BENJAMIN...continued

The next day he called. 

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"It's not right."

"What do you mean not right?"

"It's a sin."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Can we get together tonight and talk?'

"Sure."

All day at work I thought about what we had done and the struggle inside me felt like it was tearing me apart.  I loved my wife.  I loved my year old baby girl beyond words.  From my early teens I had struggled with my attraction to men.  Always falling in love with my best friend and fearful that someday my inner life and secret would be revealed to the world and I would be shunned like a leper.  My heart broke when I was a senior in High School and had fallen in love with my buddy, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing could or would ever come of it.  I determined then and there that night after crying and struggling with my feelings, that I would banish them and seek to be "normal".  I would get married and have children.  I wanted a family more than anything.  My family life with my parents had always been tough.  They fought constantly and I made up my mind that I would have something better, for me and my children. 

I got married when I was twenty-one, which seems so young now.  Three months later my wife found out she was pregnant.  My daughter's birth was the most magical thing that had ever happened to me.  We went to Lamaze classes and I was present when she came into the world.  Supernaturally natural.  Just after she was born I met Benjamin. 

At first I didn't pay too much attention to him.  He had just graduated from High School and went to the same church.  I knew his sister from High School and he was in the class as my younger sister, although I had never known him.  He hung out with some of the same people that I did who had all gone to school together and now formed a group at the church we all attended.  A few of us started folk dancing at the Old Gymnasium at the University.  It was then that I started to notice his free spirit and his natural ability to have fun and laugh. 

Just after my wife and I got married, we both became Christians.  The 'Jesus Movement' had just taken off and some good friends of mine kept trying to convert me.  One night after a party at our house they dropped by and prayed with me to accept Jesus as my personal saviour.  I jumped into the Fellowship and my wife soon followed.  There were many of our friends from school who were apart of the group so we fit right in. Although we lost many friends, we gained many new ones.

Benjamin was one of them..

He picked me up in his green Fiat and we picked up a bottle of something.  I can't remember what.  We walked down the steps to the beach.  The moon was not quite full and it was a clear warm summer evening.  We found a spot on a rock and passed the bottle back and forth.

"I think I'm falling in love with you."  I said.

"Yeah, me too."

"So, what do we do?"

"What can we do, you're married with a baby girl."

We sat and stared at the moonlight reflected on the water.  Ben was an artist too.  His plan was to go to Pasadena and attend Art School.  I had been and was now working in the City Warehouse to support my family.  I painted some, but didn't have a lot of time to devote to my art.  Ben was an amazingly creative artist.  He worked in several different mediums.  His drawings were fun and whimsical.  He made me laugh all the time. 

"We need to pray and not let this go any further."  He handed me the bottle.  "I'm going away in the fall and let's make sure it doesn't happen again."

"OK."  I was dying inside.  I started to cry.  I wanted him so badly.  I wanted to hold him and be held.  I felt like my life was slipping away.  "Can we kiss one last time?"

He leaned over and kissed me and put his arms around me.  It felt so right.  How could it be wrong?

The next day was a Saturday and we came back to the beach.  We took our trunks off and ran into the ocean.  We horsed around and body surfed.  We ran up the beach and threw ourselves down on the towels, our naked asses glistening with sea water.  He was so beautiful wet.  His hair in thick wet strings, the sun reflecting light off his tan body.  We lay on our stomachs with our heads turned facing one another.  His green eyes staring at me with longing, while the water danced off the ends of his eyelashes and the tips of his hair.  We talked and laughed.  Had I ever really been in love before.  This was new.  It scared me and exhilarated me at the same time.  Like riding a roller coaster.

He turned onto his side and his semi-erect cock flopped onto his thigh leaving a string of precum from his leg to the slit of his penis.  The sun reflected off it and made it look like diamonds.  I don't think he even noticed, but I will never forget that moment.  Time stood still and I have continued to play that scene over and over in my memory.

Benjamin went away at the end of the summer, but it was far from over between us.