for a kiss. "Wait a minute," he said. "I know where that's been!" I kissed him anyway as we both giggled.

"While you were asleep," I said, "I woke up, and I was scared. Klaus showed me that there are lots of ways to feel better when you get scared. We thought about nice things, and I thought his big penis was a nice thing. He let me play with it, David!"

"Oh, that sounds very nice!"

"Yeah, and it was an accident how I learned that licking someone in the anus felt so good."

"Well, Donovan," he said with a deep breath, "I'm sure glad you learned that lesson! That felt wonderful!"

"And d'you know what else? He let me suck on it until he squirted his semen in my mouth!"

"Wow! What happened?"

"I did it, David! You were right! I swallowed it all, and it wasn't hard, and it tasted so sexy. His whole cock smells and tastes so sexy. You hafta ask him if you can play with it tomorrow."

"Oh, I will!" he said, kissing me again, "I want to swallow his semen too."

"I'm sorry, boys," said Klaus, "but you know there's no privacy in here, right?"

We both knew that, but we were both startled anyway. "Yes Mr. Kettering, we know," repeated David, obviously embarrassed.

"Oh please, David," said Klaus, "please don't feel embarrassed! I just wanted to tell you that, well, I've been masturbating, and if you like, I can cum again for you. I wanted to offer that, if you like."

"Oh!" We both giggled. "Donovan? Would you like to share?"

"Sure!"

"Yes Klaus," said David. "We'd like that very much!"

"Oh, that's wonderful!" said Klaus.

He climbed in the bed with us and put his knees on one side of David's head and his elbows on the other side, a bit like a letter T, with Klaus being the cross part on top.

David put two pillows under his head to prop himself up close to the big, dangling cock. "May I play with it a little first?" he asked. I snickered because I knew he was being formal again, and I knew Klaus' answer.

"Oh, of course! That's why I'm here, but let's try something different. This position isn't going to work quite right." He pushed himself up onto his knees and lifted one of them across David's slender chest. "There. That's a little closer to you, and it should be easier on your neck."

"Oh yes," said David. "Oh, it's so big!"

"I know," I said. "Isn't it?"

"Mr. Kettering," said David, "now you know I've been looking at you all year, and I've been dreaming about playing with your cock, I just want to say thank you! I'm so happy!"

"Are you going to call me Mr. Kettering, even while we're having sex?"

"Well," David said, "the whole time I was dreaming about this, that's who you'd always been. This has always been Mr. Kettering's penis. Is it ok?" I took David's very hard cock in my hand and stroked it slowly.

Klaus chuckled softly and kindly before saying, "David, if it makes this better for you, then of course, that's what you should call me, but don't think I'm doing this as a favor, please! I love you, boys, and you make me feel as good as I hope I make you feel. I want this for myself too. I know I can only have sex with you boys, and not make love, but I've wanted sex with both of you all year too, the unimaginably beautiful gay boys from fifth grade. I knew you were gay and in love, but I didn't know if you were sexual yet, but something much more important, when I was your gym teacher, I could never, ever play sexually with you."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because my job as your teacher was too important to risk with sex," he said. "You kids need good teachers. You know there are plenty who really shouldn't be teaching, and I hope I'm not one of them. Teachers with a true passion for educating kids are hard to come by, especially in rural schools. If we had sex while I was your teacher, I would become one of those teachers. I would treat you differently in gym class, and I think you would see me differently too. At school, I was an authority. I was in charge, and you had to do what I said, only because I said it. Sex has to be between people who have the same power to say yes and no. I might tell you to do things in class that were unfair, and instead of protesting, like you should, you might just do it because you were afraid the sex would stop."

He continued, "I might be so happy with our sex that I decide to give you better grades. I know that doesn't sound bad, but it's not fair if you're one of the other students. I could just as easily give you failing grades if you didn't give me the kind of sex I wanted. It's also a felony for a teacher to have sex with his students if they're kids your age. It's almost as serious as your dad's armed robbery, Donovan. I could go to prison, and I would definitely be fired from the school. I can never have sex with a student."

"And now you're not our teacher," said David, giving Klaus' big cock a few tugs and licking the tip, which made it a little longer and easier to reach with his mouth.

"Mmm… that's right, David. That's so very true."

I silently began sucking David's cock again, feeling his body pulse with my motions, but for the first time, he was also reacting to somebody else at the same time, that big cock he'd been dreaming about all year. I couldn't see what they were doing, but I thought that was ok. David was actually having his dream come true, and I was there with him, participating! I felt so lucky at that moment. I moved back to his anus and licked all around it. I wondered if I could get enough of my saliva on his anus to lube him. I slobbered it all wet, then I licked my finger all wet and slowly pressed it in. David wiggled around intensely, clutched, and clawed at the back of Klaus' thighs. I took that as a good sign.

This was a new position for all of us, and I found it was a little awkward for me. I slobbered up his butt, and then I made sure my boner was as wet as it could be, and I moved in. It was difficult to reach. I could poke the head in, which made David twitch, but that was all, and it kept popping out. If I lifted him just a bit, I could get it to work, but I couldn't hold him up the whole time. Finally, the idea came to me, and I grabbed the third pillow, lifted David's body up, and rested his butt facing up on the pillow, holding his legs back toward his head. I slipped right in!

I hugged David's thighs in front of me as I thrusted in and out. I remembered to go slowly and to stay in deep. I learned that when I moved slowly while fucking David, and while there's someone else also doing something with him, I can sometimes feel the things the other person is doing through David's twitching muscles. The first time I felt that, I almost had an orgasm, but I wanted David to have everything. I wanted him to have my boner in his butt while he was swallowing Klaus' semen. I let David's left leg fall to the side, and I took his cock in my hand and stroked it to match our fucking speed. I leaned forward and wrapped my left arm around Klaus' waist, holding David's right leg against Klaus' left side. I could feel his huge stomach muscles clenching.

"Are you ready, David?"

"Mmm-hmm"

"Ok, it's coming. It's coming… here… n-ow!"

He gave a mighty roar, I guess, because nobody was trying to sleep. I felt David's body tense up, but I couldn't see what was happening. For the second time I wanted to orgasm, but I didn't. I wanted to see what was going on with David, so I just kept going.

"Mmm…" I heard from David. I could hear him swallow, then slurp the big cock back in his mouth. I was so happy for him! I reached down with my left hand and felt the base of Klaus' cock. I could tell it was softening.

After a few more seconds, I heard a sucking sound as Klaus pulled his cock from David's mouth. "I'll get out of your way now. Thank you so much, David! I want to lie here with you two if that's ok."

I had started to push harder, and neither of us could really answer. I hooked David's knees over my shoulders and fucked deep and hard while he took over his own cock. I felt Klaus' hand caressing my butt, it felt really nice. I was making love with David, and it was like having another source of love supporting me. David had been making his kitten sounds again, and it felt like he was clenching tighter on my cock. I felt ready at any time when I heard those sounds, but when he gave that soft crying sound of his, it was almost the same as seeing his head fly back. I think I made a barking sound. After a few moments, I laughed at how that must have sounded – a barking dog with a crying kitten.

David's arms suddenly became stronger than I'd ever known as he pulled me in for a tight hug, followed by a long, passionate kiss. I could taste Klaus' cum in David's mouth. I still felt Klaus' hand on my ass, and it still felt nice there. I wanted it there while I was feeling more love than I had felt before in my whole life.

How can I possibly describe that feeling of joy? I had this incredible amount of love for this impossibly beautiful boy, and it felt as if Jesus was holding us in his arms as we continued to experience our love and our bodies together. That will have to do until I can think of words more powerful.

Chapter 27

Greet the Day, Sugar-Free!

