7 comments/ 40026 views/ 22 favorites Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 01 By: willmasonwillmason I stepped off the grimy Greyhound bus and tried to get my bearings as my eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine of Southern California. I had been on the bus for two days and had no idea where I was, except somewhere in LA. I hadn't been west of the Mississippi River until sometime yesterday. A tall shaggy-haired guy about my age bounded off the bus well after everyone else. He was shaking his head and unselfconsciously talking to himself in a voice loud enough for anyone within a few feet to hear: "I had no idea we were here already. I was so zonked out ... Jeez ... I could have really fucked up..." He stopped and stood in the sun right next to me, momentarily staring off into space. "Hey, don't forget your bag," I offered, pointing to the open compartment under the bus where suitcases were stored. "I got everything I own right here, dude. But thanks!." He said the last part brightly, slapping his hand on a dark green knapsack slung across a broad shoulder. It was not a backpack, but looked like some war relic you'd find in your grandpa's attic. Impressed by his nonchalance at carrying all his worldly possessions in a small knapsack, I nervously tried to keep make conversation: "Traveling light myself, been on that bus for two days and have no idea where to go for the night." Damn. Why did I say that? It sounded like self-pity. Preoccupied with his cell phone, the knapsack guy apparently didn't hear me. "Oh, fuck; now my battery's dead," he muttered. Then he looked at me, saying: "Hey, dude, I hate to ask, but have you got one I can use for a second, just to find an address?" "Sure. Here you go. My name's Zack by the way." He looked me in the eye and smiled, then extended his hand to shake: "I'm Trey and I really appreciate it. I would have been up the creek with a dead phone if you hadn't been standing here." Trey was looking for a youth hostel called Banana Bungalow and it turned out it was only 6 blocks away. That sounded like a strange name for a guesthouse to me, but I had never been to California and figured a lot of things here would be different than what I had been used to. "Got a reservation?" I asked, trying again to engage him in a little more talk. "No dude, I read about it on the way out here on my phone, on a website called Hostel World. Sounded like a chill place. European backpackers trying to see LA on the cheap give it the thumbs up." After a pause, while still fooling with the map on my phone, Trey took me by surprise when he asked: "Hey, Zack, wanna walk over there with me, since you got no place to stay yet either?" I guess he did hear me when I said I had nowhere to go. "Thanks. I appreciate it and, well, uh ... sure." Trey's easy-going manner and obvious comfort in being in a new city all alone was so different from my rattled state of mind. I wished I could have been so comfortable in my own skin. As we walked the six city blocks, I learned Trey was my age and had just graduated from high school in Daytona Beach, Florida. After a few weeks of partying with his high school friends, he had hopped a bus to the west coast to "chase some dreams" as he put it. He was a surfer and he planned to pick up a used board after working a few weeks. His parents had wanted him to go to a community college there in Florida and live at home, but he was determined to strike out on his own. I explained my situation, or at least a condensed version of it. I was raised by ultra-religious parents in a rural compound where every move was controlled by a church council of elders. I had been questioning the life there for some time and a month or so ago, without much planning, I had just walked away, never looking back. I had walked 17 miles to a nearby town where I found work for an elderly widow for a month, building and planting her summer vegetable garden. I also did repairs around her farmhouse. She had given me a place to stay on her screened porch and paid me $8 an hour, almost all of which I had saved. With money in my pocket and a new cell phone that had served as my reason to talk to Trey, I was exploring the country. I was adrift, trying to figure out who I was and what I really believed. Trey's reaction made me think maybe I had shared too much: "Whoa. Heavy shit, dude. My folks meant well and all, and they sure didn't go overboard on the bible-beating. But just the same, it just felt like it was time to travel, chase a few dreams, you know?" No, I didn't know. I didn't even know what my dreams were. I just knew I had to get far away from the compound. My internal dialogue was an impenetrable thicket of profound questions and unfocused longings. I was jarred out of my moment of introspection by Trey's near-shouting voice: "Hey, that's gotta be it, dude. Come on, let's go check it out." The hostel turned out to be an old 1960s motel with a South Seas beach bar theme. Walking past a basketball goal and an outdoor ping pong table, Trey led the way to the entrance. The young woman at the front desk greeted us with a languid half-smile. She had a small diamond stud in the side of her nose, crazy multi-colored hair and a small green tattoo visible on a bare shoulder. She was the most exotic girl I had ever seen up close. She let us wander around unaccompanied, telling us to go explore the facilities. Trey first led us first to a windowless room with six computers that guests could use for free, then to a kitchen, a connected room where breakfast was served and room with a pool table, which some European guys were playing on. The communal bathrooms were clean and basic, with several shower heads, sinks and johns. Outside, there was no pool, but there was a fenced patio with lounge chairs and tables with thatch umbrellas for shade. I tried not to show how shocked I was to see two girls on lounge chairs, sunbathing topless. They were lying face up and softly chatting in what sounded like French to my untrained ear. Their small but perfect breasts were the first I had ever seen in the flesh in my 18 years. I was mesmerized when one of the French girls slowly got up out of her lounge chair, walked over to a shower head attached right to the hostel's wall, then cooled off in the water. The late afternoon sun caught the water droplets on her bronzed body, causing them to gleam and sparkle. As I felt my dick start to harden in my jeans, I briefly fantasized about joining her in a shower, then rebuked myself. As soon as I did, it occurred to me that there's no longer any reason to rebuke such thoughts. Still, I felt incredibly out of place. I knew I wouldn't have any idea how to talk to such a girl. Trey watched her shower for a second too, raised an eyebrow at me and grinned broadly. He then grabbed my arm and said "Come on dude, let's see the rooms too. I sure like what I've seen so far." We poked our heads in one of the brightly painted private rooms (too pricey) and then one of the larger dorm rooms with two sets of bunk beds and a couple of twin beds. A bed in one of the six-person rooms cost $18 a night, with free breakfast and use of all facilities. Satisfied that the place would do for at least two nights, Trey plunked down two twenties and I did the same, happy to have landed somewhere in a strange new place. I took a top bunk and Trey threw his knapsack on the bed below it. Someone had claimed the single twin beds, but that the other bunk beds in the room were not taken yet. I desperately needed my first shower in almost three days and headed off that way while Trey said he wanted to do some research on the internet about something. "Hey, Zack," Trey yelled out as I walked away. "Come drag me out of the computer room when you're done and we'll go get some food. I'm starving." Awesome. I was so happy this guy wanted to hang out, at least a little, and I was very relieved that I wasn't completely alone in Los Angeles. When I got cleaned up and wandered into the computer room, Trey was there by himself, looking intently at a screen about auditions for something. As he scrolled through lists, jotting down notes, Trey explained that he didn't just come out here for the surfing. Since tenth grade, he had been in lead roles in school plays and even had some success in what he called "Community Theater," which I took was something bigger than a high school play. He had come to Hollywood to see if he was good enough to get a role in a film or television show. "What about you, dude? You got enough cash to just cruise for a while, or are you looking for work too?" "I saved up a little, but figured I'd look for some work with a landscaper tomorrow, since that's about all I know how to do." Trey responded by saying, "Let's go grab something to eat and you can tell me about it. I just read there's a bad-ass Thai place real near here." I had no idea what Thai food was, having been raised eating only things we grew and raised on the community farm. I had only rarely had what the elders called "store-bought" food. But I was eager tag along with Trey and learn about new things. We walked into the restaurant and I was glad to see a chalkboard saying "Special $10 Dinner." Trey ordered "two Singhas" and I tasted my first cold beer. My previous experimentation with alcohol was limited to furtive sips off of a whiskey bottle my friend Jacob had snuck into the compound and a few hot Budweisers I had choked down, also with Jacob. The ice-cold beer went down so much smoother. As soon as we finished those, Trey signaled for two more. The tiny Thai waitress never asked the baby-faced tourists for an ID. Over beers, Trey talked practically non-stop, asking me about the garden I had built for the widow lady and how I knew how to do all that stuff. I explained how I had learned to farm from an early age from the adults in the compound, using natural ways of keeping insects off the crops and as fertilizers, never buying anything from the stores that we didn't have to. Trey seemed genuinely interested in what he started calling my skills. I could see the wheels turning as Trey quizzed me about growing things "organically," but had no idea why he was so interested in what I thought was common unskilled labor. Trey ordered the special and I followed his lead, having no idea what the strange names of the dished meant. To my surprise, the noodles and chunks of chicken that arrived tasted pretty good and was definitely filling. I was just so delighted to have some company that I would have liked almost anything. After three cold Singhas, I was also feeling moderately buzzed, a sensation I had experienced only a few times before back home. We walked back to the hostel and Trey pulled me back into the computer room. I had figured I would call some landscape contractors in the morning and try to get hired as a laborer, but he said to just wait as he had other ideas. While I looked up landscaping services, Trey pounded away at a keyboard a couple of seats away. In only a few minutes, Trey said "Look at this, dude." He had gone to a site called Craigslist and was posting an ad for an "Experienced Organic Gardner." "That's you, dude," he said without looking up. I protested, saying all I needed was a job and a paycheck. "Fuck that dude," he said as he typed. I winced at the word "fuck," which was never uttered inside the gates, knowing I needed to quit being so sensitive. Trey kept talking. "You can be your own boss, make your own schedule this way. Besides, it sounds like you know more about how to get things to grow than any of the pretenders who advertise as organic