At around seven years old, as I recall, I started engaging in a great American boyhood rite of passage.

When a boy reaches a certain age - or, more accurately, a certain level of development - he discovers he can do something that brings him intense pleasure. Soon after realizing he can do it (often within days), he gets the urge to engage in it all the time. Some boys figure it out on their own; other boys might not realize how super it is, until a friend or friends show them. I was wild about it. So were my friends. In fact, I think every boy I knew liked doing it.

In any circle of friends, one or two boys always seem to be pioneers - they discover the pleasure first, and introduce it to the rest. The others aren't sure what to do at first, but it's a simple matter to pick up the basics - almost a matter of following one's instincts. Some boys are raised in households where this kind of activity is discouraged, sad to say, or even forbidden. There was usually some way to let those boys in on the fun, but it had to be done carefully so their parents wouldn't find out.

Among my friends, I was one of the pioneers. I did it constantly from around age 7 onward. I was one of the more aggressive boys in pushing other kids to do it with me, but there were many times when another boy approached me. In fact, sometimes we'd make plans a week or more ahead of time to do it with each other. (You could, and usually did, do it with just one friend, but with two or three it was even more fun.) It was really cool when you could take turns doing it with each other - first, your friend(s) would let you do it with them, and then you'd let them do it with you.

Many times, we'd stay up half the night doing it. We never got tired of doing it, although sometimes it was so exciting and intense that we were totally wiped out the next day, and slept through most of the daylight hours. And there was always a mess to clean up, afterwards - and you didn't want your mom to find the mess, or you'd get in big trouble.

I refer, of course, to sleeping over at friends' houses. (What kind of naughty thoughts were you thinking?)

Sleepovers, also known as "spending the night", were a fixture of my youth. I could not begin to count how many sleepovers I participated in. It seems as though I was sleeping at some kid's house, or some kid was sleeping at mine, every single weekend night of the school year, and seven nights a week in summer. That's not possible, of course. But, as I point out regularly in these memoirs, it's the intense moments that stick with us for 30 or 40 years or more; and many sleepovers were unquestionably peak experiences.

I don't think I'll try to describe a "typical" sleepover, because I don't know that any such animal exists. They're as varied as the ages of the kids involved, their spirits, their moods, the setting, and a host of random influences. A sleepover is a work of performance art, with two or three or four signatures.

This particular memory is about a particular sleepover with a particular good friend, Ricky, when I was a very particular age: eight years old.

Ricky lived across and three houses up the street from me, on the corner. I can't remember how I got to know him; as far back as I remember, he was just always there. Ricky was six months older than me - his birthday was in February, mine August. I didn't go to school with him until 4th grade, when they built the new wing on the elementary school right behind our house and I transferred in. But I got to know him long before that, as I did all of the kids near my age in our neighborhood. His family was not wealthy. Our area ranged from solid middle-class to factory-worker families, and Ricky's dad was a welder, which I'd now estimate probably put them a little below the median income in our neighborhood. It was irrelevant then, and still is today, how much money any of my friends' families made. The relevance to this story is that they had a small house - and that fact contributed to what happened between us, as you'll see.

Ricky's house had a big side yard, so when we neighborhood kids got together to play any game that required alot of space, it was not uncommonly at his house. His house was on the corner where our street crossed a busier street. That was an interesting situation, in fact, because even though the cross street had more traffic, they had to stop at the intersection while our street had the right-of-way. Ricky and I would be playing catch or soccer or whatever in the side yard facing the busy road, and all the time, we'd see near-collisions as cars would run the stop signs or try to beat an oncoming vehicle. I remember afternoons or evenings when we'd sit on his side porch playing cards and making bets on how long it would be before you'd hear the tires screech and the horns blaring over at the corner. Despite that, I only remember one person who ever had a serious accident at that intersection. That happened to be my uncle, who was trying to cut across in front of an oncoming car one fateful morning, and got the back end of his El Camino smashed into a postmodernist sculpture for his trouble.

After 6th grade, Ricky and I went to different schools and didn't hang out as much during the school year. But come summertime, the gang always regrouped, at least occasionally, and we were still part of it. Around 9th grade or so, we spent alot of time just hanging out with other kids on Ricky's side-yard lawn sloping down to the cross street, and shooting the breeze on warm evenings.