It was probably light outside when I woke up next, but we couldn't see daylight from inside our shelter corner. David and I had our bodies still wrapped around each other. I think he had already been awake because he looked at me the instant I opened my eyes and said, "Good morning, sweetie," with the most beautiful look in his eyes. He gave me a long, soft kiss. "I love you so much, and I wish I could tell everyone in the world how much I love you!"

"I love you too, David!" but I'd hardly been awake a few seconds, and I didn't have words in my morning fog, so I kissed him again and held him close.

The light was on in the room, and I could hear the generator running again. "Good morning boys! You look like you've slept fairly well."

I yawned, kissed David yet again, and said, "I sure did. I feel wonderful. What time is it?"

"It's nine-fifteen," he said. "Let's have some breakfast. When you're awake, we've got some good news to talk about."

We folded the bed back into a couch and then set the table back up. I realized how convenient it was not to bother with getting dressed in the morning. No dirty socks to throw in the hamper either. Klaus walked out into the other room and got three folding chairs to put around the table, "We can't really eat at the table while sitting on the couch," he said.

"But… but you…" I stammered, "You just walked out into the basement to get chairs! That's not an emergency, is it? What about the radiation?"

"That's the good news," he said. "Let's sit at the table, and I'll show you on the map. It won't take long." He had gone back to listening to the radio and monitoring the radiation after David and I had fallen asleep again. "First, have a look at this." He put the radiation log in front of us. "Look at these last few readings."

'2:50 AM, outside 68 rad/hour, basement 7.0 rad/hour, inside .3 rad/hour.'

'3:12 AM, outside 45 rad/hour, basement 4.4 rad/hour, inside .2 rad/hour.'

'3:30 AM, outside 35 rad/hour, basement 3.6 rad/hour, inside .2 rad/hour.'

'4:00 AM, outside 23 rad/hour, basement 2.5 rad/hour, inside .1 rad/hour.'

'6:00 AM, outside 16 rad/hour, basement 1.5 rad/hour, inside .1 rad/hour.'

'8:00 AM, outside 13 rad/hour, basement 1.2 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

'8:30 AM, outside 12 rad/hour, basement 1.2 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

'9:00 AM, outside 11 rad/hour, basement .9 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

"But how?" asked David. "The cloud was huge! We should have stayed in it until at least tomorrow, shouldn't we?"

"They explained it on the radio," said Klaus. "First, you were right about the Monticello nuclear plant. The people in those jets that are flying around and measuring the clouds say the time when the Monticello plume just brushed us was right when you boys recorded that first small spike in fallout, but the upper level winds gave us a huge helping hand and blew the whole Fargo cloud farther north than they expected."

"Then why did we get so much radiation outside last night?" asked David.

"You know they have those specialized jets tracking the cloud, right?" We both nodded, remembering the lieutenant governor's update. "Well, they mapped the cloud out pretty well, and there was what they call a hot spot that passed just to our north. Have you heard of hot spots in mushroom clouds or fallout clouds?" We both shook our heads. It surprised me that there was something so important about mushroom clouds that I didn't know. "Well, they are just what they sound like. They said on the radio that the blast never happens exactly evenly, and parts of the really dense radioactivity break off inside the mushroom. They slowly separate within the cloud over time, and they call them hot spots. It's just a small region of really dense radioactivity surrounded by an area of much lower activity."

"So we were in an area of lower activity," I began, "but that hot spot floated by and made things worse for a while, but now it's gone?"

"Yup! Exactly."

"Just as we were going to bed?" said David.

"Yup, just then."

"Yay!" We all jumped and cheered at this good news, then fell into a big group hug.

"Oh! Next reading." Klaus looked at the instruments and made the next log entry.

'9:30 AM, outside 9 rad/hour, basement .8 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

***

We had a choice of Wheaties, Cheerios, or shredded wheat for cereal. I hadn't noticed before, but there was also a toaster, and of course, we had tons of bread in the freezer and two loaves already thawed. There was plenty of orange juice too, and a case each of apples and oranges, plus two bunches of bananas, one ripe and the other green.

"Where's the sugar?" I asked David.

"Mom wouldn't let us keep that in the house, remember?"

I looked at Klaus, sipping his cup of coffee. "But you gave me cream and sugar in my coffee last night."

"No wonder you couldn't fall asleep," said Klaus with a smile that told me he wasn't serious.

"The cream is instant cream," said David, "and that always has a little sugar in it, but I also added a little bit of Sugar Twin. It's a kind of fake sugar substitute."

"It's not bad in coffee," said Klaus, "but I wouldn't want it on my cereal."

"Besides," said David, "we've only got two boxes of it. That's not much."

"Do you always eat this kind of cereal without sugar?"

"Well, yes," said David, "but not every day. I like Wheaties and Cheerios, but not shredded wheat. Sometimes we get All Bran, and I really liked that, bran flakes too, but the real treat was Life cereal. You know, Mikey?"

"Oh, I love Life cereal," I said, "especially with cinnamon sugar on it."

"Really? You added sugar to Life? It's got all kinds of sugar in it already. You can even see it in each piece. That's why it was such a treat. Mom would buy a box of that once a month, and it was special, just for me," he said with a huge grin. "I think Dad snuck off to Dunkin Donuts on his way to work most mornings, though."

"That happens when you don't eat too much of something," said Klaus. "If you don't eat much sugar, then foods with more sugar in them taste really sweet. The same is true with salt. The less you use, the less you want."

"That's true," said David. "I've seen you putting salt on your fries at school, even though they already taste so salty to me. Did you know they put salt on them when they make them?"

"Yeah, I knew that. I was a kitchen helper too, you know, but so did Mom. She salted our fries right out of the oven, but we all added more when they were on our plate."

"Yep," said Klaus, "that's just what I mean."

"I don't know if I really want cereal without sugar," I said.

"Donovan, we have a lot of fresh milk here," said Klaus, "and if we don't drink it, it'll just go sour. We need to eat the food that will spoil first, so we waste as little as possible. That also means only putting something on your plate if you're sure you're going to eat it all, ok?"

"Ok, but can I just drink my milk and have toast with peanut butter?"

"As much as you like," said Klaus, "but I think you should have a piece of fruit too. I think we should all have one banana a day, because the ripe ones will spoil soon, and when they're gone, the green ones will be ripe. It'll be a long time before we have fresh bananas again, so let's not let 'em spoil, ok?"

"Ok," I said. I loved bananas.

"I'm having my banana later," said David, pouring himself some Cheerios.

"I'll have mine now," I said. "Bananas go good with peanut butter." Then I looked at the bread, "Don't you have regular bread?"

"No, I'm sorry, Hunny," said David. "Mom had a lot of rules about food. No white bread, but I think you might like that Country Hearth wheat bread with peanut butter."

"Ok," I sighed, putting two slices in the toaster and pouring a glass of milk.

Klaus had a dishcloth in his hand, and he carefully wiped a glass, a plate, and a knife for the peanut butter before handing them to me. "Before we use any dishes, every time we use them, we need to wipe them off carefully in case a bit of fallout dust somehow made its way in here. We can't have that getting in our food, ok?"

I noticed he was eating a banana with bruises on it. I looked at the yellow bunch, and there were a few with bruises, but not as many as the one he was eating. "Do you like them with bruises?" I asked.

"Not really," he said, "but that's where all the sugar is!"

After he sat down, I took one without any bruises, like I would at home. No one said anything, but I felt guilty about it.

David's mom had bought some fancy kind of peanut butter with honey. It was really good, and David was right about that bread.

***

"Ok, let's all clean our own dishes," said Klaus. "Donovan, that means you get the peanut butter knife. I'll wipe down the table."

"Wash them how?" asked David.

"We can just rinse dishes like this in the bathroom sink," said Klaus. "For the kind of food we used on them, that will be just fine. Rinse them and wipe them well, and you know where the towels are. Be very thorough with the towels," he emphasized. "If any particles of fallout dust have made their way in here, I want them to wind up in the dishtowel, not in your bodies."

