I'm standing at the gates of Heaven or Hell, and the doorbell doesn't work. Saint Peter must be on a lunchbreak, or else Cerberus is paddling around the River Styx looking for driftbones. The gates are red ivory, and thanks to Christo & Jean Claude's billowy purple canvas stretched around the length of the fence, I can't see fuck all on the other side. After a round of vigorous knocking and door-kicking, I try the doorbell again. In the distance a dog howls. So these are the gates of hell, the doorbell is so high pitched only Cerberus can hear it, and now he knows I'm here.

I pull out my cell phone and check my missed calls. Score.

Emmet answers on the first ring. "Hello?"

"Hi. I'm outside. I don't think your doorbell is working."

"Ummm. I'm outside on my front porch. I don't think that's my doorbell. Wait. Are you the guy across the street?"

I cross the River Styx, making sure to look both ways for speeding gondolas. Emmet is sitting on a blue futon, sipping a pear margarita with an umbrella in it. It occurs to me that I've never met anyone who puts umbrellas in their drinks when they're at home. This is a whole new level of Gay.

I sit down in the captain's chair next to his futon. He kicks a cooler toward me. Inside is a blender of margarita mix, two green and orange striped, curved goblets, and about a half dozen little umbrellas.

"Tommy should be on his way shortly." Emmet says. I doubt him. Not because I think Emmet is lying, but because I know Tommy.  Tommy and I have fooled around twice. He's stood me up three times, and the last time we tried to plan a threesome, we ended up alone, eating shitty pancakes at three in the morning. We haven't spoken much since.

Apparently, Emmet is Tommy's latest fuckbuddy, a twenty-two year old MIT student with the keys to his parents' summer house. It's not quite yet summer, which means Tommy is not quite yet eighteen. Three more days. But given our history, it seems pretty stupid to turn down the possibility of a threesome based on a 72 hour legal formality.

Two hours, and a blender and a half later, it's pretty obvious that Tommy found a better offer. Likely, one with money involved. So this is neither Heaven nor Hell but Purgatory. I decide to take my fate into my own hands, and head home.

"What? I don't even get a blowjob?" Emmet asks.

No, Third Wheel, you were just a bait to try and get Tommy back into my sex life. He wanted a threesome, you wanted a threesome, and I wanted him. I appreciate the alcohol, but I had no intention of touching your dick unless Tommy asked me to.

Don't get me wrong, Emmet was cute, and I'm not particularly choosy, but I had planned this entire day to literally get back in touch with Tommy. I'd been pretty much celibate since Elvis left, and all I could think of was Tommy's tongue.

"Ummm. What?"

"Fucker. You come over here and drink like half a bottle of tequila, and you can't even suck me off a little?" Maybe this isn't Purgatory after all. "You faggots are all the same." Says the guy with little drink umbrellas in his pink cooler. "You're all talk talk talk when it comes to sex. You lead a guy on over The Internet, go to his house, and then suddenly your legs are superglued shut. Fine. Fuck you. Get off my porch."

I am already ahead of him on the last count. I'm about halfway across the street, and ready to bolt if he makes a move toward me. My attempt to apologize for not being as much of a whore as he thought are interrupted by a car horn. This is the second time I've nearly been run over when Tommy stood me up. Surely this is some sort of sign.

Staying on the right side of the breakdown lane, I pedal. I pedal as though I could overcome stars and cars alike. It's as though reconnecting with Tommy would somehow save either his life or mine. There's nothing quite as invigorating as an unhealthy sense of melodrama.

It's 2:22 AM and I am biking the streets of Cranberry Lake because my car has been impounded and Tommy doesn't have one yet. He's eighteen now, and somehow I think that makes things better.

     AOL Chatroom CranberryLakeM4M
     Tommyislegal: Hey Insafemode
     Insafemode: Tommy! Long time, no talk. How goes it.
     Tommyislegal: Pretty good
     Insafemode: Cool. Up to anything exciting lately.
     Tommyislegal: Nah. Kinda bored. Kinda horny. U UP 4 anything? :-)
     Insafemode: I'm definitely up for getting together. Unfortunately, my car's kinda dead. D'you have wheels?
     Tommyislegal: I've got a bike. ;)
     Insafemode: Up for a ride then?

It's 2:22 AM and I am biking the streets of Cranberry Lake because I have not yet grasped the concept that lust only leaves me feeling empty. I am madly in love with someone who I am fairly sure is incapable of loving me back. So tonight I throw on my jacket and gloves, take my long-ignored bike out of the back yard, and hit the streets. There isn't much distance between my house and Tommy's. There are, however, a lot of twists and turns. We agree to meet at The Generic Mom and Pop Store about halfway between our houses. There we'll buy rolling papers and condoms, then bike back to my place.