Here's a funny story about us kids sitting on that lawn: Years later, at a party in college, I met a guy a few years older than me who was from a different neighborhood in my city. In the course of conversation we talked about what parts of town we lived in, but nothing specific about streets and so forth. After awhile he mentioned that as part of his delivery job, he used to drive our cross street regularly during the evening. And, he said, "it's funny - I would drive by this one intersection, and right next to it was this big yard, and there were always around a dozen kids hanging out, just sitting on the lawn talking. My coworker and I called them 'The Boys Club', and I always wanted to pull off the road and go up there and join them - it looked so cool. They looked so cool."

It takes alot to surprise me, but I think my mouth was hanging open by that point. I said, "Was that the intersection with [my old street], by any chance?" He said, "Yeah! How did you know?" And I said, "Because I was one of those kids you saw hanging out." Now his jaw dropped. He said, "Oh, man, that is so utterly cool!! I can't believe I'm talking to somebody who was there! Y'all looked like you had it so perfect. I envied you so much. Tell me all about it..." I ended up telling a bunch of people at that party about our neighborhood gang. Danny, the Storyteller, strikes again.

Funny story. But this guy's reaction made me realize something profound. We were just living our ordinary lives there. And yet to others, it looked idyllic - the very flower of teenage life and society. I wonder how many times I've driven past a little scene, quickly glimpsed, and said to myself, "If only I was there..." Was it really as perfect as it seemed? My answer may seem odd: Yes, oftentimes it is that perfect - but the participants don't realize it. Sometimes that quick glimpse is the reality, and the locals are too immersed in it to see. I firmly believe we create our own realities. If it looks like Nirvana, it probably is.

Well, back to Ricky and the sleepover: Like almost all my friends, Ricky and I did the sleepover thing on a back-and-forth basis. Ricky shared a bedroom with his 14 y/o brother Ronnie - a small bedroom, with twin beds and not much floor space. Ricky's bro fortunately wasn't there much, but unfortunately could be a jerk when he was at home. We had little choice except to share the room with him, though. Sleeping in Ricky's living room, on the couch or the floor, was a no-go. Ricky's dad worked second shift and came home around midnight, and if we were downstairs, he'd yell, "You pissants get your butts in bed!" and chase us out, so he could drink his Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and watch roller derby on TV or something. And there wasn't anywhere else in his house we could sleep. This meant that sleepovers at Ricky's required us sleeping in the same single bed together. I think that fact had a lot to do with how we wound up doing what we did, and why it was a thrill.

The specific sleepover in question took place in the fall of my 3rd-grade year. I remember that, because it was one of the two falls I went out for football (the other being 7th grade.) I was a mediocre football player. I had pretty good ball-handling skills and great reflexes, but I had one major weakness: I was one of the smallest kids for my age in the league. I think I weighed less than 55 pounds, then. American tackle football is best avoided by the small in stature. Anyway, I know this sleepover was during the season, because I came from practice straight to Ricky's house that day.

Sleepovers with Ricky, whether at his house or mine, were almost always on Friday nights if it was during school. Sleepovers in general could take place either Friday or Saturday night during the school year, but I rarely took the Saturday option with Ricky. The reason? His family were strict Southern Baptists. Every week, come hell or high water, they were at Sunday morning service, and Wednesday evening prayer meeting too. Sleeping over at Ricky's house on a Saturday meant going with them the next morning. My family were Southern Baptists too, but we went maybe once a month, and to a different church. Ours was one of the big congregations, near the edge of downtown, with a college-educated pastor and relatively "liberal" (for Southern Baptists) theology. Ricky's church was in the neighborhood. It was smaller, newer, and decidedly more fundamentalist. I don't know what the preacher's background or training was, but he used phrases like "you ain't never" and "it don't matter", and yelled alot during the sermons, every time I went.

At any rate, Saturday-night sleepovers at Ricky's were avoided, by mutual agreement - Ricky understood perfectly why I didn't care to indulge. He didn't like it much himself. By the same token, I suppose I don't have to tell you which night Ricky always preferred to sleep over at our house :).