Chapter 28

Why Does Our Penis Make Us Feel So Good? (Lab Session)

'10:00 AM, outside 10 rad/hour, basement .9 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

"How come it went up instead of down?" I asked Klaus. I knew the answer, but it was a sign of my lingering anxiety that I was asking anyway.

"Do you see how the needle keeps moving around?" I nodded. "Measurements of radioactivity aren't perfectly accurate, but on average, they give us the correct information."

David and I smiled at each other, giggled softly, then called out, "Precise, not accurate!"

He gave us a confused look. He knew an awful lot, he was very smart, and we both knew we needed him to keep us safe, but David and I decided he needed our help to become a better scientist.

***

We listened to the radio for a while. The fallout was terrible east of St. Paul, and the news was slowly coming in about how the rest of the country was doing, not from the federal government, but the shortwave radios run by the news stations. They said the news from the shortwave radios run by news stations was unofficial, and that they could lose their broadcast license for bringing it to us during a national emergency, but they felt we listeners needed to hear the most important news, even when they couldn't get it cleared by the government. We learned that every major city and every military installation in the Midwest had been hit and that nobody but a few people in the military seemed to have had any warning that an attack was coming. No civilians in the region had received any warning from anybody.

"How come three thousand missiles came here to the US, and there wasn't a warning?" I asked Klaus.

"I don't know, Donovan. Nobody seems to know right now. Something went very wrong, though."

"But they said they shot a bunch of them down! They must have seen them coming!"

"I'm sorry, Donovan," he said, "but I don't think we can believe everything we're hearing from the government. The guy on the radio clearly doesn't."

"We've noticed that," said David.

As we continued listening, it became clear that there was a lot that they knew at the radio station, but they weren't telling us. At one point the announcer said, "Many of you have been contacting us on citizen's band channel eight with stories you've been hearing from other states. We cannot confirm any of these stories. We do have developing news stories coming in from various sources across the nation and Canada," the guy said, "but until we can confirm these stories with official government sources, we cannot bring them to you. We are required by our broadcast license to report only official information during a national emergency."

"I guess that's for security," said Klaus. "Whatever these stories are, it could be the Soviets planting false information to confuse us. This station isn't supposed to report anything that doesn't come from the government. They could get in trouble for the news they're reporting from other stations by shortwave radio. That sounds serious, and it's also serious that no one got any warning anywhere. That doesn't make any sense."

***

'11:00 AM, outside 9 rad/hour, basement .9 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

It had begun to feel warm and humid again, so we turned on the fan. The skin on David's forehead had begun peeling in some places, and my shoulders were more scaly. We used the lidocaine spray once every few hours, and Klaus had found some kind of lotion to smear on the burns to help them heal. I thought the stuff smelled terrible, but I agreed to it because burns hurt, and I didn't want to go into shock again, not even mild shock.

David was the only one who had clothes that fit him, but none of us seemed to feel the need to wear clothes. It wasn't just the heat. It wasn't exactly sex either, though both were definitely a part of it. It was also a sign of how close we felt to each other, and how much we trusted each other.

***

We'd played two games of Clue, and of course, David won both times. "Ok," said Klaus, "it's time to do something educational."

"But it's summer vacation!" I protested.

"Did I say school? Did anybody hear me say school? We could do school work if you like. Would you like that?"

"No!" I shouted. Klaus was smiling and obviously having fun with me.

"We could have Phys Ed class right now," he suggested as he began to jog in place.

"No!" David and I protested, trying not to giggle at the way his penis was bouncing all over.

"Well then," he said. "I can teach you something, you can teach me something, or we could learn something new together. How's that sound?"

"Well, we know a lot about science," said David.

"I bet you do," said Klaus.

"And you know a lot about the human body," I added.

"I could teach you a few things."

"Then why does our penis make us feel so good?" I asked.

"Would you like to learn about that too, David?" He gave his slowest nod and his shyest smile. This time I got up and kissed him all over for being so cute.

What followed was a lesson the way all lessons in school should be taught.

"This will be an easy lesson in sex education," said Klaus, "because we don't need to use models or drawings for the penis. We all have the real thing, and you can learn by doing and touching. There's just one problem. It all starts with girls, and we don't have a girl here to experiment on. If you boys slide over, I'll sit next to you and draw you some girl pictures. The whole thing is about our need to make babies, and nature gave us these feelings to help us along."

He drew lots of pictures of a girl's vagina and everything around it and inside it. He told us about the clitoris, the cervix, the uterus, the ovaries, and where her urethra was.

"Donovan, do you know where your urethra is?"

"Boys have one too?" I asked.

"You found mine last night," he said. David giggled because he knew the answer.

"Let's make this fun. David, do you know where Donovan's urethra is?" He nodded with a smile. "Then would you please show him where it is, using only your tongue." David had to kneel under the table for the demonstration. I got a boner when I saw where this was going.

"Good, Donovan. That'll make David's job easier. Go ahead, David." My sweet David smiled at me, then licked the center of my cock from my scrotum all the way to my pee hole, where he stopped and tried to poke his tongue in.

"Excellent David, excellent. Come on back up. Donovan, the urethra is the tube that leads urine from your bladder, through your penis and then out into the toilet."

"So is urine like pee?" I asked.

"Yes, they're the exact same thing."

"Then where does pee come from?" What followed was a fascinating but simple explanation of how our kidneys and bladder work, but it wasn't much fun sexually.

"So, is that enough about urine? Should we move back to our original topic? The penis?" He paused long enough for us both to agree.

"Ok, David, come stand here next to me, would you please? And Donovan, would you please kneel in front of David and suck his penis?" I moved into position and took David's cock into my mouth and sucked it happily.

"Ok, that's enough for now. David, what did your penis do when Donovan sucked it?"

"It felt really good!"

"Oh I bet it did! Donovan could feel a change in your penis. Can you tell me a change Donovan might have felt?"

"Oh, you mean it got hard?"

"And it got bigger," I said.

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean, but during educational time, we're going to call it an erection, ok? Ok David, why do you suppose that happened? Why did you get an erection?"

"Mom says it's the body's natural response to sexual stimulus."

"Did that make sense to you, Donovan?"

"Nuh-uh, my mom said only bad boys got them and they were icky."

"Oh Donovan, look! He's losing his erection! It's your job to make sure David stays erect while we're studying erections, ok? Go to work!" I giggled and began sucking David's cock again.

"Now David, while he's doing that, I want you to explain to him in language he can understand why you get an erection when he sucks your penis."

David giggled and said, "I – can't! You can't talk… OH!"

"You'd better just keep going then, Donovan. We'll have to use a different model to talk about erections after he's had his orgasm. There you go, David. Right now you should feel the energy rising inside your body. You know that's your Donovan down there, making you feel so good." David fell back against Klaus, who held him to his chest as David's kitten sounds began. I looked up in time to see him throw his head back in his orgasm, right into Klaus' nose.

"OH!" shouted David, half in ecstasy and half in horror at hurting Klaus. "I'm sorry! Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

"Quick," said Klaus, holding his nose. "Your penis, look at your penis right now."

"But your nose!"

"This is education time, not injury time. Hurry and see what your penis is doing. You too Donovan. Look closely at David's penis."

"It's all soft now," I said. "He didn't mean to hurt you!"

"I know, but look closer. It's not all the same. Look at his glans, his penis head. What do you see?"

"It's still kinda big," said David, "like when I'm erect. It does that after I've orgasmed sometimes."

"Look at it boys. Touch it, examine it, pay attention to what the rest of his shaft feels like too. I'll be back in a minute, and I'm going to ask you to describe it with as much detail as you can. Scientific observations, boys!" He was smiling and acting excited about something he was going to teach us, but he was bleeding from his nose, and the blood was running from his hands to his elbows in small dribbles.