gardeners." Trey's exuberance was contagious and I couldn't argue with his logic. Insecurity crept in though when I tried to get my head around what I would say if someone actually called me up. Trey said I needed a simple contract, invoices, and some business cards. He quickly found a sample contract on a website and we customized it to read "Zack's Complete Organic Gardening Service." I was both exhilarated and frightened by this turn of events, but grateful to have Trey as my guide. Within an hour, we had set up a rudimentary website, which he fronted me $24.95 for, since I had no debit card. I had never even had a bank account. My cell number was listed prominently on the home page, as was my new email address, myorganicgardener@gmail.com "Gmail is free dude, so don't sweat it," he added when I asked what that cost. I sat there in amazement as my online business started to take shape. As we discussed his plan, Trey showed me images I could use of verdant gardens filled with herbs and vegetables. Sitting down next to Trey in front of one of the hostel's computers, I soon got involved in selecting the garden ideas I thought I could replicate. Trey's enthusiasm was as infectious as his smile. "Let's think this through, Zack. Right now it's just you, dude. So you want to tailor this shit to a small number of rich people, mostly older women, who have plenty of money and would really get off on growing their own cilantro." I was getting used to his casual cursing and just nodded on agreement as ideas sprang from my new friend's head. He typed up my list of services, declaring I would help my customers turn any sized area of their yard into an "organic gardening oasis." I learned that I would provide skilled guidance in selecting the plants, preparing the soil, then planting and nurturing the herbs, vegetables and fruits my clients chose. I worked one-on-one with my clients (not "customers") in the planning and planting stages, helping them become organic farming experts themselves. Since I work with one customer at a time, my services -- according to Trey -- were not cheap, but I delivered excellent value and offered a money-back guarantee. Initial appointments lasted from half an hour to two hours, depending on the scope of the garden desired. I charged $40 an hour, but less for follow up visits by my trained staff. Due to my commitment to air quality and the environment, I did not own a car, but took public transportation or rode my bicycle to appointments. How did he know how to make this stuff up? I even had a biography, stating I was a lifelong gardener who began pulling weeds in his parents' "commune" farm in the rural deep South at age 5 and by my teens had developed the skills of a seasoned organic farmer who knew the most effective ways to fertilize and keep pests away from tender shoots and leaves, making sure harmful chemicals and compounds never entered my gardens. Earlier this spring, I had accepted an assignment working exclusively for a reclusive widow, developing and bringing to life the fabulous summer vegetable garden she had always dreamed of, and I was ready for new challenges. I had never known anybody like Trey. Intelligent, well-read, worldly, he was above-all a hard-charging optimist. I had no idea what he saw in me, and was puzzled as to why he would spend so much time setting me up like this. "It's like online hookups, dude; you gotta weed out the freaks and fakes, and focus on the ones with real promise." I had no idea what an online hookup entailed, but Trey's words were becoming my new gospel. We stayed up late perfecting my website, then slept in till almost 9 am, neither of bothered by the snoring of the 30-something looking guys who occupied the twin beds across the room. The next morning, emails to my new Gmail address started pouring in. I got inquiries for full backyards, small plots with partial sun, and someone who wanted only yellow tomatoes like she remembered from childhood. I even heard from a lady in a condo who wanted to grow herbs in pots on her balcony because she had no yard. I made three appointments and, with my new friend's guidance, mapped out my routes on public transportation. Trey said he needed to check out some auditions but when I practically begged him not to send me out to fill his fictional portrayal of me on the website, he agreed to accompany me and help seal the deal in the initial meetings. The first meeting was at this amazing, largely open-air home on the top of a hill in an exclusive part of Hollywood. The views were awe-inspiring, even if the large lady in a flowing caftan was not. She had an overgrown garden that had been neglected for years and consisted mostly of weeds and a few volunteer cherry tomatoes planted no telling how many years ago. We sat down at her outdoor table and while sipping ice-cold lemonade, mapped out a plan: first dig up everything, to get rid of the weeds, bring in some fresh tilled organic soil, then plant the three things she most wanted to grow to give to her book club friends. Trey started out talking, but as we got deeper into the details, he had to defer to me. I found my voice and grew increasingly confident as we discussed things I knew like the back of my hand. The caftan lady was giddy with the prospect of growing things, something I had always done just to eat. She pressed a $50 bill into my palm for a little over an hour's meeting and I left with a smile that my new buddy called a "shit-eating grin." We got "home" to the hostel after sunset with $120 and many days of hard work lined up. I was due at the caftan lady's house at 9 the next morning to dig out the weeds and old plants. Trey made a beeline for the computer room. "Dude, you've got like 22 emails," he shouted at me, then in a matter of minutes added "At least 8 of them look like the real deal. This is fucking amazing." I didn't know what to do with 8 more prospects and sank into a chair feeling overwhelmed. I wanted to pay Trey back for what he had done for me, so I gave him the $122 I was holding. Partial payback, I called it. "No, no, dude. I only put like 25 bucks on my debit card. This is way too much." I insisted he keep it for all he done for me and he said "OK, I'll take half, but on one condition, that I treat for dinner." Trey wanted to go back to the Thai place because they had not "carded" us there. I readily agreed, happy I would be spending more time with my new friend and mentor. Over a lot more beers than we had the night before, I hatched the idea of a 50/50 partnership: until some acting jobs came Trey's way, why not help me run my one day-old organic gardening business, handling the emails, returning calls and learning about chemical-free farming along the way? I had never had a business before, much less a partner. I pointed out that it was as much his business as mine anyway, offering to split all the money with him. He said that sounded cool, but the pay needed to be adjusted for how many hours we each put in, to keep things fair. He figured I would work more hours, but agreed he was better suited to run the money end of the business. I wanted to jump up and down for joy like a little kid when Trey agreed to be my partner. I managed to restrain myself, but inwardly I was leaping high and pumping my fists in the air. The next couple of weeks, we worked long days and into the evenings. When Trey wasn't chasing acting auditions, he accompanied me, helping both sell our services and do the physical work. I liked the fact he wasn't afraid to get dirty and work hard in the constant California sun. I had no tools to carry around with me because Trey had wisely specified in our one-page contract that the garden owner supplied all tools, since he or she would need tools to maintain the garden once it was up and running. Some mornings, all I did was accompany clients to a high-end garden center to help them spend their money on tools. The clients always seemed to buy my lunch or feed me while I was working. The hostel was the perfect base of operations. We paid rent out of our earnings; plenty was left over to save. The computer room was our office and Trey showed me how to set up accounts on a program called QuickBooks. He ran the business end. I was what he called the face of the organization. Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 01 After a month, the girl at the front desk said the owner would give us a big discount if we would pay up front for another whole month. We discussed it over dinner, deciding we could hardly do better than to stay another month. Rather than buy equipment, we could use the hostel's computers and print our invoices and receipts on its printer that mostly got used to print boarding passes and maps for guests. We could eat breakfast for free and --perhaps most importantly -- try to get acquainted with the steady stream of girls who wandered in for a night or two. Why would we leave all that? After five weeks at the hostel, Trey had been to six auditions and was still waiting for his first call back. But he never seemed disillusioned and was consistently upbeat. We had made several thousand dollars -- more money than I had ever seen, with Trey making nearly as much as me. Almost every night, we went to the Thai place and downed several beers, often inviting other travelers from the hostel to join us. I was wide-eyed with wonder at the travel stories I heard. I learned that in Europe, the governments not only pay for health care and "university" as they called it, but gave citizens my age a stipend that they used to take long trips all over the world. We met some great girls. I let my always charming friend take the lead in talking to them, hoping to learn at least a little of how he put people so at ease and made them want to get to know more about him. A few times, Trey would pair off with one of the cute girls, separating her from her friends for "a little loving," as he phased it. The communal living made "hooking up" a challenge, but Trey was so smooth that he always seemed to manage. He once even talked this beautiful blond German girl into having sex with him in a bathroom, which he excitedly reported to me, providing details that I know made me blush. I was simply in awe of this guy's charm, and his success. Even when one of the girls we met seemed to show an interest in me, I was too shy to "close the deal" as Trey put it, although I did kiss a girl about my fifth week at the hostel. For me, that was a huge step. I would have tried more, too, had her roommate not interrupted us. With Trey's gentle coaching, I was slowly gaining confidence in how I handled myself with girls. Working side-by-side in rich ladies' gardens and sharing many after-work beers, Trey and I got to know all about each other. His open-book attitude about even the most personal details of his life gradually made me feel comfortable opening up to him in a way I had never done with any friend, or with anyone for that matter. Conversations with Trey usually consisted of him telling me wild stories about his wild teen years in a free and easy beach community, then him probing me with questions about my strange upbringing on the compound. Trey was genuinely interested in how I had been raised and what life was like under the rules of the compound. He wanted to know all about how the elders kept everyone under their power, how money and community needs were handled and especially about what led me to walk away the week I turned 18. Sometimes, when I would reveal some detail that I thought was unimportant, he would say "Holy shit!" and compare our group to various cults and sects that I had to go look