This particular time, Ricky and I had planned the sleepover for 3-4 days, since early that week. It wasn't for any special occasion, just another in the series. That morning, I'd packed my stuff in a gym bag, so I could go straight from school to football, and then from football straight to Ricky's house. All of that was typical. By around age 8, I had developed alot of self-sufficiency and alot of plan-ahead instincts. Partly that was my nature, and partly it was because I already realized my mom couldn't be counted on to come through; even with all good intentions (and she did have good intentions most of the time), she was handicapped by her weaknesses, like alcohol.

We had football practice for two hours after school, until 4:30. This was city rec-league football - the equivalent to what's now called "rocket football" - and for 3rd-graders it emphasized learning the basics of the game as much as actual practice or games. I don't recall what we did specifically that day, but it was enough to get us good and sweaty - not that it took alot to get us that way. At 4:30 time was called. On our way off the field, I fell in with some friends, Jeff and Paul and a few others.

Jeff and Paul were doing a sleepover at Paul's that night, and they tried to recruit me to join them, but I explained that I was committed. I added, "Maybe Ricky and I can sneak out and meet y'all tonight." They said, "Yeah! Do it!" And we made tentative plans to meet at Paul's Treehouse. As it happened, Ricky and I never made it. First, we didn't dare sneak out before his dad came home (and his dad was very late, as it turned out); and second, we'd found other things to do, just the two of us. I guess it sounds like we stood up Paul and Jeff, but in fact that was pretty common. We were always making plans like that, and it was always well-understood that the plans were tentative and conditional. Nobody knew if a parent would catch us and thwart our schemes, or if we'd get involved in something else, or if we'd just fall asleep. It did make for an interesting explanation a few days later when I saw Paul again... that's for a later part of the story.

After a little socializing, I got on my bike and headed to Ricky's house. It was around 5 o'clock, and traffic was heavy - I had to take that busy cross street to get there. Incidentally, I was not the world's most cautious bike rider at that point in my life, as you could probably guess. I did have the sense to ride on the sidewalk, at least - but I ran stop signs with no more than a cursory look (if that) and was doing wheelies and stuff, all the time. I had big fantasies about being a BMX racer, back then. I would've dearly loved to try it, but my family didn't have the money. I only had a few bike accidents as a kid, and they were minor. I think there must be some truth in guardian angels. Maybe Ricky's preacher put in a good word for me.

At any rate, I made it to Ricky's house without incident. It was still a couple of hours before dinnertime - Ricky's family ate around 7:00. So we hung out and basically did nothing, and that was just fine. I think we played flag football - I can't remember now for sure if it was that Friday or a different Friday post-football sleepover when we did that. It involved something outdoors, anyway, because the weather was gorgeous - Indian summer, Southern-style, meaning temps probably in the mid-80s (that's around 30 degrees for you Celsius folks). Very typical late-October weather down South. One of my perpetual troubles with the chronology in these memoirs, is that my weather-memories often give no clue to time of year. The South has short winters, long summers, and we kids were outdoors for most of the year.

Eventually, dinnertime came. I vividly remember dinner at Ricky's, because more than 80 percent of the time it was one of two things: veal cutlets or pork chops. I am not complaining. I normally don't care much for either of those dishes, but Ricky's mom was a damn good cook, and I'm sure even hash would've turned out okay at their house. That particular evening it was veal. The meal was memorable for one other thing: Ronnie dropped some peas into his little sister's glass of milk when she wasn't looking. When she drained her glass and saw them, she got so grossed-out that she almost barfed on the spot. Picture this little 6 y/o girl, a look of horror crossing her face when she sees what's in the bottom of her glass, and then looking very, very green around the gills. Ricky and I was straight across the table from her; and I, for one, was on full alert, ready to hit the floor if she started projectile-vomiting. (At around 10 or 11 y/o, I coined a wonderfully-disgusting term for that phenomenon, which all my friends picked up and used with huge merriment: "bazooka-barfing"). Fortunately, she didn't get to the point of no return, or maybe I should call it "the point of everything-return".