Klaus took the first aid kit into the bathroom, and David and I began our observations. "Scientific observations need a notebook," I said, so I grabbed another fresh notebook and pencil from the shelf. On the first page I wrote neatly:

"David's Penis, 11:33 AM, July 7, 1983

David's penis appears soft and normal in most ways. A little more than one minute has passed since he orgasmed from me sucking his penis. After his orgasm, he was scared he might have hurt Klaus, so he lost his erection right away. We notice that his penis head is larger than when it is normally soft. David says this happens a lot after he has an orgasm. Mine does that too."

I found a ruler and recorded some measurements while David watched as well as he could:

"Length of penis: 64 mm [2.5 inch]

Length of top of penis head: 17 mm [3/4 inch]

Width of penis shaft in the middle: 10 mm [0.4 inch]

Width of penis head on top where it connects to the shaft: 13 mm [1/2 inch]

David says his penis head is really ticklish and sensitive if I rub it on something. When I squeezed his penis head, it squished right back down to its regular size

Length of top of penis head after squishing: 14 mm

Width of penis head after squishing: 10 mm."

David tried to draw a picture of his penis before and after I squeezed it. He could normally draw much better than I could, but not with his eyes as bad as they were.

When Klaus came back from the bathroom, his nose had stopped bleeding. He poured himself a glass of orange juice from the little fridge. "Scientific notes? Very good! Let's see what you've got here. Oh excellent! This is exactly what I was hoping you would see!"

"Why?" I asked. "We already knew his penis head was bigger after he orgasmed."

"It's not a penis head," said Klaus. "During educational time, I'd like it if we all used proper words. It's called the glans penis, or just the glans. I wanted you to see how David's glans shrinks after he loses his erection, but not as fast as the rest of his penis shrinks."

"Why does it do that?" asked David.

"Why indeed!" said Klaus enigmatically and energetically, "We'll come back to that in a bit. We're a little pressed for time right now, and there's a lot we need to cover. We have a few more lab exercises to do. This time we'll use my penis. Donovan, I want you to squeeze my penis shaft, right in the middle, and describe what you feel."

"Well, it's soft and squishy like it always is except when it's erect."

"Ok. Now I want you to reach behind my scrotum," he opened his legs. "and press in on me, right there behind my scrotum, yes there, and describe what you feel."

"It's kinda the same," I said. "It's soft and squishy."

"Excellent! Now David, I need your assistance, please. Donovan, keep your hands where they are, and if anything changes, tell us, ok?"

"Ok."

"David, I need to get an erection. Would you help me, please?"

"How…"

"Any way you like, but if you suck on my penis, that will probably work best."

"Ok." David leaned over the arm of the recliner and took Klaus' glans into his mouth and began to suck. I never noticed it until then, but when he is sucking someone's cock, he usually closes his eyes.

"I feel it!" I said. "It's getting bigger and less squishy."

"Where?"

"Both places! It's big and hard now in both places! Why behind your balls?"

"What's the word we should use during education time?"

"Sorry, why did it get big and stiff behind your scrotum?"

"That's a great question Donovan, and we'll get to it in just a few minutes. David, thank you very much. You can stop now.

Ok, we have one last demonstration. Who's penis haven't we used yet…" I raised my hand and giggled, as if he didn't know. "Oh right! Come here Donovan, facing me, good. Now spread your legs a bit, yes, just like that. Now David, I want you to stand behind Donovan, ok? I need you to reach up between his legs and feel the area between his scrotum and his anus. Push in a bit and tell me how it feels to you."

"Oh, it feels very nice!"

"I mean, describe how that part of his body feels against your hand – Is it hard or anything?"

"No, it's just normal."

"If you press your fingers into that part of his body, do your fingers squish into his flesh easily, or is his flesh stiff enough to push back?"

"Oh I see! It's soft and nice. I mean, I can push into that part easily."

"Great. Now keep your hand there while I help Donovan get a nice erection, ok?" Without any further warning, Klaus leaned forward and sucked my cock for the first time.

"Wow, that was quick!" said David. "It's all stiff now, like in a tube shape. It feels like his penis actually."

"Good!" said Klaus as he let my cock slide out of his mouth. "Now David, please come around here to the front. Donovan, I'm going to do something kinda fun to make sure you get as erect as possible for this demonstration. Ready?"

I smiled and nodded as he sucked my cock back into his mouth. When it was inside, his tongue did something really fast that felt like he was flicking my cock head, uh, my glans, up and down. Suddenly he pulled his head back and said, "Quickly David, squeeze the shaft of his penis. Give it a good squeeze."

"It's too stiff! I can't squeeze it much."

"Ok then, squeeze his glans between your finger and thumb. Squish it down good."

"It got small, and it's staying small," said David. "Wait, it's growing back, but slowly."

"But the rest of his penis didn't get smaller at all, did it?"

"No," said David, "not at all."

"Ok David," said Klaus, "fair's fair. Donovan sucked you to orgasm. I think you should return the favor. When you're done with that, we'll go over your observations and talk about them."

This was the craziest, most thrilling feeling I'd ever felt while learning things. We were studying each other's cocks and really learning at the same time. Now, for practice, it seemed, Klaus was having David suck my penis all the way until I had another orgasm while he watched! Klaus had one hand caressing my butt, and the other he had against my belly. I was the unquestioned center of attention, and I loved it! I grabbed a handful of David's hair. I didn't pull it, but I held it tight, and my body screamed out in orgasm.

Chapter 29

Why Does Our Penis Make Us Feel So Good? (Lecture Session)

I collapsed into Klaus' lap to catch my breath. David knelt facing us, and laid his head into my belly, giving us all a sort of group hug. After enjoying a few minutes of bliss, Klaus said, "Time to take the next measurements, then we need to finish the lesson!"

'12:00 PM, outside 7 rad/hour, basement .8 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus recorded the latest information into the radiation log while David and I discussed our observations of each other's glans and shafts. As David was mostly blind, a condition that made me sob quietly once in a while, I had written the notes of our observations, which meant doing my best to get everything David said as well as my thought. Occasionally I would summarize things for David. He had only been blind for just less than a day, but he accepted everything so well that it was sometimes difficult for me to get stuck in feeling sad about his beautiful eyes. It seemed effortless for us just to get along and do things as usual, with a single exception. We now had to rely on my penmanship, which was horrible.

At the end of our discussion, Klaus asked, "So what do these observations tell us? More fundamentally, why do we get erections when we are sexually aroused? David, you said earlier it was the body's physical response to being sexually aroused, but you didn't finish telling Donovan what that meant because you were distracted by his excellent oral demonstration, and I don't think anyone could blame you – the boy is good. Would you like to finish your explanation?" I blushed, but David carried on as if in class.

"Well," began David, "when we see something that makes us feel like we want to have sex, or sometimes even think of something that makes us want to have sex, and especially if we feel something sexual, something nice, the body just makes the penis erect. Sometimes it just happens too, even when nothing sexual is happening at all, not even in our thoughts."

"Do you understand that, Donovan?"

"Yeah, I get it," I said, "but why does it do that? That's just weird. When I was six, I thought mine was the only one that did that, and it felt like this wonderful, special thing that I couldn't tell anyone about, even though I wanted to tell everyone! I thought doctors and scientists should know, and maybe they'd want to study me, but I still don't get why?"

"Why indeed! That's the question we need to answer. Think carefully about sex and how we do it. Why do people have sex? Animals have sex too. Why do animals have sex? What is the job of the penis during sex?"

"You said it all began with girls," said David, "and making babies, so it must have to do with that."

"Yes, exactly," said Klaus. "Keep thinking that way."

"But that means having sex with girls," I said.

"Yes, that is necessary to make a baby. Go on. How would an erect penis help you to have sex with a girl?"

David and I were confused. We stared blankly at each other. We both got erections, but girls didn't really do it for us.

"Where does the penis go during sex with a girl?"

