Burnham-on-Sea

I've known Simon since we were little kids. We were in the same class at school until we were fourteen, at which point his parents divorced and his mum took him off to live in Burnham-on-Sea with her and her new boyfriend.

We stayed in contact - Burnham isn't a million miles from where I live - and regularly stayed over at each other's houses. He came along to Switzerland with my family and I when I was sixteen and would regularly come over to stay overnight at our house. In fact, he stayed in our spare room for almost the entire summer break from school when we were seventeen and both got holiday jobs in my local Burger King.

But this story isn't going to descend into trite descriptions of "how we stayed good friends despite the difficulties imposed upon us" or some such crap: I don't go in for all the saccharine sweet heart-warming stuff. This is the story of how the two of us became a lot more than good friends when we were nineteen, and continue to be so.

I didn't know it back then - maybe Simon didn't himself - but Simon is gay. I'd noticed, as many other lads in our school were eager to point out, that he always seemed shy around girls; but lots of other guys showed exactly the same trait and it didn't necessarily make them all gay. Simon also - it was frequently mentioned - didn't like football or rugby; but neither does my older brother Tom and he definitely isn't gay.

Simon just seemed quiet. He helped design costumes for the school drama society. He read books about Morrissey. He got excited when he heard they were making a new 'Carry On' film. Other lads seemed to enjoy piecing stuff like that together to portray the guy as a 100%, definite, absolutely-certain screaming queen, but I didn't think any of it told you anything about his sexuality.

But, as it happened, perhaps it did because they turned out to be right.

Anyway, we went off to separate Universities but would keep meeting up fairly regularly during breaks and vacations. Usually he'd come down to mine and stay in our spare room, but if his mother and stepfather were away somewhere, I'd go up to Burnham to stay with him.

And it was up in Burnham that I started noticing things about Simon that I'd refused to let the Morrissey books and costume design tell me.

When I went up there, we had to share a bed because, after the divorce, his mum could only afford a two- bedroom house. That wasn't a problem; he had a fairly large bedroom with a double bed in it. We'd usually go out to a couple of pubs in the middle of Burnham and then pick up some cans and a takeaway on the way back to his place. Then we'd lie on his bed eating it and swigging down the cans, watching a movie on the television he had at the foot of it.

It was all pretty harmless stuff and for a while I noticed nothing. Like I said, Simon was a shy lad and it must have taken him ages to pluck up the nerve to make anything approaching a first move.

The first thing I think I noticed was how long it took him to put his underwear on in the morning after he'd taken a shower. Sometimes he'd try on two or three pairs in succession, muttering about each one being 'not quite right' and perhaps implicitly seeking my opinions on them. Since they all looked like bog-standard white boxer briefs to me, I didn't feel it necessary to venture an opinion.

Then he began spending longer and longer tucking himself into them. He'd pull them up one way and then another, and then take a couple of minutes to fondle with his package, adjusting it so that his cock was over the top of his balls, and then again so that it went off to one side, all the time glancing over at me to see if I was watching.

Once I joked, "Come on, Simon. Your knob's not that big, mate. It can't take you that long to pack it in..."

He looked up at me, hurt, and my smile quickly faded.

He snapped up his briefs and muttered, "I just like to get comfortable. No need to make a big thing about it, Ollie."

"Hey sorry. I was just joking, mate."

But he went off in a mood for an hour or so; silent and sullen.

After that there was this thing about morning woodies. At first it wasn't an issue - it's something all guys get - but it became a little too regular and he sustained them for far too long for me to be convinced that that's all they were.

The first time it happened, he got out of bed with his boxers bulging outwards in a thick, rigid, seven inch rod. I glanced over at it and then took a double take. It wasn't that I was surprised he had an erection: it was that he wasn't hiding it or attempting to adjust himself so that it was less obvious. He actually proudly walked around, flaunting it and almost certainly directing it towards me whenever he could.

I laughed, "Sweet dreams, huh?"

He smiled over at me and then looked down at himself like he was surprised to find that he had a hard-on. He laughed, "Oh yeah... not so small now, is it?"

I smiled at him and then got up to take a shower. I noticed he glanced at my crotch and that his face betrayed a little disappointment when the bulge in my briefs turned out not to be a similar state to his own.

In the shower I thought about what he'd done and decided to put it down to the fact I'd tactlessly said his cock wasn't very big a few weeks earlier when I'd made a joke about him tucking himself in. He was just trying to prove to me that it was actually quite impressive once it got going. I didn't understand why, exactly, he felt he had to prove that to me. Maybe I'd slighted his sense of manhood and he was trying to reassert himself; maybe it was a male virility thing, or something.

But the "morning woodies" continued thereafter. Whenever I stayed over at his place, he'd make a little display of showing it off when we awoke and sometimes when he stayed at mine he'd come into my bedroom in the morning making no attempt to conceal the fact that he was at full-mast.

Once, at his place, when he climbed over me on the bed to find his watch (though why he couldn't walk around the bed, I don't know) and his erection woke me up by almost poking me in the face, I called out angrily, "For fuck's sake, Simon. Most guys start with, 'Good morning'..."

He kept it right in front of me, straining inside the tight confines of his boxer briefs, and said, "You must get them too, Ollie. It's not a big deal... you don't have to hide it..."

I stared at it, throbbing gently in front of my face, and noticed a little damp patch at the tip of it.

I said, "I wouldn't hide it. I just wouldn't make a cabaret performance of it like you do..."

He grabbed his watch and returned to his own side of the bed, his face looking hurt again.

I smiled, trying to cheer the mood a little. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's just it was right in my face..."

He looked embarrassed but tried to shrug it off. "I was just getting my watch on the floor next to you. I can't help getting hard-ons in the morning."

I smiled more warmly. "Come on, Simon - it's no big deal. To be honest, I'm still at half-throttle myself."

He brightened up, and looked expectantly over at the duvet covering my crotch, as if hoping to see it bulging upwards. "Yeah?"

He seemed a little too eager. I was slightly thrown. "Er... yeah..."

Then he surprised me further by gently rubbing the mound in the front of his shorts. It seemed even larger than it had when it was in front of my face. The damp patch at the tip of it was spreading into a broad circle.

He said, "You know why I'm always stiff in the morning, don't you?"

I was even more thrown. I shook my head.

He smiled. "Usually, on a morning when I wake up, I... you know..."

I kept shaking my head.

He went on, his smile becoming coy and conspiratorial. "You know... sort myself out..."

"Oh right."

We sat in silence for a few seconds. He kept gently rubbing his now enormous-looking rod. I just stared at him.

Eventually, he asked, "Do you?"

"Er... no. I'm kind of a night time guy as far as that's concerned..."

Again, silence.

He looked a little desperate. After about ten seconds, he tried, "Well, do you fancy one now? I mean, since you're... er... at half-throttle, or whatever?"

I thought, "Oh Christ. He wants to have a wank with me..."