It’s almost exactly the same. I’d expected it to be a lot different, but it isn’t; even the bus stop is still in the same place, just across the little bridge a hundred yards this side of the first house in the village (Brimbleby – population 173).
I used to visit my grandparents here every weekend, me and my mother. We lived in the town of Crandley, three miles away over the flat Lincolnshire countryside, and when we were waiting for the bus back home on a cold winter night, there wasn’t a single artificial glow visible anywhere apart from the street light this end of the village (the only other one is by the church). I’m standing at the bus stop now, and looking around I reckon it’ll be just as dark here nowadays. I’d expected there’d be new estates and shops, but no, things are just as I remember them.
I was 10 years old then. The last bus back to Crandley left at 8:45pm, and as I stood there, wrapped up warm in my long brown winter coat, holding my mother’s hand in the darkness, I’d look out through the crystal-clear air across the frozen fields to the far horizon, my young eyes making out the deeper blacks of hedges, trees, and barns, and the distant haze in the sky from the lights of Lincoln, 20 miles away.
Above me the Milky Way stretched out spectacularly amid a sky full of more stars than you could shake a stick at. You don’t see it these days, with all the light pollution, and I realise as I stand here now that the last time I’d seen the Milky Way was then – all those years ago – on those beautiful dark nights waiting for the bus.
And it was so quiet: the silence was broken only by the forlorn moo of an insomniac cow somewhere across the fields; the gentle gurgling of Beech Brook (the little stream that runs under the bridge); and by the odd owl or fox.
But occasionally – when conditions were just right – an alien, eerie, musical susurration would slowly build up. And just when you realised it was there, it would be gone. When I’d first heard it I’d been frightened, but Mother had smiled and pointed to the telegraph poles that ran alongside the road. “It’s just the wind in the wires.” After that I was never afraid of it again.
That was a long time ago. Today I haven’t caught the bus, I’ve come in the car. I’m on a tour visiting places I remember from my distant youth, and this spot is one I’ve been looking forward to very much. It’s evening.
I follow the road with my eyes, over the little white-fenced bridge, up past the edge of what was then my grandparents’ small farm, to where it turns right at the corner by the vicarage and where the red phone box was. The house on the right just there used to have green-painted sash windows (they’re now those dreadful double-glazed white plastic things). That was where Terry lived.
Terry was older than me, and he had a small motorbike. His eyes were blue, he was very fit, and he had curly blond hair. We knocked around together – there weren’t many kids in Brimbleby to play with – and for some reason he’d taken a shine to me. I was in awe of him: he was fun, he was big and strong, and I thought he was very good-looking. He wore tight jeans all the time, but black leather jeans when he was going to ride the bike. You didn’t see many guys in leather jeans in those days, and I thought they were the coolest things ever. When he was in those and his leather biker jacket with the studded belt, and the boots, he looked rough, dangerous, and – although I don’t think I was even aware of the word at the time – sexy. And it seemed to me that he knew everything there was to know about the world. I used to look at him with wide, adoring eyes. As far as I know he never noticed – at least if he did, he never mentioned it. I have no idea why, but he was always kind to me. He doubtless had other friends, and to him I must have been just a little runt of a kid.
He gave me my first cigarette, took me for short rides on his bike when my mother was well out of sight, and we read magazines and listened to the latest pop music in his bedroom. I’d so wished I could have had a room like that: the walls were covered with posters, records were piled all over the floor and on every available surface, there was an actual guitar propped up in one corner, and his bed was in the shape of a sports car – with working headlights.
Terry gave me many things – one of them was my first full orgasm.
I’d just turned thirteen, and it was school summer break. Once I’d become a teenager I was allowed to take the bus to Brimbleby on my own, and as it was the holidays I used to go over there quite a bit. Terry was really the only friend I’d got.
I remember the date: August 8th – a month to the day after my thirteenth birthday. It was hot and sunny, and we’d been for a long spin through the countryside on the bike. By the time we got back it was early evening. He pulled up just before the village and asked me over his shoulder if I wanted a ciggie – his folks didn’t let him smoke in the house. I nodded and we got off the bike. We were almost directly opposite the bus stop where I used to wait with my mum. There was a gap in the plashed hedge, and we squeezed through into a wheat field. The crop was already golden – it would be harvested soon.
We walked along a few yards and lay down on the grass between the hedge and the start of the wheat – Terry was propped up against the rusting remains of an old plough, and there was a substantial log for me to lean against. The smell of the grass and the buzzing of the insects was idyllic. He offered me a cig and we lit up. I don’t remember what we talked about – probably the same trivia as always – but eventually we lapsed into silence and just let the late sunshine wash over us.