"Up inside her vagina?" I said.

"Yes!" Klaus was smiling now. "Can you imagine trying to poke a soft, squishy, small penis all the way up inside to her cervix, where it needs to go? And do you think that would make the girl, or woman, feel good enough to orgasm?"

"Oh!" I said. "That's like with David. I mean, it's not easy to poke my cock… I mean my penis into David's anus, but it wouldn't work at all if it wasn't erect – is it like that?"

"That's it exactly!" said Klaus, smiling and hugging each of us with one of his arms. "The next question is what's going on inside the penis to make it erect."

"Isn't that just muscles?" I asked. "I can make my tongue soft and floppy, or I can make it stiff and stick out with my tongue muscles."

"It involves muscles," said Klaus, "but not the kind you're thinking of. David? Do you know the answer?"

"I thought it was like a balloon full of blood. Mom told me that when she was talking about erections being a natural response when I got out of the tub one day – with an embarrassing erection."

"Yes," said Klaus, "and both of your answers are correct. Can you tell me the difference between an artery and a vein?"

We both knew this one, but I had been answering a lot of questions, so I nodded at David to let him know he could answer this one. "Sure," he said. "Arteries carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body, and veins carry the blood back to the heart."

"Exactly!" Klaus was my favorite gym teacher, but he was so happy when we learned and gave correct answers in regular lessons that I thought he should have taught in the classrooms too, besides the two weeks of health each semester we had to do. Of course, demonstrations with real sex wouldn't work very well in a public school like Northview, at least I didn't think so, but his excitement and happiness over our learning made us want to try even harder to get the right answers all the time.

"Now, I want you to use your imaginations," he said. "What would happen if small muscles pinched the veins that carried blood out of the penis? Only the veins now, not the arteries. What would happen?"

"Oh, I get it!" said David with a victorious grin, one that I'd seen before whenever he launched his Big John rocket. "That's how we're both right, Donovan! The small muscles would pinch the veins, and the blood in the penis would have nowhere to go, so it would get backed up and fill the penis up until it stretched like a balloon!"

"That's exactly right, David!"

"But wouldn't it pop or something?" I asked. "That's what balloons do if you keep blowing them up, and we can't turn down our hearts whenever we want an erection."

"That's another excellent question with more than one answer. First, the part of the brain that makes you relax also gives you erections, and that means that generally your heart does slow down a little, but certainly not always – not when you see that special boy who makes your heart thump!

We'll get to the rest of that answer in just a few minutes, but for now, I'll say that the muscles don't cut the veins off completely, just mostly. Now, think of this balloon we've been talking about, and look at your notebook. Donovan, could you please look over your observations from the experiments we did earlier and give us a summary?"

"Uh, ok," I said, reaching for the notebook. "We said that David's head – I mean his glans, but we wrote head because we didn't know we were supposed to say glans – was still big after his erection went all soft, and…"

"Ok, that's good," Klaus interrupted. "And a quick summary of your observations from the next experiment?"

"Ok, um… When David sucked your penis, you got erect, and it wasn't just your penis that got big and stiff, but the area behind your balls… I'm sorry! I mean your scrotum…"

"That's ok Donovan, as long as you correct yourself, it's perfectly ok, and in science, the exact words you wrote when you made your observations are important." It seemed he knew a little more about science than he was telling us.

"Ok, the place behind your scrotum, but in front of your anus also felt harder and stiffer, like something inside there was matching your erection in your penis."

"Good! Now your observations from our third experiment?"

"Uh, let's see… Oh! The one where you sucked my penis!"

"Yes, that's the one."

"Ok, I got erect when you sucked my penis, and David felt the same thing behind my scrotum and in front of my anus."

"What same thing, Donovan? Don't try to remember, use your notes to be accurate."

"Precise!" we both giggled, though I wasn't quite sure this time; I just went along with David.

"That thing where it felt like something grew bigger and stiff like it was with my erection. He said it felt like more of my penis like it actually went that far back. Then when he squeezed my glans, it got small, and it wasn't as hard as my shaft. It stayed small too for a while before it got big again."

"These are excellent records of some great observations," said Klaus. "You wrote down what you saw, and what you saw is excellent evidence for our lesson today. Of course, you boys know that good lab notes include as many observations as you can record, just in case you see something you weren't expecting."

"We always try to record our observations carefully," said David.

"I can tell," said Klaus. "You boys should know that I actually did study the sciences when I was in college, and I have substituted many times for the science teachers at Northview, but I think you two are still probably much better at science than I am." David and I smiled at the flattery.

"Now imagine you were a scientist studying how the penis worked a few hundred years ago. You knew that an erection was like the penis turning into a balloon full of blood, but for some reason you suspected there was more than one balloon in the penis. That is your hypothesis: The penis becomes erect because it contains more than one balloon full of blood. You design your experiments to gather evidence, and your very first experiments are exactly the ones we did today. Tell me what you think of this evidence.

I will give you one clue. Your observations today strongly support your hypothesis. Why don't you two discuss the evidence, just like good scientists do during their lab meetings, while I look around for some lunch ideas."

***

"I don't get it," I said to David. "You're smart. What do you think?"

"Oh stop it, Don! You always say that, but I'm not! I'm no smarter than you."

"Well, fine," I said. I didn't want to argue, "but what do you think?"

"That's why I don't feel smart right now," he said. "I just don't know! All that squeezing and pinching – what could that have to do with anything?"

"Let's try it again," I said. Without a word, I sucked on David's cock for a few seconds until it was hard, "There, a nice boner."

"Erection, Don!"

"Oh he's not here! Squish the head and we'll see if it does the same."

"It feels smaller now, and softer."

"It sure is smaller," I said, "but it's getting bigger again, slowly."

"Balloons don't do that," David said, "and if you can squish the glans and make it do that, why doesn't it work on the shaft?"

"Try to let it go soft again," I said.

"Ok, but you have to sit next to me," he said with a tinge of embarrassment. "I don't think I can make it get soft with you down there looking right at it."

I sat next to him and kissed him. We tried to talk about other things as his penis fell limp. "It's all gone down now," I said, "but the head's still bigger. It's not as big as before, but it's still bigger than normal."

"If you let the air out of a balloon," said David with a smile, "it all goes down! Remember my birthday party with the Mickey Mouse balloons when I turned nine? When we blew those balloons up, the whole thing blew up together, ears and all. Squishing one ear didn't make that ear stay flat, not even for a little bit. Don, this is it!" He kissed me in his excitement.

"And if we let the air out," I said, working out the corollary (after David had already said, "it all goes down," though he was too sweet to say so), "the ears go down at the same time as Mickey's head! They don't stay full and empty slower!"

"There's one more clue that I see," said David. "Remember when Mr. Kettering had me squeeze your glans and your shaft? Your glans squeezed down easily, but your shaft was too hard. I couldn't squeeze it together, and if I squeezed it a little, it just came right back when I let go of it."

"So the shaft is one balloon, and the glans is another, and the shaft is probably high pressure, and the glans is lower pressure?"

"Yes," said David. "I think that's right; I think you're right about pressure too. The shaft must have a lot more pressure in it, like a bicycle tire."

"Yeah!" I was excited as always when we solved a mystery. "With only a little pressure in the tire, you can squish it down. That's how you know it needs more air, but if it's got lots of pressure in it, it's all hard and stiff, just like the shaft!"

We hugged in triumph! How could not anybody love science? It's just solving mysteries, that's all, and lots of people like mysteries. Only science mysteries help you build rockets and computers and help people who are sick. Without science, we wouldn't have a hope of helping people with AIDS, but I suddenly thought with a heavy heart, could anyone ever find a cure for AIDS now? Were there any laboratories left?

***

Klaus smiled proudly and hugged us for our good work as scientists. Then he told us a few other things that had been discovered about erections.