Ricky's after-dinner chores included, as they often did, washing the dishes; I pitched in alongside him. That duty out of the way, we had several choices. There was always TV, of course; but there was some show Ronnie wanted to watch and we weren't interested. It was still plenty light enough outside for catch or soccer, but neither of us was in the mood for some reason. We settled on playing gin rummy out on the side porch, and just yakking. Between Ricky and me, I was always the talkative one. (In any pair of kids, I was nearly always the talkative one.) After an hour or so, Ricky's mom, who was a genuinely-nice lady, came out and offered to teach us three-handed bridge. We agreed quickly - for me, any new card game was cool. She sat down and went over the basics, then led us through several hands. I got the fundamentals fairly soon, but Ricky never quite caught on. His mom valiantly kept at it for about half an hour more, but it just didn't take. (Ricky was a great friend and a really good kid and I loved him, but quick-wittedness wasn't his strongest suit).

By now it was getting toward twilight. Ricky's mom suggested a walk down to the Dairy Queen, and we all enthusiastically agreed - all but older bro Ronnie, who was still wrapped up in the TV. So the other four of us walked down and had ourselves some cones or sundaes. Ricky's little sis Laura got a vanilla cone, and I remember teasing her about shoving some peas into the middle of the ice cream. She said, "Danny, you're being gross!!" I thought she was kidding, but I wasn't sure, so I laid off. Besides, after a few moments' thought, I realized I didn't know what might trigger Laura's barf-threshold.

Back to the house, under the streetlights - full dark by now. Being boys, Ricky and I were hungry again. So his mom made some popcorn, and we sat in the living room and played gin rummy some more, with Ricky's older bro yelling "Get him, get him!" at the cops on TV, and his younger sister playing with her Barbie. (That's an interesting contrast, now that I think about it.) Within 10 minutes, Laura had crashed and fallen asleep on the rug, and her mom took her up to bed.

Somewhere not too much later, Ronnie shut off the TV and went up to bed himself. He had to get up early for some reason - I can't recall now if it was his paper route or something sports-related. Ronnie had a newspaper route for part of the time Ricky and I hung out together, but I'm not sure if it was that year or later. At any rate, he headed up. Ricky's mom was on the phone in the kitchen, immersed in some marathon conversation with a relative, so that left Ricky and me in the living room. I had forgotten to mention Paul and Jeff's plan earlier. Now that we were alone, I said, "Hey, wanna sneak out later? Jeff's sleeping over at Paul's, and they said we should come over." Ricky said, "Okay... but we have to watch out for my dad - he might be up late." I'd momentarily forgotten that Ricky's dad was a factor. We decided to play it by ear. I recall hoping Ricky's dad would show up soon and go straight to bed, as he did occasionally; if that happened, we could be sneaking out by shortly after midnight, or at the very least slipping downstairs to watch Shock Theater on TV (the local horror-flick show on Friday and Saturday nights).

(Incidentally, an older teenager in our neighborhood had a part-time job doing graphics for the TV station that ran Shock Theater, and one of my peak experiences a few years later was when he agreed to get the autograph of Shock Theater's host for me. The host - whose name I have totally blanked out on for some reason - was a gigantic, sinister-looking bald guy, who looked something like Jesse Ventura. This guy tried to scare the viewers at the beginning of every show and during commercial breaks, and I remember him succeeding a few times in my case.)

After a while, Ricky's mom finished her phone call, came in the living room and shooed us upstairs to bed ourselves. It was after 11 o'clock by now, and we were a little sleepy, but we protested anyway, naturally. Naturally, it did no good. We went on up and brushed our teeth, and then changed clothes in the bathroom so as not to wake up Ronnie. Ricky always slept in pajamas, but I had started wearing just my underwear to bed by that time, so all I had to do was strip. I remember Ricky putting his PJs on over his white briefs. At this point in the evening, nothing erotic had entered my conscious awareness. I'd seen Ricky in his underwear lots of times, and even naked - we'd taken showers and baths together. So seeing him strip didn't strike me as anything sexual at the time.

