Cool Fools 1: Dunk Tank

Back in the truck, with the Iron Man box in his lap, Woody tried to sort out his thought. He was sitting next to what seemed like a cool, decent guy who had went through all this trouble to help him for whatever personal motive. Ethan was just too ‘nice’ a guy, and Woody wondered what he had done to Charlie that caused her to hate him so much. Woody found himself blurting out loud, “Did you cheat on her?”

“What? No!” Ethan said indignantly, “Do I look like a cheater?”
“I don’t know what a cheater looks like…”
“Well, they’re like black-spotted mountain lions,” said Ethan, “But seriously, I just didn’t think Charlie was the one for me, so I broke up with her.”

“Why’s she so bitter than?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because I was her…first.”
“So, are you gonna dump my sister after you become her…first?”
Ethan shook his head, “Laurie is the greatest girl I’ve ever dated. If we ever break up, it’s more likely that she dumped me.”
**** Lying in bed at night, Woody twisted and turned. The image of Ethan White was constantly in his mind. He kept picturing the reddened skinned under the toned torso, the tight arms flexing as he beat his chest like the King of the Jungle, his bulging legs swinging off the plank, dipping a little into the slimy pool below. Never in Woody Anderson’s life had a guy dominated his thoughts at night. He was rather sick to his stomach to know that he was thinking of such things. No, Woody liked girls, he was attracted to hot, big-breasted girls….there was nothing about guys that appealed to him…nothing. Absolutely not a thing!

In order to absolve himself, in order to herd away these disturbing thoughts, Woody turned on the light of the nightstand and rolled out of bed. He crawled to the closet and carefully opened the door. Burying his hand in the messy pile of junk, Woody groped until he felt the smoothness of the magazine cover and pulled out the periodical. He climbed back to bed, eagerly flicking through the pages filled with beautiful women. He hadn’t settled on a particular page yet but had already sprung a hard-on. Pulling down his plain blue boxer shorts, his mind lapsed back to the image of Ethan’s boxers with pictures of bouncing Tiggers all over them. There was nothing sexy about Tiggers on boxer shorts, so why was his penis throbbing madly under his fist? There was nothing sexy about the man who wore those boxers either, so why was his cock glistening with so much precum…even though the Playboy magazine was still lying on his chest. Quickly he propped up the magazine with his left hand, stroking his cock hard with his right. He told himself the reason he felt so good was because of the brunette girl named Eden on page 12, and not because of the wavy brown hair, deep blue eyes, thin upper lips, fuller bottom lips, and confident smirk of Ethan White. The reason his cock was straining, bigger and more alive than he had ever seen it was because of this brunette girl spreading eagle, showing her pussy…not because of Ethan White’s golden body of a Greek Adonis, nor his hard but smooth pectorals, nor the striations of his abs, not the way his arms twitch when he tried to block the oncoming footballs, not the way he plunged into the water and came out wet, dripping of slime, but still oh-so-GOD DAMN sexy. How the fuck can someone be so fucking sexy covered in fishbits?

Woody’s mind temporarily went blank as he came harder than any other time since he had discovered the virtues of masturbation. He always made sure to moan slowly and quietly so his family couldn’t her, but there was no way to control the utterance of pleasure rippling through him now. One hand vigorously pumping his rod, the other now jiggling his aching balls until creamy whiteness erupted from the head, shooting up so high and coming back down to spatter on his heaving, sweating chest. Quickly followed by a second burst, even harder than the first, spraying all over his stomach. His body shook and erupted a third time and a fourth time, each time he tried harder to keep his groans suppressed in his lungs, but each time they escaped his mouth loudly and satisfyingly…until the door swung open and light from the hallway poured in. Woody quickly covered himself with the blanket. 

“Woody, are you okay?” it was his sister’s voice. Of course, if anyone heard him moaning, it would be Laurie whose room separated his by a thin wall. 
“I’m fine. Go away!”

“Dude, it’s alright. We know guys your age masturbate. It’s not a secret,” she said, “But were you…um…were you calling out my boyfriend’s name?”

