Not a Lover but a Brother (1985)

At a local rainbow gathering I met this wonderful boy. He is 20 years old, long limbed and boyish graceful, and like a kid he shows his affection with his body; he leans on you; he caresses you; he hugs you tight. But he is not gay, he says, and I say OK. I am not after sex really; I want to give it up; it drains me. If I can get your total love, then sex is a small matter to give up. So, I try to put it out of my mind. When I get a hard-on I say purification mantra and it vanishes.
This happens every time I give him a massage and little by little I become less strict and allow my excitement to manifest. First I massage his back. When I press the muscles on the shoulder blades he groans. Then I squeeze his powerful copper freckled shoulders and down his bulging biceps and again he groans with pleasure. I do his hands; I do his feet and up his legs. I do his butt and he likes it. I turn him around to do his neck and head, and my hands slide down over his chest, his sides, and his stomach. Step by step I explore his whole body except his sex.

During the year after we met, we have spent time together four times averaging a month. Every time we came a step closer. Once I am lying on the mattress naked and he comes out of the bathroom fresh from the shower and flops down next to me and says, nap time! I put my arm around him and snuggle up to his back and a warm peace fills my whole being and I sleep.
On our travels we are one night given a double bed. We fall asleep separate but wake up in an embrace. I caress him and he responds and all morning we are blissfully entwined. Afterwards we talk about it and he says that it freaks him out a little. I say, oh, I love to just sleep with you like that, it is so warm and good, and I respect that you don’t want sex.

But now he begins to hint at sexual motives. He talks about his hard-ons and one day he lets his soft cock hang out. I grab it and say, how are you, nice to meet you! When we hitch hike we play around and he tries to squeeze my nipples and I go for his crotch, but he is stronger than me. More and more often we lie together naked, embracing, caressing. I know that some day it will happen, but I want it to be his decision.
We sit and talk and he says, when I come home I am broke; maybe I’ll sell my body! – How much? I ask. He seems surprised and laughs, I need $80 – That’s kind of expensive, I say – oh, he says, but it’s worth it!
When we come to my home at travels end, he is cold in the morning and I put my cover over him though he is still under his own blanket. I cannot sleep, so I get up and knead dough for bread. “What are you doing?” he asks when I come back in. “Baking bread”, I say.
He opens up his covers and invites me into his arms. I feel his cock hard against my stomach; it jumps and wants to play – there is no doubt. I let my fingers flicker lightly over it and as I look down I see a pearl of lubricant emerge. He is ready, and I go down on him. For some reason, to finally have reached my ultimate fantasy is less blissful than it should be. I am too tense.
I feel guilty, he says, because I don’t have the urge to do the same for you, but I tell him not to worry, it’s good, I’m happy. That day we pass mostly in bed and he gets hard again. The same happens the next day, more than once, but I am still too tense to find relief. In the evening as we are going to sleep separate I hear him moan. What’s up? I ask. Oh, I’m just playing with myself, he says. That’s OK, I say, if I can be in on it – and I jump on top on him and he takes my cock together with his and this time we come at the same time.
The special satisfaction of ‘going all the way’ is his total surrender to the heart, his total acceptance of my lust as being in the service of love. Closer we cannot get, being unified even where we differ. His words of goodbye set it all in place: ”I don’t think of you as a lover, I still think of you as a brother.”

I remember one of the first days we were together by the Yuba River.
We had taken Ecstasy and he wanted to jump from a 40 feet cliff. I had to do it too, even though I was scared. When I hit the water it tore my arm out of its joint. We had climbed to get where we were and there was no way I could climb back with the arm out of joint; we had to fix it then and there. He had some experience and his advice was to bend the arm in the direction that hurt most. It didn’t sound too good but it worked: the arm clicked back in place and after a few minutes I felt all right and ready to continue our expedition up the river.
There was only he and I, and jumping behind him from one rock in the cool, clear water to the other I set my foot step by step where he had set his. The green, green moss stabs me with pleasure and in a flash I know that I am happy, that I will never forget this moment. But I let it go and follow him as he leaps like a flame up the river.