up on the computers later to figure out what he meant. The church I had grown up in was a tiny sect and there was almost no information about it on the internet. But in its structure and how its elders governed, it seemed eerily similar to a lot of other cults, many of which had ended in disaster. I was especially shocked to read about one led by some madman named Jim Jones who had eventually convinced his followers to commit mass suicide. While Trey was conducting our business on one computer, I would often be reading all I could find about various religious sects. As I had come to suspect, the cults that try to tightly control peoples' lives usually led to ruin. The more mainstream religions seemed little better. I read about Mormon sects where very young girls were forced into plural marriages, Catholic priests who molested children (and bishops who covered it up), Baptist preachers who had serial affairs with members of the congregation and even some monks in eastern religions misbehaving in similar ways. I knew about certain terrorist acts done in the name of Allah, but was less educated about the bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India, the massacres in Balkans and the crimes on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Having been raised to think Christians were better than all the non-believers, I was riveted by all the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity, from the Crusades to the wars between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. The knowledge I gained only accelerated my questioning of not only my former religious beliefs, but everything else I had been taught as well. While I was having what Trey termed my "epiphany" about organized religion, Trey was growing in other ways. In high school, he had always worked "for the other guy" as he put it, making minimum wage or a little more at a series of dead-end jobs. Trey had always longed to start his own business, devouring books about entrepreneurs and successful start-up businesses. What held him back, he told me, was that was stymied by his lack of a marketable skill. He had become depressed about his chances of ever being a success in business. That's why he had turned to acting as a possible alternative. In my ability to coax vegetables and herbs out of the soil without resorting to any chemicals, he had found the skill he needed. One night after he had drunk so many beers that he was slurring just a little, Trey told me he was as happy as he had ever been in his life, building our organic gardens business. He had big plans for its expansion, making my head spin. I was so grateful to Trey for conceiving, implementing and nurturing our business that it was humbling and gratifying to hear him say I had supplied the missing ingredient that allowed him to realize a dream. It had not dawned on me that he really did need me too. I felt a warm glow at the thought that it might just be a perfect partnership. Trey's hard-charging approach to growing our business was balanced by his equally fierce devotion to having a good time. I had heard the old saying about "work hard, play hard," but Trey was a case study in how to put the cliché in action. His zeal for life and the pleasures it could bring was a beacon to me for what my life could be, if only I could see things more like Trey saw them. I had gotten used to his graphic and thought-provoking revelations. I wanted very badly to be as healthy as he was in opening up about things that I had been raised to consider wrong, dirty or taboo. So when Trey asked me one night to tell him if I had ever smoked weed or done any drugs, I leveled with him instead of avoiding the subject: "Trey, I have never even seen any drugs, not even marijuana, although I recognize the smell now, thanks to your telling me what it was when those Colorado guys were smoking on the patio." Feeling brave, I said, "Maybe I need to try it." "Easily arranged, my friend, easily, Trey assured me. "So what about sex? Any action at all back there on the compound?" Now I was getting out of my comfort zone, but I forced myself to plow ahead, trying to be as open as he always was with me: "It's embarrassing Trey, but no, none. Even masturbation was considered a terrible sin in my 'former faith' as you have been calling it." That brought a big laugh from Trey. "Dude, they told you not to even jack off! What kind of cruel joke was that?" This guy was so at ease, talking even about things that were deeply embarrassing to me, or at least had been until he made it all seem so natural. Trey continued: "Seriously Zack, there's not a guy alive who doesn't jack off at least a few times every week, whether he's getting steady pussy or not. I started at like 12 and usually manage to rub one out at least once a day." I had thought I was unnaturally horny all the time since I was about 13, sure there was something wrong with me. Relieved to hear Trey tell me everybody did it, even a guy like him who got laid all the time, I felt bold enough to follow up with a small confession myself: "I know that now, and believe me I have been working on banishing the ridiculous demons my past put on me, so don't worry about me being too shy to take care of myself," I managed to even smile as I said it. Then I added: "It's my shyness with all these girls who come through the hostel that I need to figure out how to deal with." Trey pressed me on that, asking me exactly what I had done with a girl. I told him about some tame make-out sessions I had had with a couple of girls in the compound. Even if I had been willing to take things further, though, the girls were too scared of being found out and labeled immoral. I was a virgin in every sense of the word at 18, though not by choice. It felt good to get that off my chest, although how could Trey have thought any different? Trey said "No problem, dude. We'll have to fix that real soon." Now emboldened not only by the alcohol, but by the way the conversation was going, I tentatively asked my him to explain to me what to do if I got lucky, embarrassed that I had to ask at my age, but glad to have a friend I could ask. "I feel like an idiot at 18 to have to ask this, Trey, but I have no idea what to do. I can't just blunder into getting laid the first time without knowing how the female body works and what to do to make the girl, you know..." "You mean cum? That's easy, dude. They all like to fuck and most are pretty easy to get off. You just have to know how to make sure their clit gets plenty of contact, with your fingers, your mouth, and especially your pubic bone, grinding into them at the right spot while you're fucking." When I acted dumbstruck, he patiently explained things to me, really being nice about my lack of knowledge. Trey saw how shy I was about even asking the graphic questions, so he went into great detail about things I previously didn't even know the right terms for, like how to find and pleasure a girl's clit. He seemed to really enjoy describing eating pussy, with explicit instruction on getting a girl off with your mouth and tongue. I knew nothing about clitorises and was surprised to learn that just plunging in and out of a pussy "doesn't hit the spot" and wasn't enough to bring a girl to orgasm without some grinding of the pubic bone above your dick into her clit. I couldn't hold off my red-faced reaction when Trey explained that fucking doggy style gives the girl no clit action, so using "the old reach-around" was the way to go there, "unless," he added after a swig of beer: "you already got her off and you're just going for your nut, pounding that little ass. Doggy's like my favorite way to finish when I am having trouble busting." As he broke down barriers for me with his patient explanations, I got bolder in asking questions and learned so much that I started to feel like I could take some big steps myself the next time opportunity knocked. When my remedial how-to-have-sex lesson was over, Trey asked me what I thought about trying some drugs. He explained all the drugs that kids did in his high school and what he had tried. Trey had done a long list of drugs at least once, but nothing involving needles. He made clear he thought most drugs were, as he put it, "shit." He particularly hated coke and meth, saying they really messed people up. But he liked to smoke a little weed now and then, offering with a sly smile that there's just nothing like getting wet, sloppy head while you're a high. He said acid and mushrooms were really fun in the right situation but that they would probably freak me out as the trip could be overwhelming. The only drug Trey recommended I try, other than weed, was something I had never heard of called "molly," which he said was powdered ecstasy. He said it made you feel warm and joyous, all touchy-feely and affectionate, yet it was too intense for actually having sex on, at least until you came down from the "peak." He said some girls were fun to do it with, but others were too jittery on it and ground their teeth for hours. Trey preferred to do molly or "X" with his close guy friends, saying that doing it with them had unexpectedly led to some amazing conversations that deepened their understandings of each other and cemented their friendships. "It's like therapy in a pill, dude," he said, but I could only dimly imagine what he was getting at. Trey said the best experiences he had ever had, on any drug, were with a close high school buddy or two, peaking on "X" and talking for hours on the beach, with no one else anywhere around. He described getting a sense of closeness that guys have trouble reaching, at least after puberty, due to the whole guys-don't-show-emotion culture. "And," he explained, "after you come down, you don't lose what you gained; it's like something changes and you see things a little different." Like how, I asked. "My two best friends that I did X with the most, Rip and Perry, dude, we care about each other more than other people's friends do, and we show it. We can talk about anything, and I mean anything, stone cold sober, but the catalyst was when we broke down all our barriers, tripping balls on that molly." I couldn't imagine any kind of drug trip, but was intrigued by what Trey was saying and how evangelical he was about doing X with a close friend or two. I wondered if I would have the courage to do something like that and decided I would if it were with Trey. I couldn't imagine being able to talk more openly than we had tonight, but I was eager to see what he meant about deepening friendships and developing the closeness he described. I was fascinated by all of this -- the sex he had with seemingly countless girls, the drugs he had tried, and especially his frank talk about how close he felt to his buddies on this "X." I had longing deep within me for the kind of closeness he was talking about and hearing him say these things helped me put that longing in focus. After taking in all that he said, I asked him to show me around some of this stuff, when the time was right, but not to let me do anything stupid or that he thought would freak me out. I was starting to use his terminology, tentatively. Maybe I was learning to be a normal American teenager after all, if a little late at 18. Trey put his arm around me and said "I will , buddy. I will." It was a warm and wonderful feeling to have him put an arm around my shoulders and call me his bud. "Zack, you deserve to have some great mind-blowing experiences and it's the least I can do to be your guide after all you've done for me. I would have been on a bus back to my parents' house by now if not for you. My