“What? No! I’m not fucking gay. And why the fuck would I like your stupid boyfriend? I mean…he’s fucking ugly and he’s got a ridiculous goatee.”

“Dude, chill out! My mistake,” said Laurie, “Just so you know, your magazine’s on the floor…Good night.”
When Woody heard the door close and the fading footsteps of his sister, he threw back the blankets and rolled out of bed again to pick up the periodical. Woody couldn’t believe he had thrown his favorite magazine on the floor; worse, he couldn’t believe he had gotten hard and masturbated and had came that much all by the mental image of one guy. 

The next day at school, Woody Anderson had made up that his mind that the queer attraction to Ethan White was just a fluke, some kind of gratitude for what he did earlier that afternoon, admiration that he had misinterpreted into something sexual. There was nothing wrong with a teenage kid having a male idol…even if that idol was his sister’s boyfriend. In any case, he had just better stay away from Ethan until he could separate the feeling of admiration and attraction. But that would be hard, considering he owed him $400 dollars and would have to pay him in weekly increments.

Woody saw his best friend Reed was leaning against a stretch of brick wall near the entrance of the middle school; his head was low and he was staring down at his feet. The more outgoing boy approached the shyer one and said, “Hey, what’s up? Why were you grounded yesterday?”

“I told my parents something I shouldn’t have…” sighed Reed.
“Wow, you talked back to them. That’s very unlike you.” said Woody, “But at least you stood up for yourself.”

“Yeah, sure…”
“Hey, wanna see what I got?” Woody asked excitedly, “Jimmy and Billy are gonna flip!” Swinging his book bag to the front and unzipping it, he pulled down the flap to reveal the two boxes with the Iron Man action figures.
Reed managed to raise an eyebrow and simply bobbed his head up and down, as though it could fall off his neck any minute.

“Wow, man. You ready need caffeine or something. You’re bumming me out.”
Just as Woody had predicted, the Welling twins were jumping up and down when he presented them the toys during lunch and sandwiching him in a hug. Jimmy and Billy began to sputter out their apologies, saying they knew always that Woody was a good friend even though he said inconsiderate things sometimes, and they promised to pay him back by the end of the school year. Woody thought it was pretty worth it to have Jimmy and Billy as friends again, because at the moment, Reed wasn’t much fun to hang out with. He was constantly moping around, almost bringing down the atmosphere, and became more like a statue following the other three around. Of course Woody and the twins would ask Reed what was bothering him, but the sad kid never replied. So eventually they stopped asking.

Woody had to walk a lot of dogs at least three times a week in order to pay back Ethan in four weeks. The boy was sure the reason Ethan was always in his mind was because he was in his debt. He knew that the sooner he paid his debt, the sooner Ethan would clear from his mind. But when all the $400 bucks were paid, Woody still found himself thinking about Ethan at night, still finding himself getting hard, still jacking off when he couldn’t hold it in any longer. God, he only wished he knew if other straight guys ever went through this phase where they questioned their feelings. Cause this was all it was…just a phase.

And then one day, Reed came over to Woody’s house. Reed hadn’t come over ever since he became all mopey, and Woody was very glad that his friend was beginning to revive again. It had been a long time since they played basketball and Woody was excited to get to play with his best friend. But when Reed followed Woody into his room, the quiet boy gently closed the door. The shorter brown haired boy opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His face reddened considerably as tears began to fill his round eyes. Woody went up to hug his best friend, completely baffled as to why he was crying.

“My parents are sending me to a different school!” Reed finally said.
“You’re kidding? Why?”
“Cause they want me to change…”
“Change what? What school are you going to?”
“It’s not really a school. It’s a troubled youth center…”

“What? You’re not troubled? You’ve been sad lately, but you’re not like severely depressed, are you?”