"We know now that there are actually three erectile bodies, and I want us to call them that during education time, ok boys? Not balloons, erectile bodies. As we learn new terms, I want us to use them, because the more we use them, the easier they are to remember. That goes for any new terms you guys teach me too, ok? When you give me lessons…" He stopped because David and I were a bit stunned. We'd thought he was kidding about that earlier.

"I'm serious! You boys know and understand a lot of things I don't, especially about radiation, which is very important to our survival right now. I'm teaching you now because I know more about the penis than you boys do. Other things will come up, and it will be the other way around, trust me. The erectile bodies… Yes, there are three of them, and they have complicated names that I will tell you, but in this case, I'll say they aren't important right now.

You are right that the Glans is separate from the shaft. Well, most of the shaft. I'll say the name now, but there's no need to remember it. The corpus spongiosum includes all of the glans, and it surrounds the urethra as well, the whole length down the shaft. You can think of that as the spongy one – spongiosum, spongy – the one you can squish easily. Corpus is just the Latin name for body, so corpus spongiosum means spongy body.

The other two make up the right and left halves of the shaft, except where the spongy body surrounds the urethra. They are called the corpora cavernosa. Corpora is just plural for corpus, and cavernosa means…, well, cavernous – big and spacious. You are right about its high pressure. It's surrounded by this very strong layer of tissue, like the bicycle tire you mentioned, that holds the pressure in. Another name you don't need to remember, but I think you boys like learning fancy words…" we nodded to him, "…is the tunica albuginea. You also have tunicata, which is plural for tunica, albuginea surrounding your testes, which perform the same function. In case something tries to crush your testes…"

"That's why they say 'rupture!' when someone kicks you in the nuts!" I interrupted.

"Please remember the proper words, Donovan. They are testes, or testicles, not nuts, and yes, that's where that expression came from. It's a real injury and extremely painful."

"Donovan, you asked earlier about why these erectile bodies didn't blow up and burst. This tough layer is part of the answer, but there are actually injuries that can cause that layer to burst. If you have a nice hard erection, and something suddenly crushes it or bends it in half, the pressure can get so high that the tough layer can rupture open, like your eardrums did when the pressure got too high from the blast, and it makes a popping sound or a breaking sound."

"OW!!!" I said while David gasped in horror.

"Yep, it's a painful injury too," Klaus continued. "It's not easy to rupture that layer, but some men have actually done it while having sex with women. When I showed you that diagram of the vagina…" He searched through the papers on the table, "Yep, here it is. Do you see where the pubic bone is? If a man's erection is very hard, and if he is thrusting very fast and carelessly, his penis can slip out of the vagina and get crushed against her pubic bone."

"I'm never having sex with a girl, ever!" said David.

"My penis slips out of David all the time!" I said.

"Calm down," Klaus said with a smile. "David, would you stand up for a minute, please?" Klaus cleared off the table, then lifted David and laid him on the table with his bottom facing me. "Ok, David please spread your legs, good. Donovan, I want you to find David's pubic bone. Can you do that?"

"Boys have pubic bones too?"

"Yup and they're in the same place as girls."

I felt around just in front of David's anus. David was instantly erect, but I had felt something before that happened. I said, "It's all soft here, well, before he got his erection. When I pushed hard, I could kinda feel a bone. It was way up in there, though. Is that it?"

"Is that where a girl's pubic bone is? Look again at the diagram."

"Yeah," I said. "It's right above where I fuck him."

"In education time, we'll say that's where you insert, or where you penetrate him, ok?" I nodded. Eleven-year-old boys don't usually have the most academically developed sexual vocabulary.

"We don't have to be afraid of words like fuck, but we need to use language that means something specific, just like everywhere else in science. You should know that's why scientists use complicated words – they mean very specific things, and nothing else. Think of all the definitions of the word fuck, then think of the definitions of the word penetrate. It's much more specific." I knew that. I felt embarrassed! "You already knew that, of course." Klaus was also very sensitive. I felt like the stupid one when it came to an understanding of how other people felt. "I just mean to say I'd like it to be the same during education time. What I'm teaching you about your bodies is all based on science, so let's speak the language of science. What do you think? Is that ok?"

"Ok," I said, still feeling a bit embarrassed about my non-scientific usage. I noticed David had gone soft again.

"Ok then," said Klaus. "We were looking for David's pubic bone. I understand why you were looking there, Donovan, but the position of the pubic bone doesn't depend on where a person is sexually penetrated. Look again at how the girl's hip bones are laid out, the position of her vulva, and look for those places on David's body. I'll give you a hint." He wrote the words mons pubis on the diagram. "That's a small raised area of springy, fatty tissue. The pubic bone is right behind it. Yes, boys also have the same thing, but it's harder to notice because the penis is so much more obvious."

David had an erection again, which gave me a nice distraction while Klaus showed me that the area between his scrotum and his anus really did feel like a continuation of his penis. "I'm glad you noticed that, Donovan. David, you felt that on Donovan's body too, right?"

"Yes, I did, Mr. Kettering."

"Good," continued Klaus. "It feels like a continuation of the penis because it is a continuation of the penis, but it's not usually called that. The penis is an external organ. The part that protrudes from your body is the penis. These are the same erectile bodies, though. They have different names here though. The corpora cavernosa become the crura, and the corpus spongiosum becomes the urethral bulb, which is something worth exploring. Donovan, see if you can feel each one."

I probed around and realized it was easy now that I knew what I was looking for. "I feel the spongy one sorta sticking out all in a row here, and I guess the rest is just the right and left ones."

Meanwhile, David was having a hard time remaining still. He moaned occasionally, and he sometimes let out a small giggle that turned into a moan.

"Donovan, are you making scientific observations right now?"

"I think so."

"Are you observing anything besides David's erectile bodies?"

"Um… I guess I'm not."

"Perhaps you should watch how David is responding when you touch him and stimulate him there."

"David!" I said. He moaned softly as I massaged his erectile bodies.

"Next time you give him oral sex," said Klaus, "you might want to remember this."

"Can I try it now?"

"Sure, but then we have to move along with the lesson. Lunch will be soon." I licked David in that area, but I'd realized that I'd done that to him before. He'd liked it, but it wasn't the same.

"Remember your fingers, Donovan. Remember, you were pushing harder than that. Your tongue needs to do some work."

David gasped as I poked my tongue hard into his erectile bodies and moved it up and down, then left and right. I couldn't do it very long because my tongue became sore and tired, but David really seemed to like it.

"Always know what gives your partner pleasure. Now, his pubic bone…"

I found it just above the base of David's penis, right where Klaus' diagram pointed. "Good, excellent!" said Klaus. "When you penetrate David, and when you then fall out, does your erect penis come close to his pubic bone?"

"Not at all!"

"So that particular danger shouldn't be a factor for boys having anal sex," said Klaus. "However, notice that David is still erect. Feel again what's between his scrotum and his anus."

"His erectile bodies?"

"That's right," said Klaus. "Right now, while he's erect, they are quite stiff. Not as stiff as a bone, but injuries aren't impossible, but it's hard when your penis is boy-sized to get that injury at all because you have to bend it nearly in half, and there's plenty of room for your penis to go if it comes out of David's anus.

Men might be more likely to get that injury, not just because there's less room for the erect penis to go, but there are also considerations about the volume and pressure of the blood in the erectile bodies and the strength of that tough membrane around them.

Another consideration for you boys is the use of lubricant. If you use plenty of it, your penis can slip around and not get stuck anywhere if it slips out. If you don't use enough, your glans might grip to David's skin somewhere and not move while you're still thrusting, but probably the most important and wonderful thing to remember is that if you thrust deep and stay deep, and learn to enjoy the intense energy when you go more slowly, none of this will be a concern."

"Ok," I said, still feeling a little nervous, but as I looked at David, his eyes closed, gently stroking his cock… I mean his erect penis, everything felt all right.