The routine was familiar on these sleepovers. Ricky had twin beds in his and Ronnie's room, and with Ronnie in one bed and limited floor space, we were obliged to sleep together in the other twin bed. We went down the hall, opened the door quietly, went in (giggling in reaction to the need to be quiet), and pulled the door closed behind us. Even with the window fan running, it was hot as an oven in there (not unusual). Ronnie was asleep flat on his back with all the sheets kicked down around his ankles. He was sleeping in a T-shirt and (I presume) his underwear (the T-shirt went down to his thighs.) His bed was closest to the window, and I have a vivid recollection of the fan blowing across him and making the T-shirt ripple and blowing his hair a little.

Sleeping without covers seemed like a good idea to me, and evidently to Ricky too. We got in his bed, facing each other, and just lay there for a while whispering and giggling over something unmemorable like knock-knock jokes or the like. After a while we heard the sounds of his mom getting ready for bed, but soon that ceased and the house grew silent.

As always on sleepovers, we weren't sleepy. It was inevitable that we'd get involved in something. But it wasn't inevitable that we got involved in what we did. That was by choice.

I should pause here for some background, in case anyone's forgotten or in case you're reading this story out of sequence. I was, of course, already aware of sex. I didn't know details, and didn't have alot of factual information at all by that point - just the bare basics, which I'd picked up (in typically garbled fashion) from friends. But one thing I knew about very well - although I didn't know what to call it yet - was jacking off and reaching orgasm. I'd been doing that for about a year, maybe longer - I'm hazy on the first time I discovered how to make it happen. At that time I thought of it something like this: "You rub your weenie till it gets hard, or after it's already hard; and the little tickle happens; and you keep rubbing, until all of a sudden the little tickle turns into a great big tickle; and it makes you want to wiggle and shake and go 'uhh, uhh'; and it's super-fantastic." I even had come up with a rudimentary j/o technique, which was holding my hard-on with my thumb on top and two fingers underneath (no more than two could fit), and pulling the skin back and forth. I had a vague sense that if I could do it, other boys could do it too; but at the time it didn't seem pressing to do it together. I'd had my share of show-you-show-me games, and often we'd get stiff, but it never went further than touching each other with our fingers, before that night. If for no other reason, we usually didn't have enough privacy to experiment further (or thought we didn't.)

That night, sleeping over with Ricky, things were different. At some point, we got to talking about girls. I had a 3rd-grader's-crush on a girl at school, Mary Ann. Ricky had a crush on some girl at his school. We were talking about them - not anything sexual, strictly speaking; it was about kissing. Neither of us had ever kissed a girl at that point - I know I hadn't and I doubt Ricky had, although of course we lied and said we'd done it lots of times. After about five minutes of talking about our alleged girlfriends, there was a lag in the conversation. And in the lag, I became aware of something. My dick had gotten stiff.

It may sound odd, but I hadn't noticed that fact until this point. Erections are attention-focusing in post-adolescent and adult male awareness - so much so, that getting one and not realizing it right away, may sound impossible. At age 8, it's not that way, not always. Prepubescent sexuality is different in so many ways. Some things I really miss about those days, like being multi-orgasmic...

Well, at any rate, I was now aware of my state. And my erection was stuck in the down position, pushing against my briefs - not uncomfortably, but not in a natural-feeling position either. Still lying on my side facing Ricky, I reached down to adjust it. No need for me to look down, of course - I knew what to do - so I just kept my eyes on him, by default. But he looked down to see what I was doing, and he watched as I put my hand inside my briefs and pulled it into the upward position.

Ricky and I had never played show-you-show-me before. It just hadn't come up in the spontaneous order of things in our lives. But I was never averse to that game, ever, and I was always willing to try it with some kid I hadn't done it with before. It was always a matter of seizing the moment; and back then, seizing moments was how I lived 90 percent of my life, it seemed. So now was an opening, with Ricky. I don't remember thinking consciously, "I'm gonna take this opportunity." It just happened.

I whispered, "My weenie got stiff... did yours?" He said, "Uh-huh." We both giggled. And I said - no further preliminary needed, or expected: "Want to see mine?" I didn't wait for him to answer. I reached down with my left hand (I was lying on my right side), and pulled my underwear down, lifting my hip off the mattress slightly to let them slide down. It was necessary to take my eyes off Ricky to do that, so I lost sight of his expression for a moment. But when I had gotten my briefs down to mid-thigh, I looked back. He was staring at my stiffie.