money would be long gone and I would have had to slink back home without having gotten a single part in even a stupid commercial." Wow. I had never thought of it that way. It was the only time I ever heard Trey talk about his disappointment over the auditions. I was so grateful that Trey had led me to make the hostel our home, quite literally created my business for me, and encouraged me to be an owner instead of a laborer. He had taught me so much about life. It had never occurred to me that he would thank me. I felt closer to Trey than I ever had to a friend after he told me he appreciated being my partner like that. About a week later, on a Thursday, when I got back from a job, Trey said he good news. He had been hanging out with this cute little Michigan girl all week. She had a friend from home that just arrived today for a long weekend. She was hot, Trey said, arching an eyebrow and emphasizing the word "hot." They were staying at the hostel, then going down to San Diego Saturday morning. He said the four of us were going to party Friday night, then we'd probably never see them again. If things turned out like he hoped, it could be a big night for me. I was fired up, as Trey would say, to hear this news. I had been cutting my teeth talking to lots of different girls for weeks now, working on getting comfortable with how to flirt with a girl and interpret subtle signals. I had also done some furtive computer research on how girls' bodies worked and watched porn videos showing pussies and clits up close, inevitably leading me to find a private place to jerk off, sometimes for the second or third time that day. I was definitely ready for some real action. What I didn't know was that Katie, the girl Trey had been hanging out with (and of course having sex with) all week, had told him some juicy details about her friend who was coming in for the weekend. What he learned had caused Trey to reserve one of the hostel's private rooms for Friday night. If I got lucky, there would be no hassle about where to be alone with the girl. From what Katie said about her friend, there was a strong chance the room would get put to good use. I could tell Katie liked me by the way she flirted with me even while hanging all over Trey, but what I didn't know was that she had told her friend all about me, saying I was hot looking but real shy. Trey had not told me any of this because he didn't want me to feel a bunch of pressure that might make it more difficult for me to "go with the flow" as he liked to say. We met the girls at 7 PM and they both looked really sexy. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Katie's friend, Lizz, was at least as pretty. I tried not to stare at her tight little body that made me think she could have been a gymnast in high school. Within the first few minutes, I saw that Lizz carried herself with confidence, the same way Trey did. I got the impression that she was not shy about getting what she wanted. We went to our regular Thai joint, impressing Lizz with the warm reception we received there and especially the fact that nobody asked us for IDs when we ordered drinks. The girls were sophomores in college, still well shy of 21. Over the next three hours, we spent at least a full day's wages on cold beers, pad Thai and curries. The conversation was animated, free-flowing and at times hilarious. Trey entertained us with his crazy stories about how the locals took advantage of the drunken spring breakers every March at Daytona Beach. The girls were laughing the whole time, getting pleasantly buzzed on the beers our favorite waitress kept bringing. Katie kept flirting with me from across the table, even as she had her hands all over Trey, both above and below the table. Katie's attention to me seemed to make Lizz grab my arm more and even lean on me, especially when we were all breaking up with laughter. By the time we were ready to pay the bill, Lizz was stroking my leg under the table and I had an arm around her shoulders. Trey was smiling at me across the table, his eyes conveying his familiar "fuck yeah dude!" message of encouragement without a word ever spoken. I was a bit apprehensive, but anxious to see what the evening had in store. When we got back to the hostel, the girls went straight to the bathroom together and Trey let me in on his plan. "Zack, do you realize how much cash we've got in the bank?" I had no clue. I was stunned when he said almost $10,000. "So don't get pissed, but I paid for one of the private rooms tonight. It was only $75 with our discount. So I'm gonna take Katie in there for a little romp while you put the loving on Lizz out here, then we'll vacate the room and you can have it to spend the rest of the night fucking the shit out of Lizz. She wants you dude." Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 01 "Yeah, I think she just might," I replied with a grin. I then told him how she had been rubbing my leg under the table the last half hour, giving me an almost painful hard-on. "I thought you were walking funny back there," he laughed. I was so comfortable with Trey after our talk of about a week ago that I could say things like that to him, things I would have died of embarrassment to say before. We had talked casually all week about boners, jerking off, and especially what I would do when I finally found myself in a situation where I might get some pussy. It was amazing to have a friend I could talk to about it and not feel like an idiot. It wasn't five minutes after the girls returned that Trey and Katie disappeared to go for their "romp" as he had put it, leaving Lizz and me sitting side-by-side on the patio. Before Trey and Katie were even out of sight, I leaned over and kissed her, a bold move for me that I had been planning since we left the restaurant. We started kissing, groping and finally moving to a lounge chair in a dark corner of the patio, which we had all to ourselves anyway. I must not have been that bad of a kisser because Lizz seemed really turned on, kissing me back passionately, then putting her hands under my shirt and rubbing my bare chest with her little palms. I jumped a little when she teasingly ran her fingers into the top of my shorts, almost touching my pubic hair. My dick was rock hard anyway, but her fingertips edging down into my underwear made me feel like I was going to explode. I ran my hands up under her t-shirt, copying her move and cupping her fine little breasts, all while kissing her fiercely. Apparently, I was going too slow for her, because after maybe a minute or two of all this rubbing and kissing, she reached down below my belt, this time outside my shorts and rubbed my hard-on through the fabric. Oh wow! I was lucky I didn't lose it right then. At almost the same time, she gently guided my hand into her panties. I gasped at the first touch of her wetness, but got busy exploring the territory. I was gratified to hear a little moan escape from her lips when I moved my index and middle fingers in a circle at the right spot above her opening. Soon, I felt her tugging at the top button to my shorts, then slowly unzipping me. Thank god I had jacked off this afternoon while Trey showered and I was alone. That and the five or six beers I had drunk combined to keep me from shooting jizz everywhere at the first touch of her warm little hand on my bare dick. Still, I barely managed to keep it together. I got her tight little shorts and panties down below her pussy and fingered her wet slit, doing my best to rub her clit correctly, a skill I only knew in the abstract from "how to" conversations with Trey. She must have been ok with it as she moaned and ground her pelvis into my hand. Lizz started jacking me off while grinding harder and harder into my hand with her crotch, working us both toward a climax. I was worried about the mess I would make and tried to pull her hand away before I came, but she touched a finger to my lips and said "shhhhhh" while she made my dick feel like it had never felt before. A few seconds later, I exploded all over her hand, and she used my cum as a slippery lube, jacking my spurting rod faster as she came herself. Her wet hand job kept me at an orgasmic peak for longer than I thought possible, until I got so sensitive that I had to still her hand on my dick. When we both stopped cumming, we laughed and I said we needed to clean up before our friends got back. Lizz led me by the hand to the girls' bathroom, which was thankfully empty at this time of night. As soon as the door shut, she began stripping off my clothes and stepping out of hers. We got in a warm shower together, which was the second most exciting and sensuous thing I had ever experienced, coming on the heels of what we had just done in the lounge chair. My mind briefly flashed back to the French girl in the outdoor shower the first time I was in the hostel. I never lost my hard-on. I had drooped a bit but was still huge. Lizz soon started soaping me into another rigid frenzy. Then she rinsed off the soapy suds in the warm water, massaging my fury balls and jacking my straining dick at the same time with her busy little hands. Suddenly, she dropped to her knees and engulfed me in her warm wet mouth. Trey had told me about girls who had blown him, saying not many knew what they were doing because they lacked the right equipment to really know what guys wanted. Lizz must have been the exception, because while she couldn't get more than half my length in her little mouth, she made me feel ten times better than she had with her hands. I was astounded at my good fortune as she slurped and sucked my hard cock. A hurricane couldn't have wiped the smile off my face as she gave me previously unimaginable pleasure. I felt like I needed to return the favor and wanted to taste pussy for the first time, but before I could figure out how to make that happen, she slowly removed my glistening tool from her mouth and stood up, kissing me once more under the spray of the running water. I was struck by how hot it was that she went straight from sucking my dick to kissing me and it crossed my mind that I was tasting a little of my own cock when she stuck her tongue in my eager mouth. That would have grossed me out if I had thought about it even a day ago, but with my six foot frame pressed tightly against her compact little body in the women's shower at the hostel, it all seemed so right. We stopped kissing and Lizz looked at up at me with her big brown eyes. Holding my engorged dick in her left hand and gentle hefting it up and down, as if she were weighing it, she stared into my eyes and said slowly: "I can't wait for you to fuck me with this big thing." Holy shit! I stared back into her eyes and pressed my body up against hers, grinding my cock into her flat little stomach, the tip of my cock touching the bottom of her breasts. With our height difference, that's where it mashed into her squirming little body. She then took my cock in her hand once more and directed it toward her pussy. I bent my knees to get the right angle and gasped as she started to literally impale herself on my pole. I had never imagined the first time I made love, it would be standing up -- much less in the shower of a semi-public bathroom -- but I was not complaining. I had a fleeting thought about how much fun it would be to tell Trey my first time story. Lizz slowly worked my engorged pole into her pussy, inch by inch. I let her take the lead. She whispered that she was on birth control pills, so there was nothing to worry about there. It felt so amazing going in and I could feel the textures of the insides of her vaginal walls