I don't smoke anymore. I gave up cigarettes after I finished smoking the pack that ElvisSeith left behind. The last time I smoked pot was with Tommy. I haven't hooked up with anyone since Big Gay Toms's friend, and I haven't gotten laid since ByronElvis left. Why am I getting on my bike at GodAwful O'clock in the morning to meet someone who I'm not in love with, knowing that I will be engaging in at least two activities I should not be doing.

It's 2:22 AM and I don't hear the serve of the approaching van.

Staying on the right side of the breakdown line is tricky. The roads curve too often. Though it's not yet winter, there's black ice glimmering on the slick, black pavement. I'm thinking this may be a metaphor for something. I am wishing I was in better shape. I feel like Ive been kicked in the chest and thrown in a freezer. I will have to stop a little bit before the store to catch my breath. I don't want to look too winded. I've got to focus.

It's 2:22 AM and I am pedaling head over feet over head over feet (and I'm not even in love). The bike is briefly above me, then beside me. The ground is not as frozen as I'd feared. My head is two inches away from a pine tree. The van honks its horn as it speeds off into the night.

It's 2:22 AM. I'm cold. Apart from the chain having come off, it looks like my bike is ok. My legs work fine, my arms appear to be in working order. Apart from a dull pounding, my head's no better or worse than usual. If I hadn't told Tommy I'd meet him, I'd turn around, go home and get some rest. But desperation and lust rule out common sense and well being. I put the chain back on my bike and start pedaling again.

So what do you do when you find out the stranger you picked up in a grocery store is underage? You fuck him.

Maybe it was the pot mumbling, or maybe I was just an unethical hornball. Whatever the lame excuse, once I processed the fact that I couldn't actually be arrested for being a twenty-one year old fooling around with a seventeen year old, all my reservations about how his family could kill me anyway flew right out the window. Perhaps they were trying to catch up with the pot smoke.

Tommy wanted to blow me again, and how could I say no to more head from the best barely legal fallater to ever walk the earth?

We're on the bed doing some 69 and, as I'm wont to do when there's ass to be played with, I let my fingers do the walking. A little squishy squish, some slappy slap, and some pokey poke (I'm gonna stoppy stop now). I'll confess it right here, publicly, for all the cringing world to see that yes, I have an ass fetish. Tommy's ass, while not ideally round, was at least present. So I slide my index finger in and out a few times before upgrading to the middle finger. Next up is the thumb of doom which, while it obviously can't get in as deep as it's better hung companions, has better girth, and is much easier to make eccentric ellipses with.

Tommy is bucking and thrashing and SPLAT. Drizzle. Drizzle. Moan. SPLAT. Drizzle. Yelp. SPLAT. Drizzle. Drizzle. Screech. SPLAAAAAAAAAT. Drizzle. Drizzle. Drizzle. Drip. Drip. SPLAT. Drip.

Damn.

"Fuck me. Please."

I was taken a bit aback. Not that Tommy wanted to be fucked, but that he was so enthusiastic about it. He had been a typical mellow stoner up to this point. Monotonous voice, Garfield shaded eyelids, and slouch.

It would be nice to think I had some sort of internal dialog about whether or not this was a good idea, but the only thing my dick could think of to say to my brain was "Thank God you keep your condoms within reach of the bed, now move my damned arm."

And in we go, doggy style. This boy was tighter than spandex on David Lee Roth. The only word that accurately describes sex with Tommy is "Damn."

When we were finished, we passed out draped across each other. When I woke up it was dark outside. I kept staring at Tommy, thinking he was bathed in moonlight, but it was actually a streetlight. Eventually we got up, and I drove him over to a friend's house, where he'd decided to stay the night.

This was the start of something a tad more meaningful than just whoring around. You know that cliché about how there are other fish in the sea? I kept thinking Tommy would be the keeper. Turns out I had throw him back. He was too small.

The warning signs:
He lived with his parents.
He rode his bike because he didn't have a car.
He liked cartoons.
He got my sense of humor.
He was smoking pot with the bagboys at a grocery store.

On their own, none of these things mean everything, but put altogether, how did I not realize that I had picked up an underage boy in a grocery store parking lot. I mean, he looked over 18.

His profile hadn't listed an age, but I assumed --

Fuck.

I was now the posterboy for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor." We'd drank, smoked pot, and he'd sucked my dick.

I was going to prison.