I said, "See? It got all stiff 'cuz we were talking about girls." I rolled partly over onto my back, propping on my left elbow, to bring it more into the faint light. Ricky said, "Yeah... mine too." I said, "Well, can I see yours, too?" He hesitated for a split-second. I was thinking to myself, "Come on Ricky, don't be a pussy - this is fun." But I didn't have to say anything. After that split-second hesitation, he rolled over all the way onto his back, lifted his butt off the bed, then reached down and pulled his pajama pants and his briefs down, all in one motion. Then he turned back toward me. We were facing each other now, with our faces and our weenies a couple of inches apart.

His dick was fully erect, like mine. It was decidedly bigger in both length and thickness. His balls were bigger, too. Ricky wasn't the best-endowed little boy I ever experimented (or went further) with (that would be Marcus, who was part of my first circle-jerk experience at 11-12 y/o), but he was in the top quarter among my prepubescent friends back then. I'd never paid attention to his size or appearance when I'd seen him naked or in his briefs before that night - but then, those were pre-sexual circumstances. At that moment, it was exciting to see his erection, as it was with any boy, then. And seeing that he was so big added an extra little zing. I wanted to touch it.

We were, naturally, both giggling like crazy, and doing our best to stifle them with our hands or arms or the pillow. There was Ronnie, sleeping only six feet away behind Ricky's back. I didn't particularly care if he saw our game - it wasn't anything to be ashamed of, in my mind - but I know I didn't want to wake him up and have him get mad at us.

A couple of seconds later, after all the giggles subsided a bit, I whispered, "Hey! Yours is big!" He looked down at his, then mine, and said, "Yeah, looks like it." I was going on pure impulse now, still seizing moments, pushing to the next step, as I nearly always did sexually, from the very beginning. I said, "It feels good when you touch it just right. There's a spot that feels really good on the bottom when you touch it." I didn't wait for an answer. I reached down and put my fingers on my own cock in the manner I described earlier. I whispered "Your fingers go there, right underneath where the big part on the end is... want me to show you?" Ricky was grinning, still verging on the giggles - but he was looking closely at what I was showing him. I could tell it was okay.

I didn't wait. I reached over with my other hand and grasped his boner between my thumb and two fingers. It was the reverse of how I'd held my own weenie, since he was mostly facing me, so I had to put my thumb on the underneath side. That didn't matter, of course. As soon as I touched him, he quit his stifled giggling... and let out a long, quiet sigh, and closed his eyes. I knew what that meant. I began rubbing his weenie up and down, just as I had done my own for over a year now. After a second, I realized that, because his dick was so much bigger, I didn't have to use just two fingers - I could fit all four on his erection. So I did that. I had all five fingertips on him now. He didn't open his eyes - but he gave a small jerk with his pelvis. I knew what that meant, too.

It didn't seem like any kind of milestone, then. Just another small step in experimenting. But it was exciting. This was a first for me. I knew I liked doing it.

I kept stroking him for a few more seconds. Neither of us was giggling now. We were into what was happening. I stopped masturbating him after a few seconds and let go. He was still just lying there on his elbow with his eyes still closed. And I wanted him to reciprocate. I took his free hand and tugged on it. As soon as I did, he opened his eyes, and whispered, "Why did you stop?" I said, "You have to do it to me, too... come on... let's do it." He was looking at me, still uncomprehending. I tugged on his hand again. I wasn't quite bold enough at that instant to pull his hand all the way over and put it on my cock, but I think I would've done it within a few seconds. I didn't have to. He was willing. As soon as I tugged the second time, he reached over and took my weenie in his fingers the same way I had done with his. Amusingly in hindsight, his first grasp was the reverse of mine - he tried to get all four fingers along the top of my dick. But I was too small, and he ended up with two hanging over the end in space.