with the head of my cock with each centimeter I penetrated. When I was fully inside her, my balls pressed up against her, I asked her if that was OK. I couldn't imagine how her little body being stuffed with seven inches of hard cock wouldn't hurt. But she responded with words I had only dreamed of hearing a girl say: "Oh, yes, fuck yes, fuck me, fuck me now." I slowly started moving in and out, soon getting the hang of what to do. We fucked slow, we fucked fast, we fucked in short little bursts and we ground into each other. Then we did all those things again in every imaginable order. We fucked for quite a while and I was very glad I had gotten that mind-bending hand job out on the patio just a few minutes ago, so I could make this last. I felt like Lizz was close to getting off again when she ground into me so hard that I couldn't really stroke in and out any more. I could only grind back as she rubbed her clit against me and suddenly had a shuddering, shaking orgasm, digging her fingernails into my back. When her shuddering subsided, I didn't know what to do next (was her equipment like my dick, and too sensitive to keep going after coming? Or were girls' bodies different?). Lizz knew exactly what to do though. With my cock firmly embedded all the way up inside her and our bodies pressed tightly against each other, she looked up at me and said "That was so amazing ... and now it's your turn to get off too." She lifted herself off my cock so it was free from her body. Then she sexily turned around, presenting her cute little behind. She grabbed my rigid wet dick and guided it back into her pussy from behind, urging me to fuck her hard, doggy-style. That was of course the position favored by all the animals I had watched mating since I was a child. If anything, this was the one position I felt like I knew, even though I had never even so much as touched a bare breast before tonight. With Lizz biting her lower lip and urging me to fuck her harder, I built up to pounding her from behind in as animalistic a way as I could bring myself to do, plunging in and out of her as she urged me on. I looked down and was almost hypnotized by watching my big hard-on pistoning in and out of her pussy, her tight little ass making a perfect target. I pounded her faster and faster, eventually feeling myself build to yet another explosive nut. We had been far from quiet from the moment we started soaping each other up and even with the water running in the shower, anyone nearby would have had to hear what we were doing. But I didn't care. Liz certainly didn't. I rammed her harder and harder as my orgasm built, then with a final thrust jetted another stream of jizz, this time deep inside her wet welcoming pussy. I kept thrusting and cumming for what seemed like a long time, then buried my cock to the balls in her and just held it there until all the little contractions had stopped. I finally pulled out, my chest heaving like I had run a five mile race. We gently cleaned each other off under the still-warm shower, taking out time with each other's bodies. We dried off using a single towel and shakily got back into our clothes. I was amused when I realized my shorts were still damp in spots from where I shot my load all over the place when Lizz jacked me off in the lounge chair. When we straightened ourselves up in the mirror and walked out the bathroom door, Trey and Katie were just outside, sporting huge smiles. "Well, I see you two couldn't wait for your turn in the love nest," Trey commented with a grin. We learned that Katie had come in to use the bathroom while we were just getting started fucking, had seen our clothes and ran back out to get Trey. He had come in too, listening a bit before they left us alone. They got so turned on by what they heard, they went back to the room for a "quickie" as Katie called it. They had just gotten dressed and had hoped to greet us (and give us some good-natured shit) when we walked out of the women's bathroom. I couldn't believe how openly the four of us were talking about fucking! But then Lizz took things a step further still. "Well, I know you, Katie Sheffield. If you saw what Zack here is packing, you would have jumped in the shower with us and tried to take it away from me." She grabbed a handful of my still semi-hard dick through my shorts and gave a gentle squeeze, right in front of Trey and Katie! Liz was embarrassing me to death now, but the three of them just laughed heartily while I turned all red. We went out on the patio to have another beer while everybody recharged, then Trey gave me the key to the private room. It was after 3 am. Lizz and I fucked three more times; once before we went to sleep (my first time in the missionary position!) and twice more in the morning. In between all that, I ate pussy for the first, second and third times, fucked in four different positions and learned a lot about how Lizz liked to be pleased. She came several more times than I did, having three shuddering orgasms in our last extended round in the morning. I started the night a naïve virgin; when we told the girls goodbye shortly after 11 am, I was a far more confident young man. Trey said my shit-eating grin looked like it was permanently affixed to my face. Trey and I napped most of the day, then went over to the Thai joint for a happy hour beer. He wanted to know all about my first time and I spared no detail. I was as happy as I could ever remember being, telling my best friend everything about my first time and hearing his "fuck yeah!" reactions, especially when I told him about her saying she said she couldn't wait for me to fuck her "with this big thing." I was a lot bolder in asking him about his fuck story, and he told me in delightfully graphic detail about how he had fucked her all week in a variety of places, as well as how Katie had surprised him by dragging him into the bathroom to listen to Lizz and me in the shower. He said they almost got naked and joined us in the shower stall, but he figured that wasn't the right thing to do to a guy the first time he got laid, so he steered Katie back into the private room and furiously fucked her again, first missionary with her legs in the air "like goal posts," he said, then harder from behind, working to finish before we did. Trey said he lost count of how many nuts he got with Katie this week, but it had to have been at least 15, yet in talking to me about what we had both done, he had gotten hard as a rock again. Trey then leaned back in his chair and said "Look at this," grabbing his rock hard dick in is pants, showing me the outline. My dick was standing straight up as well. It was a major step out of shyness for me to confess to Trey that what was probably causing most of my wood right now was the thought of Trey and that other pretty girl joining me and Lizz in the shower in a four-way fuck session. What kind of perv was I becoming? We laughed until we had tears in our eyes about two guys sitting in a restaurant with boners, telling each other their fuck stories. Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 02 No longer the innocent farm boy, I went on quite a tear with the female guests at the hostel in the weeks after my wild night with Lizz. I found that replacing my nervous and tentative way of starting up a conversation with a confident smile made all the difference. In the three weeks after my wild initiation, traffic through the hostel improved and I added three more girls to my short list of lovers. Moving out of the bunk room into a private room made a huge difference in my game. We had gotten to know the hostel's owner, an old hippie in his late 60s who loved the fact we had taken up permanent residence at his place. We acted as his eyes and ears, he said. He also valued the nice guest comments he received in online reviews that praised us as making guests feel at home. Trey later asked me what I thought Lizz and Katie wrote, making up a mock review that cracked us both up. The owner said he would charge us the same low monthly rent we paid in the bunk room for our pick of the nicer, corner private rooms if the two of us would help him with repairs and minor maintenance. I was always fixing stuff around the hostel anyway, even teaching Trey some simple plumbing and carpentry. We readily agreed, glad we wouldn't need to leave the hostel to get some privacy. Withdrawing a few hundred bucks from our bulging joint account, we furnished our new corner room with a $100 mini-fridge and two new queen beds we found on sale. They were perfect, Trey said with a smirk, for entertaining our guests. I soon got to make a small down payment on the incalculable debt I owed to Trey for his patient coaching and encouragement. I had met these two 22 year old student teachers from Atlanta as they were checking in while Trey was still out on a job. They both had great bodies and were the kind of girls Trey would call "just a little bit trashy in a very good way." After they got settled in their room, I led them on a short tour of the facilities, ending up on the outdoor patio. I offered them a beer from our stash and helped them map out their tour of LA. When the time seemed right, I invited them to join me and my roommate for dinner. The teachers readily agreed. I texted Trey to get his ass over here, including in my text a surreptitiously taken cell phone photo of the girls. He joined us just as we were sitting down at the Thai joint. Trey was his usual entertaining self, charming the girls with his stories. When we got back to the hostel, he invited the girls back to our room to smoke some weed he had just bought. Within an hour, clothes were coming off and we ended up putting on a live sex show for each other. I learned a few things from Trey's agile moves on the bed across the room and the budding school teachers won our secret poll of the most uninhibited guests of the year. The way Trey playfully teased me about my transformation into a "pussy-getting machine" conveyed that he was both proud of me and at times in awe: "Dude, you weren't content to just lose the v-card, you've been on a mission!" The rest of the summer, all the way past Labor Day, was a huge bonanza. Girls from across the US streamed in during their summer breaks, some eager for a vacation fling. That was my sweet spot, Trey said. He did well with the European girls whose signals I still had trouble reading, but American girls seemed to fall right and left for what Trey called my humble, farm boy act. I was surprised that girls who had boyfriends back home were often as eager to fuck as were the unattached ones. I rarely even exchanged email addresses with them, which suited both parties to our fleeting transactions. By September, Trey had stopped trying out for parts in films or TV shows. I knew he was more of an entrepreneur at heart anyway and he constantly surprised me with savvy ideas for growing our business. As our client list grew, we got more and more calls for follow-up visits. Our clients weren't the type to pull their own weeds. In fact, many were eager to pay for follow us just to check on the progress of their gardens. We couldn't meet the demand and Trey kept saying "Dude, we're leaving money on the table." I had no idea how address that issue, which I viewed as a good problem to have. Trey, as always, had a solution. One Monday morning, before I even woke up, Trey took the bus down to a parking lot where day laborers gathered, hoping to be picked up for a few hours of work. In his broken high school Spanish, Trey interviewed a couple of dozen men, all of them undocumented workers from Mexico or Central America. He