But first I was going to take a long hit off the joint he rolled. I briefly pondered buying some off him and offering him a beer just to cover the points spread.

"Want to go back inside?" he asked. Yes. I wanted to go back inside with him, alter the timeline and meet him when he was eighteen. If I couldn't do that, I wanted to go inside and freak out about the fact that he never told me he was jailbait, and I wasn't intelligent enough to ask him how old he was. But I thought that might ruin the mood, so I asked "How long have you known John?"

"Since we were kids." Right. When they were kids. As opposed to now that they were in high school together. I ---

I remembered something from an online argument in one of the chatrooms. A sixteen year old was talking about his twenty year old fuckbuddy, and when people harangued him about legal issues, he'd linked them to a website about state laws. In our state it was perfectly legal for someone under twenty-two to fuck around with someone over sixteen. I was under twenty-two.

"How old are you?" "Seventeen."

I did the legal happy dance in my head. Morally, I was still less than thrilled. I just couldn't picture myself driving a white van and hanging around tech school parking lots. I was too good for that. Only grocery store parking lots for me.

"My friends tell me I give great head." Nice segue.

"You're amazing. You should be teaching classes." Instead of attending them in a middle high school.

"I've always wanted to get fucked, but never had the courage to ask anybody about it. It's why I decided to meet someone online today."

Rut-roh Rhaggy.

There were so many ways this could go horribly wrong.

1.) His parents could find out. Being absolutely terrified about his parents discovering his sexuality, he could lie and say he'd been seduced. Neither of us would ever be able to go out in public in Nowheresville again without facing some sort of ridicule.

2.) His parents could find out, and he could be completely honest with them, and they could fuck up his life anyway.

3.) Miss M. could hear us through the thin walls, if she hadn't already, and start telling everyone in the neighborhood, and her family, and his family, and my family, that I was fucking teenage boys. Goodbye any sort of political career (which is a moot point at this stage in my life, but at the time it was still a nearly improbable possibility).

4.) He could suggest a threesome with Johnny, who I'd known since Johnny was eleven. That would never happen. Johnny was cute and all but he was Johnny, just a kid. I couldn't be attracted to him any more than I could be attracted to his fri-- Bugger.

5.) No one would find out, and we'd end up having a secret relationship which would do wonders for us sexually but distract him from his college applications.

6.) We would end up in a relationship so wonderful that he would come out to his parents, introduce me, and then they would beat me to death with their collection of Gideon's Bibles.

7.) We would end up in a relationship so wonderful that he would come out to his parents, who would pretend to love me while secretly pooring arsenic into my Cherry Coke until I died.

8.) We would end up in a relationship so wonderful that he would come out to his parents, who would really love me, and want to spend some time camping or something with my family who would kill me when they found out I'd been fucking a seventeen year old boy.

There were hundreds of variations on these thoughts involving angry mob justice, Jerry Springer, NAMBLA meetings, and various other things I never wanted to be a part of my autobiography if I ever became famous. But we connected on so many levels before I found out how old he was, and it wasn't as though he were thirteen, or mentally retarded or anything. He was nearly a consenting adult.

I was nearly kidding myself.

I decided to make it a non-issue. We spent some time talking about how long he'd wanted to get fucked, why he wanted to get fucked. If he was sure it was a great idea to get fucked by some guy he'd just met on The Internet. The fact that I really wanted to fuck him, but really didn't want to fuck him up. I suggested we wait.

He kissed me. That boy could do anything with his mouth.

At this point, age was a moot point. I still wasn't going to fuck him until he'd really thought about it, but it was because I didn't want to see him make a mistake, not because he was seventeen.

His hands went down to my zipper again. I took his hand and led him back upstairs.

While most of the other people in CranberryLakeM4M room scrolled things like: "38/m/brown/brown/5'4/8," I would check profiles and send deliberately horrible one-liners to guys who I thought might be my type.

I was an AOL lurker.

I don't know what ridiculous thing I said to Tommy, but it made him LOL. We talked for all of about twenty minutes before he relayed to me that he was horny. This was someone I could bond with, but not in that ropes and whips sort of way. He said he was saving up for a car, but was currently biking places. He said this as a way of telling me he was fit (little did he know how low my standards were). He was still living with his parents in order to not pay rent and save up for some HolyGrailMobile, and was not out to his parents, so he didn't want to meet at his house. While I didn't live too far from him, it was far enough that he didn't want to bike it.

We agreed to meet in a grocery store parking lot. I was meeting someone in a parking lot for sex. I didn't think I could get much lower. Little did I know.