Reed shook his head.
“Then tell me what’s the problem…” Before Woody had realized it, Reed had sandwiched his best friend’s face between two hands and had pressed his closed lips firmly onto Woody’s open mouth. The blonde hair boy, in shock of it all, pushed his best friend aside, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m gay!” Reed said finally.
“What? No, you’re not. You like girls. We hit on girls all the time together…”

“Yeah, but I never do it alone. I don’t want to…I like guys…” Reed said, “I’m attracted to guys…like you. I really like you, Woody.”
A lightbulb flashed in Woody’s mind that could maybe explain all of this, “Hey, do you think there’s like a gay virus going around?”
“What?”

“Look, dude. Lately I’ve been having dirty thoughts about…” he lowered his voice considerably to say the name, “…Ethan, my sister’s boyfriend. I know I definitely like girls, but maybe this virus is affecting my head and yours.”
“A virus? That’s just stupid…” 

Suddenly the door burst open and Billy came running into the room shouting, “Oh, my god! J-Jimmy’s gay! Jimmy’s gay! I j-just saw him staring at Ethan’s crotch.”
Seconds later Jimmy huffed and puffed as he came into the room, “No, I’m not, you stupid moron. Don’t believe him.”

“Yeah, you are. You f-fag! He was all ch-drooling and stuff, staring at the guy’s nads, trying to hide his d-delighted face behind a comic-book so I wouldn’t notice…” Billy said.

“What about you, huh?” Jimmy retorted, “You saw our neighbor Corey Somers mow the lawn shirtless last week and you can’t stop talking about him…”
“He just has a nice b-body that I wanna have…I-I mean, work out to get…” Billy explained, blushing nonetheless.
“Whatever, dude. You just like his nipple ring!”

“See I told you Reed,” Woody said triumphantly, “There’s a gay virus going around. We’re all infected.”
“You two did something gay?” asked Jimmy.
Woody nodded and explained his thoughts of Ethan that had been plaguing him for a month since they went find the Iron Man action figure, and also mentioned that Reed had just kissed him moments before Billy ran into the room. Reed proceeded to tell his friends that his parents were making him move to a center to degayify him.

“That’s t-terrible!” said Billy, “The g-gay virus must be true, then. We’ll just have to wait to let it pass…like a c-cold. You just have to tell your parents to let you r-rest or something and it’ll g-go away. We’ll help you. You can’t l-leave us. We’re the F-Freakin’ Four, man. You’re parents can’t split up the Freakin’ Four.”

And thankfully, Reed’s parents didn’t. Whether it was because of Jimmy, Billy, and Woody’s explanation of the gay virus, or they were just happy that Reed had close friends who were willing to fight for him, they had let Reed stay on the condition that it passes by the end of the year. And so the group was back to normal, Jimmy and Billy often invited Woody and Reed to their house to play video games. Woody had forgiven Reed for kissing him, and Reed, now very happy to know it was just a virus that was creating his feeling for his best friend, often went with his best friend to the park to play basketball or tennis or baseball. All four were actively trying to degay themselves by secretly buying straight porno magazines and video from Corey Somers, their distributor, and checking out girls at school and asking them out.

Of course Woody blessed with his good-looks never had a problem with asking out a girl. Jimmy, on the other hand, took four tries before a girl agreed to go to the movies with him, and Billy talked to five girls before one finally said yes. Reed himself also asked out a girl, without Woody’s help, and she had said yes. So by Thanksgiving, it seemed as if everyone’s gay virus had passed through their system.

But by the end of the year, Woody still found himself thinking about Ethan occasionally. Whenever he came over for dinner, Woody would just quickly clear up his dish and ask to go to his room. With a pretty rosy-cheeked girlfriend Jessica Little, Woody had managed to think about her most nights, but some night for unexplained reasons, the same old image of Ethan sitting on the plank wearing a Tiggers boxer short invaded his mind. Woody wondered if his three friends were having as much trouble getting rid of the gay virus as him. Jimmy and Billy have became considerably more confident to ask out girls and seemed straighter than ever. And Reed’s parents no longer threatened to take him to the youth center so he must be cured already. So why hadn’t Woody been cured yet?