was looking for some very specific criteria for trusted employees we could dispatch to follow up visits. Within a few hours, Trey had assembled a three man team of guys who all lived together in a cramped efficiency apartment, sending their meager earnings back to family in Mexico. Trey started referring to them as "The Oscars" because the leader of the group who did all the negotiating was named Oscar. They were from the same village in Guanajuato and proved to be humble, honest and diligent workers. They loved working for us, a big step up from trying to pick up jobs in a parking lot where they feared "La Migra." Either Trey or I went with them to each client's house the first time, introducing them to the owners and overseeing them in weeding the gardens, fixing problems and making sure the plants were thriving. The Oscars caught on quickly. We paid the Oscars an above-market $12 an hour each, which assured both loyalty and punctuality. Trey arranged pricing so that we always made at least 100% profit on their time, adding to our growing bank account. By mid-October, mostly older tourists were showing up at the hostel, often Germans traveling on a budget. We hit a long dry spell, complaining to each other about how long it had been since a group of hot girls had come in. "Dude," Trey led off during one of our daily happy hour visits to the Thai place, "I'm so horny I could fuck Mrs. Desmond." I winced at the thought: "Oh, no you're not, man. Nobody's that hard up." Mrs. Desmond was a large woman in her fifties who got deep into a bottle of expensive Chardonnay every day by late afternoon. She had made not-so-subtle invitations to each of us, even leaving the silver-tongued Trey a bit flustered. I had learned to schedule her for 9 or 10 am visits, when she was better behaved. "I'm not kidding, dude, I am so sick of jerking off that I gotta do something about it." Trey was off on one of the rants he seemed to start up anytime he went a week without any pussy. "Well don't look at me," I said, laughing. "Oh come on, farm boy, don't tell me you never jerked off with a friend when you were in like eighth grade." Trey was not quite drunk, but he was clearly out in no-inhibitions land. "No way, dude," I answered. "I told you how repressed everyone was inside the compound. I was so confused when I was 13 and 14 that I alternated between jacking off behind a shed and beating myself up for being such a dirty pervert. It was a vicious cycle." My thoughts trailed off, thinking how the compound had messed with my head, and how far I had come. "Well, I didn't lead such a sheltered life." Trey just let his cryptic comment hang there. I of course knew that Trey had enjoyed lots more life experiences than I had. He had sex years before I had, did drugs I never heard of, and had even traveled a little. But this was the first time he ever brought up doing something "homo," as my old friends used to call it. I had wondered about that topic a few times, spurred by getting to know some of the gay men and women who stayed at the hostel. I learned that they were like everybody else: some were really nice and fun to get to know; others not so much, just like straight people were. As part of my rejection of everything about my upbringing, I had long since decided that the religious-right perspective on homosexuality was as ignorant and backward as it was about everything else. That realization made me suspect that it was normal and natural for there to be more than one "right" way for people to feel and express sexual desires. Nonetheless, I had never imagined doing anything gay myself, nor had it occurred to me Trey might have. I gamely took the bait, though, giving Trey the go-ahead to spill whatever he wanted to talk about: "OK Trey, you're dying to try to shock me again, which you invariably succeed in doing. So what else has been on your sexual smorgasbord that you haven't told me about yet? I sat back and waited for yet another story as my brilliant business partner and crazy best friend talked: "I told you about doing molly with my two best buddies back home, right? Well, it works like truth serum, dude. The first time we ever did it, when we were barely 16, we all decided we'd tell each other everything we had ever done sex-wise, holding nothing back." "OK, so where did that lead, pervert-in-chief?" I loved to tease Trey about being such a perv. "We laid the cards on the table, and it turned out we had all done the exact same experimentation shit, you know? Everybody was too embarrassed to admit it, until we ate some molly, then we were like stumbling over each other to confess. We just died laughing about what we had all done. We were literally rolling around in the sand with laughter. It was so cool." I surmised from that comment that Trey's buds had all admitted to jacking off with another guy. Who cares, I thought. What intrigued me more than some juvenile circle jerk was this drug that led Trey and his friends to talk so uninhibitedly about something they were all too embarrassed to admit otherwise. I thought I was uncommonly open with Trey anyway, especially talking about sex. But I realized I still had a lot of "bottled up shit," as he called it. I needed to explore what this molly stuff offered. Trey took a swig of beer, reading my mind when he said: "You need to roll on some molly, Zack. It's bad-ass." "Ecstasy?," I asked. "You've told me about it, but I can't imagine what it would be like." "No way to do it justice with just words, dude. You just gotta experience it." Then Trey leaned over out table and looked me in the eye like he would do only when he was really serious about something, lowering his voice: "I really want to do it with you, Zack, just the two of us. What do you say?" "You haven't led me astray yet," I replied with a smile. Trey then almost whispered, "Then come here," showing me his cupped hand. In it were two aspirin-sized pills. "Look what I picked up from that mean little Israeli girl with the nose ring. You know most of the good X comes from Israel?" I had no idea where drugs got made, but was excited by the idea that a real drug experience was right there in front of me. "So cancel tomorrow's appointments and let's go do this shit right now. We'll walk out on the beach and talk about life. You deserve a day off, dude. And I guarantee you'll fucking love how this will make you feel." Trey was staring right into my eyes. I couldn't tell him no, about anything, when he looked right at me like that. I tried to seize a little part of Trey's spontaneity, saying: "OK, I'll send the Oscars to my appointment and email the client that I'll be there on Thursday." "Let's do this shit!" Trey declared with glee, slapping a $20 on the table and standing up to leave the restaurant. I was in. Holy shit, I thought, exactly what was I in for, though? As we walked back to the hostel, Trey told me not to eat anything because we wanted to do it on empty stomachs. Inside, he started hurriedly organizing things, eager to go while it was still daylight: "Get some warm clothes, dude, like jeans and a warm sweatshirt at least. We're going to get a taxi to this state park beach I know, and it gets chilly at night." Trey knew the area surfing beaches and had rented a board a time or two this past summer. An hour later, after enduring some LA traffic in a cab, we were sitting on this perfect, deserted beach. I had packed 4 cold beers in a small lunch-sized cooler. Trey carried a large bottle of water along with a big blanket to lay out on the sand. We walked down the beach to get far away from the empty parking lot and threw out the blanket in the soft sand, a good twenty yards or so back from the high tide line. Trey conspiratorially reached into a pocket then handed me one of the pills with a mischievous grin. We downed them at the same time, looking at each other as we swallowed with a tiny shiver. I was crossing yet another line with my best friend. Trey went into a long dissertation about what to expect: nothing for maybe 20 minutes, then some flushing of the face and the start of what the drug would deliver. Using a blur of words, he described a sense of warmness, a feeling of well-being, and a need to touch and be touched, which was totally cool like hugging a friend and nothing I would find creepy. "Just act on your impulses, dude. Do what your brain tells you and don't hold back. Whatever it is, go for it! And when something comes up in your mind, spit it out, tell me about it, like I'm going to do with you. You're going to be blown away with how free you'll be." He warned me against grinding my teeth and chewing up my lips or the inside of my mouth, but otherwise said to just go with the flow and stay near him. Trey made me promise to tell him if I saw him grinding his teeth and to make him stop. That was kind of scary, but I trusted Trey when he said it was the opposite of a scary experience. Just as he had predicted, in less than a half hour, I felt my face flush like I was turning red. I wasn't uncomfortable at all like I thought I might be. Instead, I got a dawning sense of happiness and peace like I had never felt before. Trey said it was starting to hit him hard and that this must be some really good shit. He put his hand on my arm and looked at me, using an uncharacteristically soft-spoken voice: "Thanks for doing this with me, Zack. I've really been wanting to do this with you. It means a lot to me." Damn, that was nice. And his touch felt so warm. A wonderful sense of well-being had been slowly engulfing me and Trey's words only deepened that feeling. I lay back and looked at the night sky while gentle waves of warmth washed over me. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I couldn't do it justice at all with adjectives like "amazing" and "wonderful;" it was beyond that, alive, exciting and yet so peaceful at the same time. Trey started talking about how "fucking amazing" he felt, using every superlative he could muster. "Dude, I've like done X maybe 12 or 15 times, but this is like the best shit I have EVER had! I am fucking loving this..." Trey excitedly reported everything he was feeling and thinking, his message soon moving from the sensations he felt to how much he appreciated my trusting him enough to do this with him. He said he knew what a leap of faith it was for me, having never done any drugs except my coughing attempts to smoke some weed with him. I listened as he thanked me profusely for trusting him, for being his friend and for letting him be my business partner. Trey kept his hand on my arm, gently gripping me, while he gushed about how much I meant to him. He said he had been an idiot to get on a fucking bus and believe he could break into the movies, but that he was so glad he had done it because that's how he met me. Trey's stream of consciousness went on to say that my talents had had made it possible for him to stay out here, instead of returning home with his dreams crushed. Building a business with me had given him confidence he never had before and made him realize he could be successful with his life. Trey spoke softly, but his emotions flowed forth like I had never heard him, or anybody, talk before. Had I not been so overwhelmed by how amazingly alive and happy I felt, I would have been embarrassed by the praise he was heaping on me. If I had been able to speak coherently, I would have protested his giving me credit for his success. Neither Trey nor I was ever one of those "don't touch me" types who couldn't handle an arm on a shoulder or a friendly touch, but neither of us had ever been outwardly affectionate with each either. At