"Ok, one more bone to look for. Donovan, feel around behind David's anus. There's a bone right there, right near the surface."

"Yeah, his tailbone," I said. "Will that rupture me?"

"You have shown me your favorite position," he said. "David, could you sit up please, good, now lean back, with your hands on the table, in the same position as if you were having anal sex with Donovan?"

"I can sit, but I can't bend my knees," said David. "When I'm on top of Donovan, I'm kneeling."

"I see," said Klaus. "Donovan, maybe you should climb up on the table and lie back. You really should be in position for this demonstration." I climbed up on the table with David. It felt surprisingly strong for a folding table, but David's dad had built it.

Klaus put two pillows under my head so I could see what was happening more easily; then I felt the oil dribbling on my penis again. It must have made a real mess as I felt my erection grow.

"Good," said Klaus. "Now Donovan, I want you to put your penis right where it goes just before you penetrate David's anus. Good, now David, I think you need to be a little lower, just like having anal sex with each other. Good. Now Donovan, press it into his anus just a little."

David gasped. "Now, using your finger, can you feel where his tailbone is?" I nodded.

"Now pretend your penis accidentally fell out. Pull back just a little and let it fall wherever it wants. Good. While you're in this position, does your erect penis point in the direction of his tailbone?"

"No, it kinda points toward my head."

"And is that anywhere near his tail bone?"

"No, it's the other way."

"Exactly, so not much to worry about. You boys would have a very hard time getting that injury from sex, no matter how hard you tried. Your erect penis isn't long enough, even if David's anus was completely surrounded by bone. The muscles in his butt cheeks keep you from getting all the way in. There is nearly always a little space between you, and if you push as deep as you can, you won't bend it as much as you'd need to for that injury."

"That's good!"

"What's that injury called, Mr. Kettering? Is it another kind of rupture?"

"It might surprise you," said Klaus, "but it's called a penile fracture." David giggled cutely, but I didn't get it.

"You know, you boys sometimes call an erection a boner, right? A fracture is a broken bone. A penile fracture means a broken penis, just like a bone. You can get down now, David."

"Aw, does he have to?"

David smiled and rolled his hips, so my cock slid all the way into his anus. "It would be a waste of all that oil," said David with a giggle.

Klaus sat back on the recliner. He didn't seem upset at all that his students were misbehaving during his lesson. He was touching himself, but not exactly masturbating.

It felt as if we were on a stage performing for Klaus. This was more exciting, naughty sex than our normal love-making. That's how it felt for me anyway.

Something I knew about myself as a boy was that when I had two orgasms very close together in time, the second one came more quickly, but it felt less intense. That meant I could pay more attention to David as my orgasm spread through my body. He was so beautiful I wanted to cry! There was no tiny part of his body that didn't tell me how much he loved me – that didn't seem as if it was specifically made to be with me. I did tear up a bit, but I was glad that no tears came out. That would be hard for me to explain when I was eleven.

"That looked so beautiful," said Klaus. "We do have an unusual family, but I love you boys more and more, each minute of every day."

He gave David and me a fair amount of kissing and cuddling time in our own little bubble before bringing us back into the room with him. David and I got off the table and cuddled on the couch.

"Ok," said Klaus, "safety lesson from that demonstration – there is not much risk at all of you boys getting a penile fracture from the kind of sex you like most, but if you try anything new and unusual, sexually, keep it in mind. Now, does anybody remember the original question we began our lesson with today?"

"Why do we get erections?" I suggested.

"Almost," said Klaus.

"Don asked why the penis made us feel so good," said David, smiling sweetly at me.

"Bingo!" said Klaus, "and I said it all started with girls and making babies. Well, there are no girls here, and we'll never make babies when it's just us, so why? Any ideas yet, after all, we've covered? No? Well, imagine if sex wasn't fun. We know that not all boys like girls, but most do, and most men like women. What if that wasn't true? What if no one enjoyed sex, or if men and boys only liked other men and boys?"

"We wouldn't have very many babies," I said.

"Again! Exactly! So nature came up with a way to make it very pleasurable to make babies. Otherwise, humans would have died out." He stopped for a very uncomfortable pause. No one said it, but we were all wondering if that had just happened anyway.

"But we're all boys," said David. "We can't make babies. Why would nature give us that same feeling in our penises?"

"There are many, many reasons, but the three most important reasons I want you to remember from today's lesson. One, even though we are gay, we are humans, and therefore we can make babies if we want; two, being human males, we have penises, which are human organs that do all these wonderful things we have been talking about, no matter how we use them; and three, in my opinion, the most important reason is that everybody needs love. We need all the help we can get when it comes to loving each other." He began to tear up.

"We saw yesterday what can happen when there is more hate than love between people, and you two just showed how much better it is to love each other. The penis is an important organ for making love with each other. We have millions of ways to show love for each other, but I don't think any are more powerful than making love.

Let's have some lunch."

Chapter 30

Making Love, Plus One

'1:00 PM, outside 7 rad/hour, basement .7 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

We all sat on folding chairs at the table again, having the kind of lunch you're never supposed to be able to have in a fallout shelter after a nuclear war. We all knew we needed to eat the food that would spoil first, and Klaus thought that would be the leftovers. There was some really good potato salad, but not very much. David and I both had sloppy joes. Klaus wanted us to have some kind of fruit or vegetable, so David said we should have the eggplant parmigiana. I had never had eggplant before, and it looked like something I might not like. David promised he'd eat mine instead of a sloppy joe if I didn't like it, so I decided to give it a try. The three of us finished the eggplant, I finished the potato salad, and David and I ate about a third of the sloppy joe meat. Klaus had the rest of a spinach quiche that he found. That didn't look good at all to me.

Removing the food we had for lunch made room in the small fridge for the food that we'd put in the cooler chest the day before. There were two unopened packages of some fancy kind of hot dogs, an unopened salami that David didn't think needed to be in the fridge anyway, some fresh broccoli, and fresh carrots. No room in the fridge for beer yet, but that didn't bother Klaus. He said it was easy to put a bottle in the freezer chest and wait twenty minutes or so. After we finished cleaning up from lunch, we sat back in our familiar places, David and me cuddling on the couch and Klaus on the recliner.

"Boys, I have a few suggestions," said Klaus, "and I know you probably won't like the first one." I looked at David with dread, but David continued to face Klaus. "When we wake up, I think we should do something physical, some exercises…" I moaned in complaint, but David continued to listen.

"I don't mean anything terrible, Donovan, just the warm-up calisthenics that we did every day in Phys Ed. You both know that we need to stay fit, and living in a small space like this makes physical activity like sports difficult. It'll only take five minutes or so, just like always."

"Do we have to do burpees?" I moaned.

"I won't force you," he said. "You can stand and wait while David and I do them, but I'd really like you to do them with us, but that's just the first thing.

After calisthenics, we have breakfast. Then I thought we might have education time, followed by some sort of fun time activity before lunch. We could make up some sort of game or sport we could do in the basement here. That time has to be fun.

Then after lunch, we could have reading or studying time for an hour, free time, and an hour of work time before supper." I moaned again.

"Donovan, I know this isn't pleasant, but think how much better it can be! I think we need to put in an hour of work each day to make this basement a better place to live. When we get things more organized, we'll have a lot more room for having fun or doing what we like. Then we can make some improvements. How would you guys like to have a small sink right here, next to the fridge? We could build things too, like, how about a stand for that TV up there?"

My head snapped around. I hadn't noticed a TV! It was facing sideways on the top shelf behind the couch where David and I had spent most of our time. There was other equipment up there too that I didn't recognize, and I was curious about it.

"The radio said the TV stations were all off the air," said David. "What would we watch?"