That was inconsequential, because the touch of his thumb on the underneath side shot a bolt of electricity through me. I wanted him to stroke it as I had done to him. I crossed my arm over his and got his erection again and began rubbing it, whispering, "Do what I'm doing." Immediately he imitated me. By sheer luck we were positioned so I was jerking him off left-handed (my preference) and he was doing me with his right (his preference, as I found out later).

It was exciting as hell to me. I was caught up in a whirlwind. Thirty seconds earlier we were just two friends, giggling over some girls we knew at school. Now, suddenly, we were doing... something. I didn't know what to call it, and didn't care. All I knew was that I didn't want it to stop.

But... Ricky got cold feet. We were lying there, jerking each other's little prepubescent cocks vigorously, and we were both enjoying it and both getting more and more excited. I was starting to breathe harder. I had retreated into my own pleasure zone, so I don't know if Ricky was breathing harder too, but his eyes were closed again. His weenie was hot and throbbing in my fingers. I wasn't close to orgasm yet, and I have no idea if Ricky was, but there's no question that we both would've come before long if we'd kept going.

We didn't. Ricky stopped masturbating me, abruptly. Then he took his hand off me, and at the same time turned over mostly on his stomach, causing my hand to slip off his dick. I felt a great big void open within me, immediately, where the ecstacy had been a moment earlier. I whispered, "Hey! Why did you stop?" He whispered back, "Awww... I don't want to do it any more... right now."

I was really disappointed for an instant when he said "I don't want to do it any more" - but then, after that pause, he added "...right now." As quickly as my spirits dropped, they rose again. I thought, "He isn't stopping for good! - just for a rest, or something." I whispered back, "Let's do it some more when you're ready - okay?" Ricky whispered, "Okay - just not now." I asked, "Did you like it?" No hesitation: "Yeah!"

Maybe it all happened too fast for him. Some people surf better when they catch a wave and ride it all the way in, no planning or forethought. Other people surf better by paddling out, studying the waves, picking the right one, and climbing up for the ride. I'm very much the first type of surfer, in the ocean and in life. Newness and suddenness are a thrill, for me. But I know those waves come awfully fast and overwhelmingly for others. There's absolutely no shame in being slow to grasp a new experience. Sometimes I regret grabbing the first wave. Sometimes the later waves are better; and sometimes, if you aren't prepared, you wipe out and get a mouthful of sand.

I didn't want to argue or press the issue. For one thing, the mood was different now; for another, Ricky was my friend and I didn't want to push him into anything he didn't want. It was like soccer - don't make a kid play a position he's not comfortable in. And for another thing... we were 8 years old, and when you're 8, an experience that ends prematurely is rarely a tragedy, because there's always a new experience and new fun waiting next in line. I was still a little disappointed, and my throbbing erection reminded me that we'd left something unfinished. But hey! - the sleepover was still happening, and that was still the coolest thing we were doing. As I have said many times in these memoirs: friendship is more important than sex, any day.

After a few seconds, I became aware of something. I whispered to Ricky, "Man, I'm thirsty!... I'm gonna get a drink." Ricky said, "Okay... me, too." We rolled over on our backs, and I pulled up my underwear and he pulled up his underwear and PJ pants, and we got up. In the process of getting up, Ricky accidentally bumped Ronnie's bed. Ronnie, who this whole time had been making that almost-snoring-but-not-quite noise, stopped. Ricky looked and I looked at each other - our expressions were a mixture of panic and approaching giggle-fit. After a second, Ronnie let out a long breath, then started almost-snoring again.

For some reason, that sent us over the edge. We threw up our arms across our mouths to stifle the giggles, but it didn't help. So we beat a hasty exit to the door, opened it as quietly as we could, and raced down the hall to the bathroom. The door was barely shut before we both just collapsed in hysterics. I grabbed a towel off the rack and bent over double, laughing my butt off into the cloth and hoping no one could hear us. Ricky had his face buried in the deep-pile bath rug. It was several minutes before we got a grip.

I'm sure in retrospect some of this giggling was released tension from our sex-play. It was a peak experience, for sure.