that moment, though, I just had to put my arm around Trey. I grabbed him, feeling the closeness of a friendship I had never even imagined before. It didn't even occur to me to hesitate. Unable to get any words out, my hand's firm grip on Trey's far shoulder was the way I communicated. It felt like love itself was flowing between us via through the physical connection I had made with my arm around him. Finally, when Trey paused and briefly leaned over to take a big gulp off his water bottle, I tried to find at least a word or two: "Sssit up, Trey." Those were the only jittery words I could get out. I then lifted myself up off the blanket where we had been lying on our backs. My head felt light. Trey sat up too. As soon as he did, I gave him a big bear hug, like you would hug a long lost friend that you were just overjoyed to see again. Trey hugged me back and spoke softly into my right ear: "That feels so good, Zack, so fucking good. You're an amazing guy and I'm so lucky to have you as my best friend." Other than telling Trey to sit up, I had been completely silent. I wanted to let him know how much I appreciated him as well, but my eyes were twitching and a jumble of thoughts were coming at me all too fast, while wave after wave of warm well-being washed over me like a gentle ocean current. I needed to just soak up this experience before I could talk coherently. We lay back down in the sand, this time much closer, side-by-side, so our shoulders were touching. My right leg was up against Trey's left leg, from our hips to our ankles, another warm connection that felt wonderful. "Zack, how you liking it, dude? You OK? You've been mighty quiet." "It's like you said, Trey -- fucking amazing. I'm, I'm just having trouble getting words out. I mean, look at the stars all jumping around!" "Fuck yeah, look at them move!" Trey was seeing what I was seeing. The stars were distinct and bright but they were also dancing around the dark moonless sky as our eyes twitched. It was mesmerizing and beautiful. I was overjoyed at the connection we were feeling. If someone had seen us, they would have assumed we were lovers, but it wasn't a sexual kind of touching. Looking back, sex was not even on my radar at that moment, which is saying something since my 18 year old mind otherwise tended to think about sex all the time. The only way I can describe what I felt would be as a sense of intense belonging and safety. Our embrace had the character of what a child feels with a beloved grandmother, who loves him so intensely and completely that when they hug, neither she nor the child wants to let go. As we lay in the sand and marveled at the light show the stars were putting on, I slowly found my voice. "Trey, I need to try to tell you something, but bear with me if I can't get it out right, ok? I'm tripping so hard that it's difficult to form words..." Trey just held onto me now, saying: "It's cool, Zack. Don't try to talk until you feel like it." The words slowly came tumbling out of me, much like they had out of his mouth earlier. I told him how smart he was, how much of a genius he was in creating our business from scratch. I told him that I would literally be pulling weeds for minimum wage if he had not things. When he was giving me credit for his success, I said all I could think of was that I owed everything to him. Trey stayed quiet as I told him how much it meant to me for him to say the things he had said; what a revelation it was to learn that he admired things about me, when it was me who had been idolizing him since the day we met! Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 02 I said that his words tonight had made me see not only that I needed him and owed my success to him, but that we needed each other. Finally, I leaned up and looked at him, saying simply and clearly: "I love you, Trey. I know you understand what I mean by that. You're the brother I never had but have now. To say you're my best friend doesn't begin to do justice to what you mean to me. Thanks for helping me be able to say that out loud, without any hesitance or inhibition." Wow, I had never told a friend I loved him before, but it felt so good, so right to say it. Trey waited until I paused, then in a humble and reverent voice, said: "No one has ever said that to me before, except my mom and she doesn't say it much. It took a lot of courage for you to say that, Zack. I guess I must have hesitated to say it to you a few minutes ago and I don't know why. But hear me loud and clear: I love you too, Zack." "Sit up again, buddy," I urged as I pulled him up with me. "I don't want to lie on top of you, but I need to hug you again." We sat up and embraced for a long time, feeling the warmth of each other's bodies and the love that was flowing between us. The damn was broken and I was better able to put things in words now. Trey really wanted to know what I thought about this experience, how it made me feel and how I would describe it. He said he was dying to hear my first-timer impressions. I searched for adjectives and said it was first and foremost ecstatic (thus the drug's name, as I could see). It was cathartic. And like Trey said, I fucking loved it! I thanked him again for talking me into doing it and wanting to do it with me. Trey was beaming. He wanted so badly for me to love this experience as much as he did. I promised him I would be bugging him to do it again before he asked me. We practically stumbled over saying at the same time how we needed to make some alone time to do this with each other every month or two. We drank a toast to the Israeli girl who supplied this fun and he vowed to lay in a store of this stuff for next time. We then talked about how incredibly healthy it was for us to tell each other not only what we had done for each other, but that we loved each other. We laughed at how those had been hard words to utter before -- neither of us had ever told that to anybody but our parents, and Trey said even his high school buddies never said that, even though he did love them and he knew they loved him! I told Trey that I was over that barrier now and he might get tired of me telling him I loved him every day. When we both fell silent again, I was again aware that my eyes were twitching. The stars were jumping around like crazy, the psychedelic light show undiminished. It occurred to me that we hadn't left the blanket in over two hours, or maybe longer. I tried to see the time on my cell phone, but I couldn't begin to make out the numbers; it was all a blur. Trey couldn't see shit either, but we figured we must have been "rolling" as Trey called it for over two hours by now. The intensity of the experience remained at a blissful peak. "I gotta piss, I think," I suddenly said. Trey said "Me too. Let's get up." Whoa! When I stood up and tried to walk, I realized just how fucked up I was. But it wasn't like being drunk at all. I felt great, better than I had ever felt in my life. I was very alert; I was just was having trouble walking. Trey was having the same difficulty and we leaned on each other and giggled like kids at how messed up we were. We stumbled the twenty yards or so down to where the water was and kind of braced each other while we tried to piss facing in opposite directions. I unzipped my shorts and fished my dick out of my jeans and underwear, only to discover it had shrunk up like I had jumped in ice water. "I don't know about you, but my dick has damn near disappeared," I reported. "Oh me too, dude. I forgot to mention that side effect as it doesn't happen every time. But when you get really good X like this, it will shrink you up like you're a two year old. Everything returns to normal after you come down a bit. I promise." "That's good to know; look at this pitiful excuse for a dick." I turned to face him and showed Trey my dick, wiggling it at him. He looked down, laughed loudly and then did the same: "That's still bigger than mine, dude. Look at this tiny pencil dick. I won't be showing this to any ladies tonight!" I was relieved it wasn't just me and turned away to take a leak. After we finished, we stumbled back to our blanket, having trouble finding it in the dark for a minute or two which we found to be hilarious. We lay down again, still tripping our balls off, as Trey would phrase it. "Tomorrow," I said, looking at over at my partner in crime, "I'm going to remember showing you my dick -- and won't be embarrassed. I wanted to make sure I wasn't damaged or something." "Fuck no. It's not like we haven't seen each other's cocks before," Trey replied. "Only we've never seen them like that!" We laughed some more, then Trey said: "So name a topic. Ask me anything. Tell me anything. What do you want to talk about?" "I am just so amazingly happy," I said truthfully. "But promise me we can do this again someday." He did. What followed was a rambling talk about how we had made each other better people already, but how we could do even more in terms of helping each other grow intellectually and morally. We set goals for each other and vowed to keep each other on track. We would encourageg each other to read, to add to our knowledge and develop our intellects. We were planning to start online college courses anyway, to keep our heads in that frame of mind, but we swore we would make each other sign up this week. Some of our talk was about our morals and treating our clients fairly. Like paying a decent wage to the Oscars, it was not only smart business, but was morally right too. We were good people and we wanted to help others out. I suggested we start trying to help some other people too, like finding a charity that spoke to both of us. We were making enough money to do some real good if we targeted it right. Trey loved that idea and said he wanted me to lead him on that. We also promised to tell hard truths to each other when the need arose. We vowed that if either of us saw the other behaving dishonorably, we owed to each other to speak up and gently guide the other back into the right path. We swore we would see it as a sign of love, and not resent it, if we criticized one another in that spirit, no matter how it might hurt to hear it at first. I told Trey that maybe the best thing we could do for each other was to call each other out if we saw something that needed to be said. I said I needed someone who would be courageous enough -- and care enough - to do that for me. Trey said he did too, and that since he acted more impulsively than I did, he was likely to be the one who fucked up first and really needed a friend to tell him. I remembered I had brought some beers and we drank a few sips, describing to each other how it felt to have the cool liquid travel down our throats in our states of heightened awareness. After a few moments of silence, Trey said that all we had said to each other tonight had made him feel more accepted and loved than he had ever felt in his life, and that wanted to tell me about something that I was the only person in the world he could trust to fully understand. "Thanks, Trey. The more I learn about you, the more there'll be to love. I want you to always feel free to tell me literally anything, so I can feel like I can do the same." "It's not like I've got some huge confession, like a crime or anything. Like everybody, I've got a few secrets, you know, things I don't want people to draw wrong conclusions from. And with your upbringing and how innocent you were when we first met, sometimes I was afraid I would shock you." "I'm working through all my sheltered farm boy hang-ups, buddy and have come a long way, all due to your help. Tell me anything