"The TV stations are off the air now," said Klaus, "but that doesn't mean they're going to be off for good. If we use some of our work time to build a fancy antenna, maybe we could get the station in Saint Cloud? They weren't hit there. They might have some repair work to do from the EMP, but I bet their engineers could build a whole new transmitter if they wanted. Oh David, what's this?" He pulled what looked like a thick typing keyboard with wires hanging out of it from the shelf.

"Oh, that's Dad's VIC-20," he said. "And that's the printer next to it. He wanted to try using a cheap computer at home to see if it was worthwhile to buy a nicer one. He liked it, so he bought an Apple IIe, but it quit working last week. He was going to take it in, but he didn't, so I left it upstairs."

"I see," said Klaus. "The Apple IIe is really expensive, but if it doesn't work… Do you know if this one works?"

"I think so," said David. "It's been sitting there since winter."

Klaus pulled down a small cassette recorder that was attached to computer cables, and he also found the user's manual. "I think this might be something interesting we can watch on the TV!"

"But you just said, the EMP pulse, that shouldn't work, should it? It's got microchips in it."

"One way to find out," Klaus said with his grin that was looking goofier every time I saw it. "Besides, given all the work your dad put into this place, I wonder if there was a reason this computer was stored in this room and the TV too. Do you think he had this room shielded?"

"I don't know," said David with a faint smile appearing across his lovely face. "He might have when he put the bricks in. That sounds like something he'd do."

"Ok, does that kind of work sound a little less awful, Donovan?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well yeah! Good. Then after supper, I was thinking about entertainment."

"Entertainment?" I asked. "Like movies or something?"

"Well, that's not an option right now," he said. "I was thinking we could entertain each other. We could put on shows of some kind for each other. We could play music, we could perform a play, we could tell stories, dance, any kind of performance. We could write our own stuff too. We can write our own plays and songs if we like. If you guys write poetry, I'd love to hear you read it!"

"That sounds like a lot of fun!" said David, giving me a huge smile.

"That sounds really stupid!" is what I wanted to say. "Uh, ok," is what I actually said.

"Trust me, Donovan," said Klaus, "It'll be your favorite time of day in no time!"

"You forgot something," I said. "When is sex time?" The other two chuckled, but I wasn't entirely joking. "We should have sex time between all the other times, like passing time between classes."

"Wow, maybe you young boys can do it that often, but when you get a little older… How's this," he said. "When any two of us want to have sex, that will be sex time. You saw how sex can be part of education time too. We can fit it in during other times if we're creative." He gave me what looked like a flirtatious smile.

"Donovan, and you too, David, you boys are in love. Making love with each other is always more important than any other kind of sex. I want your word that you will take time each day to make love, to be only with each other, and feel the love you have for each other, without involving me, ok?"

"Ok," we both said.

"But we can't ever be alone while we're here, Mr. Kettering," said David. "And I'm not sure I want to be alone while you're here. It's nice if you're just here in the room with us. I love Don, but we're all like a strange sort of family, and if we make love, I'd feel better if you could be here and maybe just watch or something. Just be with us." I could see he was blushing.

"Yeah, Klaus," I said. "It's like that Eskimo Nanook movie we saw. They only had one room in their igloo, so the mom and dad made love with everybody there watching. It was like a family thing."

"That wasn't in Nanook of the North," said Klaus.

"Well, I don't know where I saw it, but it's true! David and I talked about wanting a gay man to help us understand how to love each other, and here you are!"

"You boys are absolutely beautiful," he said, getting up and kissing us both.

"David is," I said, climbing over David and straddling him on my knees. I kissed him before he could protest. We kissed and kissed, and soon I could feel David's boner against my ass. That made me curious. I took his cock in my hand and stroked it. Then I tried to sit gently down on it, knowing we had no lube.

"Donovan?" David grinned curiously at me.

"I've got it," said Klaus. In a few seconds, I felt his slippery finger slide right into the entrance of my anus, and I gasped. "You boys are insatiable," he said.

I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded nice. "Slouch down a little more, David. That's good. Legs wide apart Donovan, good, now lower yourself slowly." I felt the tip of David's cock pressing against my anus, but I didn't think I could squat much further down. "Good, hips forward now David." There it was! That gave me more to slide down on. I looked David in his sweet, dark brown eyes, and I slid down. The electricity I felt told me why David liked it so much. I closed my eyes. I was too distracted to see anyway.

"The first-time top controls the action, David. Keep your hips forward and let him find his pace. That's good. I think you two have got it."

I moved up and down, but it seemed to work better to roll my hips forward and back. The movement of his shaft around the inside of my anus felt incredible! I bent my head down and kissed him. Then I whispered into his ear, "I'm yours, David Chance. Take over. I'm yours," and he did, with a great smile of thrill. The more he took control, the more he forced his cock into my ass, the more I knew he was inside me, and I belonged to him.

I had no desire to cum, only to make him cum. He held my ass cheek with one hand and my cock with the other. I kissed him again, passionately, until I could hardly breathe. I was his! My love, my David! "My David," I whispered into his ear this time. I heard myself make a light squeaking sound, I heard David's familiar crying sound, and the world opened up and swallowed us together, forever. Our own little bubble, just us, a place that would always be ours, and a feeling that would last forever.

"I love you so much, Donovan," he said with tears streaming from his eyes. It felt weird to see that, but I thought those tears must have been a good thing this time. I held his head against my chest and caressed his soft hair. The physical part of sex was less intense for me the more often we did it (this was our third time in about two and a half hours), but making love was always, every time, more powerful than the Earth itself.

***

'2:00 PM, outside 6 rad/hour, basement .5 rad/hour, inside <.1 rad/hour.'

"It's beautiful!" David said in total astonishment. Klaus had revealed another talent of his by sketching us while we were making love. We knew David couldn't see the sketch very well with his bad eyes, but he saw enough of it by holding the sketch up and his head down to be deeply moved. "We made love with each other, and you were with us," he continued. "In a different way, but you were connected, if that makes sense. It's there in your sketch. You were with us the whole time."

I kissed David softly. I wanted him to keep talking. If I said anything, I was afraid I'd start crying, and I didn't want to have to explain why. I didn't know why, but it didn't feel bad at all. It was a beautiful feeling, full of love. Maybe it was the same feeling David felt a few minutes earlier.

"You two boys have come to mean the world to me. You're all I've got left, and right now I have more than I've ever had in my whole life. I've got you two. You're the only beautiful things in my life, and you are more beauty than I ever dreamed I'd see before I died. You make me want to make the world more beautiful."

David kissed him and gave a quiet sniffle. "You made us promise to make love with each other every day, just us, but this feels right, Klaus. It feels like you're sharing your love with us while we make love on our own, if that makes sense. I only made love with Donovan, but you found a way to share your love too, so you're not left out. It's like you made love with us, but you only shared it after we'd had our own private time. Oh, I hope this makes sense. Can you keep doing this?"

"You mean sketch you boys every time?"

"Yeah!" I said.

"Only if you want," said David. "But not every time. I like art because it shows things that we can't say. If you make some kind of art… but I'm being silly."

"Oh, not at all!" said Klaus. "I like being creative with art, but if I only have a few minutes while you boys are making love, it would be difficult to make anything really good. Should we give it a try though? See how it goes? I can add more later to my sketches, or whatever I do. I used to write poetry too. I could see if I can compose poetry while you're making love together. Sometimes my poetry turns into songs too."

"Donovan," said David, "doesn't that sound wonderful?"

It did, but how could I tell them that I hated poems? I wanted more pictures because Klaus made me look hot! I never thought I looked sexy, but Klaus' sketch showed me what my body really looked like in a way that made me want to make love to myself. It was unmistakably my body too.

"It sounds great," I said, "but I really like your pictures." David looked at me, questioningly. "I guess I need to learn more about poetry, because I bet yours is really good, especially if it's about us and how love feels, 'cause that's awesome!" I hoped he didn't think that meant I wanted him to teach us poetry during education time!

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