Finally, we recovered - whispering back and forth, stuff like "Oh man, that was so funny!", while wiping our eyes. We stood up, wobbly from our laughter and the release. I went over to the toilet and took a piss while Ricky got a drink of water, then we reversed. My dick had gone fully soft by now, but I remember the tingle I got when I pulled my underwear down and grabbed it to pee. It was the last lingering afterglow.

We tiptoed back to Ricky's bed, got in, in the same positions we'd had before, and basically picked up where we'd left off before things got sexual. I remember the first thing I asked: "Where's your dad, anyways? If he'd come home and get his butt in bed, we could do something." Ricky whispered, "Friday nights he comes home late sometimes. He stops at [a local bar] for a few beers first." I said, "Shoot... I guess we can't meet Paul and them after all, if it don't happen soon." Ricky just nodded. We both knew the score.

We got to talking again about different random boy-subjects. At some point, not long after, I felt sleep creeping up on me, and not long after that, I slipped away into dreamland. I wasn't aware of any "okay, I'm going to sleep" moment. It just happened. Like everything.

I guess Ricky went to sleep when I did, and I guess we slept soundly, because we never heard his dad come in. Nor did we wake up in the morning when Ronnie got up and got dressed and left. The next thing I remember is the sun streaming in the window, and Ricky's dad bellowing to us and Laura up the stairs, "Hey, sleepyheads! Breakfast time! Rise and shine, or I'll polish your behind!!" (Ricky's dad was a Navy veteran).

Ricky and I stumbled out of bed, rubbing our eyes and yawning. We went down to the bathroom, but Laura was already in there with the door shut. Neither of us was a morning person, so we just sort of stood around groggily, waiting, not saying anything.

One thing penetrated my fog, standing there with Ricky. I doubt it would have penetrated the fog 24 hours earlier; but I was a step beyond the place I'd been, sexually, that morning. The thing that penetrated my fog - and I still remember what it looked like today, vividly - was Ricky's morning erection, outlined inside his PJ pants. It was still big. I was still impressed. I had my own morning piss hard-on, naturally. I'm sure it was more obvious than Ricky's since I was wearing just briefs. As far as I know, Ricky didn't notice it, or didn't pay obvious attention if he did.

It was a fleeting thing, no more. I was still mostly pre-sexual at 8 y/o (or, more accurately, my sexuality was still mostly-unconscious), and when I moved on to another thought, I forgot about Ricky's boner. I doubt I even gave it another thought that day. Almost two years later, at Y-camp, I woke up to sex. That day was still in the future, sleeping. This day, after a half-second of noticing Ricky's erection, I moved on to something else - needing to pee, wondering what was for breakfast... or letting my just-woke-up fog descend again, most likely.

Laura slammed the door open and dashed past us down the stairs; "Last one's a rotten egg!" (Most mornings, I was perfectly willing to be a rotten egg - it sounded like more fun than being awake). We got into the bathroom and did our morning stuff - pissed (not together), washed our faces, and went back down the hall to get dressed. I guess I could've seen Ricky in his underwear between taking off his PJs and putting on his shorts and T-shirt, but I didn't notice. We headed downstairs to face the day.

That's about the limit of this particular memory. Some footnotes:

• Paul asked me a few days later, casually, what had happened to us that night. As I said, it wasn't unusual for plans to fall through; but we were always curious about issues like the latest tortures our parents had cooked up for us. My first impulse was to say "Ricky's dad came home" - but I didn't want to lie. So I said, "We just got busy with stuff, and then we fell asleep." Maybe I looked funny or something - because Paul, atypically, asked, "What kind of stuff?" It crossed my mind to tell him, but I wasn't quite sure I was ready to do that; so I said, "Aww... you know, just stuff..." He didn't pursue it. If he had, I probably would've told him.
• I didn't directly bring up the issue with Ricky again for some time. It didn't affect our friendship in the least. Boys are resilient. As I said, I think he just wasn't ready for things to go that fast. Two years later, he was more than ready. Ricky was the first boy I got to jack off to orgasm with me. He was the first boy whose orgasm I got to see unfold in front of me. And, although I didn't directly cause his orgasm, I got to help push it along - just as on this sleepover night - and he did the same for me. Those are stories in themselves.
• I miss Ricky. Friendship is more important than sex, any day.