At one point I opened my eyes and saw him lying back, eyes closed beneath the fringe of curly blond hair, a slight smile on his face. One hand rested on his thigh, the fingers just below his studded belt and at the side of a bulge that had been made clearer by the position he was in.
He liked to keep those leather jeans very shiny – I suspect he spent a lot of time polishing them – and the way the sunlight was reflecting on that bulge absolutely fascinated me. Because of the way he was sitting, rather than the leather being stretched tightly over it and compressing everything inside, it allowed things to be more in their natural position and sort of conformed around them. And there was a smaller shiny bump there that could possibly have been the end of his cock. I hoped it was, anyway.
I stared, fascinated by the sight, and it did something to me. At the time I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I was intensely aware that I liked it very much.
I felt more drawn to Terry at that moment than I’d ever been before – in a way I’d never experienced – and it was incredibly exciting. I realised that I wanted to hold him, to run my fingers though his blond curls, to feel him, to kiss him all over – including his boots, his jacket, and those leather jeans. Lying there in the sunshine, his eyes closed, a smile on his lips, he was everything I had ever wanted to be. He was beautiful, sexy, strong.
My imagination started to work overtime: in my mind he was straddling me, holding me down. I had no idea why that thought came to me – that sort of thing had never occurred to me before – but I could almost feel his muscular arms pinning me to the ground, his leathers inches from my body as he smiled down at me, his face and his lips coming closer… closer…
And he was kissing me. Slowly, gently, lovingly, his soft, honey-blond hair brushing against me and his clear blue eyes gazing deeply into mine...
My arms were by my sides, and I hadn’t even realised that I’d got a hard-on – but before I knew what was happening I was cumming in my jeans. My eyes were fixed, wide open, staring at him lying there against the plough opposite me, as my body quietly convulsed on the grass. I’d never had an orgasm that intense before.
Of course, I’d had many orgasms before, playing with my cock when I was on my own – but until that one, they’d all been dry. I’d heard that when boys got older this creamy stuff would come out of their cocks. It all sounded a bit suspicious and slightly icky, but I’d never seen it and it had certainly never happened to me. But lying there in the sun, looking at Terry, it did. I felt a strange sensation at my crotch, as if I’d peed myself. As I’d started to cum, my hands had automatically gone there, but now, as the endorphin rush slowly died away and my eyes uncrossed, I parted my hands and looked down: there was a small, wet patch spreading.
I realised what it must be, and I grinned. I could make spunk now! I felt unreasonably proud, and my first thought was that I wanted to show Terry. But then sanity returned and I knew that I’d be terminally embarrassed if he saw it – especially as, at the time, he was the only possible thing I could have been looking at – so I was grateful that both hands were hiding it.
A minute later Terry yawned, and I slammed my eyes closed quickly. “Better be getting back,” he said. I heard his leathers creak as he stood up and stretched.
I opened my eyes again. Had his eyes been really closed? Had he seen me cumming? As he stood there looking down at me was his smile a bit different somehow? More knowing? Had he done the whole thing on purpose? These questions – and a whole lot more – were racing through my mind as I got to my feet too, carefully keeping the stain hidden until we’d got back onto the bike. I wanted to inspect my cock, see what my spunk looked like, but I couldn’t.
At his house he invited me up to his room to listen to some stuff but I smiled and shook my head, said I’d better be getting back home. We’d see each other again in the next few days. I made my way down the road and waited for the bus. As I stood there with my spunk drying on my jeans, I gazed at the gap in the hedge opposite, remembering how he’d looked lying there on the grass while I’d creamed myself watching him.
The gap has gone now; the hedge has undoubtedly been plashed many times since then, and the stalks are all lying neatly in the same direction. I cross the road and look over it. Barley in the field this year. My log’s gone, but the patch of grass and the old plough are still there, and I smile to myself. His back had touched that.
Terry and I had continued knocking around for a year, until his family moved down south somewhere. I lost track of him after that.
I re-cross the road, back to the bus stop, and sit on the grass. I wait for the sun to go down, lost in memory. The stars come out, one by one, and then I take a deep breath: I can see the Milky Way. I take out a cigarette, and I wonder where Terry is now; what he’s doing. Is he still as beautiful? I doubt it – he’s even older than I am. Before I light it I raise it in a toast.
“Terry. You’ll always be a beautiful, sexy boy to me. Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy.” I close my eyes. “And thank you. ”
I blow out smoke. It’s a warm summer night – just like that one was. I lost my parents many years ago, but in my mind my mother is standing there, holding the hand of a small boy, waiting for the quarter-to-nine bus.
Suddenly, I stop breathing, open my eyes, and listen. The sound begins slowly, builds up, then dies away again. I smile. It’s just the wind in the wires.