Neither Tommy nor I had pictures online, so we gave each other descriptions. I didn't see anyone on a bike when I drove in, so I went into a bookstore, and sat at a table by the window, waiting. After about ten minutes, I went back into the parking lot. The only person I saw with a bike was near the grocery store carriages, smoking cigarettes with the juvenile delinquent bag boys. I waited another fifteen minutes, then headed home.

I had been stood up in a grocery store parking lot.

So I went back home and resumed my online lurking. About five minutes into it,
Tommy IMed me.

     Tommyisawhore: What happened.
     Insafemode: I went to the grocery store,
     Insafemode: waited about a half hour, and didn't see you,
     Insafemode: so I came home.
     Tommyisawhore: Oh. Were you the guy in the bookstore?
     Insafemode: Yea.
     Tommyisawhore: Yum.
     Tommyisawhore: Sorry. I ran into some friends
     Tommyisawhore: had to smoke them out.
     Tommyisawhore: I wasn't sure if you were you, so I didn't say anything.
     Tommyisawhore: Want to try again?
     Insafemode: Sure.

I was smitten by the fact that anyone said "Yum" in reference to me. I don't think it's happened since.

Back to the parking lot I went. Sure enough, one of the boys who'd been smoking by the carriages earlier sauntered over to my car. It was my turn to say Yum. I did wonder what he was doing hanging with the Stop and Shop bag boys, but I was meeting a stranger for sex in a grocery store parking lot, so I didn't think I could take much of a moral high ground.

We had a few good laughs on the brief car ride over to my house. We had a lot in common. So much so that we decided to hang out and play MST3K while watching TV for a while. At around 4 in the afternoon, Animaniacs came on, and we realized we both had a place of reverence for Wakko Warner and Pinky & The Brain. At some point in the episode, Pinky started playing with some sticks or something. "This is getting me incredibly hard." Tommy said, as he stood up and demonstrated.

Due to the lack of visual barricades, and multitude of nosy neighbors, we headed upstairs to my bedroom where Tommy turned the TV onto Animaniacs, and began taking my pants off. I've mentally filed "Pinky & The Brain" under surprisingly gay pornography ever since. Though neither of us spent much time watching the TV.

If Beckee gave the world's worst blowjob, Tommy gave the world's best. The prelude to the blowjob was a sexy striptease that lasted about thirty seconds before he was naked and and kneeling over my cock.

He was all over the place. His tongue went from head to shaft to sac to belly button to shaft to sac to shaft to head. It was as if he was born with four tongues. I quickly reached the internalized orgasm phase where you use every iota of your sexual power not to be a victim of premature ejaculation (and when premature ejaculation is involved, everyone's a victim). He had pressed every button except the one in my ass, where I carefully guided his finger. Bingo.

After about ten minutes, he took each nut into his mouth individually and began to hum. This was the only time I've ever had a hummer. Mind/wadblowing doesn't even begin to describe it. I fought the wave, and I won. Barely. He kept looking up and smiling at me. Then he'd go back to making me the happiest man to ever pick up a strange man in a parking lot.

We'd been going about twenty minutes when I just couldn't take it anymore. So Tommy did. I must have lost ten pounds in that orgasm. I didn't think it would ever stop. Tommy swallowed easily a half dozen times before I was through.

"Huuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." was really the only appropriate thing I could say.

After a few full body spasms while he continued to suck the sperm inhaler, I reached down to begin some well deserved reciprocation, but he intercepted my hand. "Mind if we go out for a smoke first?"

He could have asked me if I minded if we went out and bought some submachine guns and took out a preschool and I would have said "No problem."

We threw on some clothes, and headed to my back porch. Tommy rolled himself a joint, and we passed it back and forth a few times.

My next door neighbor to the right was a really sweet grandmother. I used to visit with her every couple of days. Sometimes I'd make dinner for her, other times she'd come over to my house and listen to me play piano. When I used to work at a summer camp, she had her grandchildren attend it. They were great kids. Taylor was nine, Clayton was twelve, and John was sixteen.

I'm reasonably sure she knew what we were smoking when she leaned over the fence and said "Something smells good. Oh, I miss being able to smoke my -- Well, hello, Tommy."

"Hey, Miss M. How're you?"

"I'm doing great. I didn't know you knew Insafemode."

"Yea, we go way back."

"Well you have excellent taste in friends."

"Awww. And you're not at all biased because I hang out with John all the time."

"Not at all. Ta ta boys." and she headed off her porch and over to the community pool.

"Where do you know Miss M from?" I asked.

"Oh, Johnny and I were on the JV football squad together last year."

Uh. What?