and I promise you it won't shock me, or if it does shock me, that will help me grow too." "I hear that. Well, here goes. I have told you all about my 2 best friends. I partied with those guys mostly, but I had this whole other group I would hang with sometimes too." Trey, always prone to long rambling stories, went off on a full description of his drama club friends. The theater group's hangout was this kid named Tyler's house. Tyler was an only child and he lived with his dad, who traveled all the time. Tyler usually had the house to himself. He had a furnished basement where they could smoke weed, or do whatever they wanted without parents, police or anybody else knowing. "Anyway, one night in eleventh grade, I stayed at Tyler's because I was way too high to drive home. Everyone left well before midnight and it was just us. Tyler is this tall, kind of skinny, dark haired kid, with curly black hair and a big goofy grin. He's a good actor and got some leading man roles, mostly in comedies. He's real intelligent and interesting to talk to." "So Tyler and I had hung out like a million times in groups before, but never alone. We were pretty stoned and started talking about sex, of course. I had been fucking this girl from another school who we all knew through theater. Tyler started asking me about her, saying he thought about her hot little ass all the time, then that he hoped that his saying that didn't piss me off. I was like 'fuck, no dude' and let him know it was just a real casual thing between us anyway. To prove my point, I gave him some juicy details about fucking her." "One thing led to another and soon we were regaling each other like 16 and 17 year old boys will do, telling pussy stories. Then Tyler says he's horny as fuck and asks if I minded if he put in some porn." "I was high as a kite and a little drunk too, with a bulge in my jeans from the pussy stories, and I said 'Sure, dude, what you got?'" "Tyler gets up and fiddles around with a stack of old-school DVDs, then starts up this porno with two dudes giving it to some little chick from both ends, to her exaggerated delight. "Tyler almost immediately started openly rubbing his dick through his pants, making no pretenses about what he was doing, right there, three feet away from me on the couch, all the while making hilarious comments about the ridiculously shitty acting in this fuck flick." "The girl getting fucked looked a lot like the first girl we had been talking about, which Tyler said is why he liked this film. Then after a few minutes of watching the video, he said he needed to warn me about what was coming up, so it didn't catch me by surprise: "Tyler looked over at me and said, 'Yeah, I like this video because that chick is my current jack-off fantasy fuck, but don't be shocked when those two dudes touch each other. It's nothing gross, but it's not completely hetero either. Here, you take the remote and kill it if the scene turns you off.'" Trey continued telling me about watching porn with Tyler: "So sure enough, when everybody in the porn video was about to get off, this young dude with his ball cap on backwards who was fucking her from behind on the bed, pulls out of her snatch and comes around to the girl's face. He is standing right next to his buddy, a similar frat-looking guy who has been shoving his cock in the girl's mouth while she got fucked." "In porn, you always gotta show the money shot, right, so the guy who was getting his cock sucked pulls out of her mouth. Then, instead of the guys jerking off and shooting it all over her like you would expect, the guys take each other's cocks in their hands and start jacking each other off in front of her face." I spoke up at this turn of events: "Whoa. So you've got the remote right, and it's up to you to turn it off or keep watching?" I suddenly saw the evil genius of Tyler's move and got a sense for what might be coming. "Exactly, but I was so fucking horny, I wanted to see the finale, so I just kept staring at the TV. I wasn't all that shocked anyway. I even told Tyler that was pretty mild for homo shit and laughed about it." "Anyway, so these two dudes were jacking each other off into this girl's hungry little mouth. The guy with the ball cap, the one who had been fucking her, erupted first and his buddy does his best to aim the shots of jizz right on her tongue. Then, seeing and having a hand in making his buddy's cock shoot, the guy who had been getting sucked starts shooting his load too while his friend milks his cock into the girl's mouth as well." Trey got more and more animated as he described the scene: "Jizz is flying everywhere and this chick is slurping it up, like her look-alike in my hometown never showed the slightest interest in doing, I might add. Then to top it off, the guys keep holding each other's dicks, rubbing them on her face, using each other's cocks to scoop up all the spilled cum and shove it in her mouth. She eagerly ate both loads and then cleaned up their cocks, doing a damn fine job of looking like she really wanted to." "Shit, Trey, your film review would give me a raging hard-on right here, if I had a dick." I reached inside my pants from the top and felt my shriveled dick, leaving my hand there without embarrassment. Trey saw what I was doing and did the same, commenting: "Yeah, me too, dude, no dick at all yet." I thought for a second how ridiculous we looked, lying there with our hands shoved down our jeans, feeling our cocks. Then Trey resumed his porn flick narration: "Anyway, so there I was, on Tyler's couch watching what was admittedly a super-hot porn scene, hard as a rock. So what I hadn't noticed was that while the cumshot action was going down in the video, Tyler had quietly taken his cock out and was jacking off right there in the open!" "He kind of half-heartedly apologized when he saw that I noticed, saying 'sorry, dude, but that scene was too fucking hot. I couldn't help it.'" "Damn," I spoke up again, intrigued by a situation I had at least half anticipated. "What did you do when you saw that?" "Well, now it's confession time, bud. I figured what the hell and I did the same thing, taking my own aching rod out just as a new scene came on." I jumped in again at this news: "OK, I'm trying to make sure I am following this in my drugged condition: the two of you are sitting side by side, your cocks out, both of you jacking off to a bi porno?" "Exactly. I mean, my high school buds and I had jacked off to porn before in the same room, but this was totally different. It was just me and Tyler alone, not a group of horny 14 year olds. And we were on the same damn couch..." "But back to the porno," Trey resumed his play-by-play: "The next scene is this very hot blond lying on her back, legs in the air, getting vigorously fucked by some different frat guy, while another college-looking dude positions himself behind her head, tilts her face up and feeds his long hard cock into her mouth from above her face, his balls pretty much smothering her face." "The two guys are facing each other, looking at each other and watching each other's poles going in and out of her pussy and mouth. Her tits are jiggling and she's acting like getting stuffed with cock from both ends is the best thing to ever happen to her. It was a hot scene." "Tyler is jacking this big old hard-on, which I can't miss of course, so I start looking at it out of the corner of my eye. It's decent sized, cut like yours and mine, with a big flared head. I had never stared right at a hard cock before, even my buds' when we jacked off together in ninth grade. It was really interesting to watch in my stoned state." Trey was talking excitedly, giving me a sense yet that more revelations were coming: "Then he fucking notices me looking at his cock, and before I can die of embarrassment, he calmly grabs my dick and takes over for me. Instead of jumping up and getting out of there, I let him jack me off." I didn't want to let that statement hang too long in the air, and wanted Trey to feel safe telling me about it: "Go ahead, buddy. You're not shocking me. It's fascinating in fact. What happened next?" I kept my arm on Trey, letting him know I wasn't grossed out or anything. I wanted him to feel completely comfortable telling his best friend, me, his secrets. "Thanks, Zack. It feels so good to come clean with you about this. Everybody needs one person they can be completely honest with. It's so healthy, you know?" I just squeezed his shoulder and Trey kept narrating his basement tale. "So Tyler is working my dick and he says to me, 'if it doesn't freak you out, I could use a hand too.' And, figuring I had gone this far, so why not, I reached over and started jacking Tyler's cock the way I would want mine treated." "It was a weird feeling to have this cock in my hand. It felt like an inanimate object you know? I realized it was because whenever I touched my own, I always felt at least a little sensation in my dick. His felt like a rubber dick or something. I know that sounds weird, but it's what crossed my mind at the time." I was surprised now: "Wow, so tell me what was going through your head? Any instant regrets or sense of 'what the fuck am I doing?'" "No, dude, it was like really interesting is the best way to put it. I stared at his cock openly now. I mean we were jerking each other off, you know, so why the hell not get a good close look at it? I liked expanding my horizons and nothing about doing this seemed wrong or disgusting. Still doesn't." Trey continued his story: "We watched that porn scene like that for several minutes, when Tyler gets up and returns with a pump bottle of aloe, like for sunburns, which he squirts first on my cock and then his own. We resumed jacking each other, now giving each other slippery wet hand-jobs that felt damn good, and I mean both my cock and the way it felt to have one in my hand. Tyler and I were staring at each other's cocks now more than the porn." I was really enjoying the story now and blurted out: "Shit, dude, this tale is a porn scene in itself. I am jealous I never had anyone to experiment with like that." Wow, that was exactly what I was thinking at the moment. I felt no embarrassment, more surprised that I had thought it than that I had said it. Trey kept telling his story: "We both really got into it, talking as we jacked each other off. I told him it felt fucking great. I asked him if I was doing it the way he liked it and we like gave each other pointers on how to make the hand jobs feel even better." "So tell me how it ended," I wanted to know. I was imagining this scene in my mind. "We built up to pretty epic nuts, dude. Just as the guys in the porn flick started painting this blond's face and tits with big creamy loads, I started to shoot off like a gusher. "I was determined to get Tyler's cock to do the same thing. He watched my geyser go off kind of wide-eyed, then said 'Fuck that's so hot. I'm going to bust too, keep going, keep....' "Then he started shooting big thick jets of jizz in the air, some of which hit me on my bare leg. We kept jerking each other, milking every drop out of each other's cocks. Our hands were gooey messes and there was cum all over us, our shirts and the couch. It was crazy how hot it was." Trey kept narrating, reporting how he said something stupid to Tyler right after he came, like "I can't believe we just did that," but that he quickly followed up with saying it was really hot and that he enjoyed it. As they cleaned things up, Tyler led Trey into a discussion about how there was nothing wrong with anything that felt that good, that if we stripped away the religious and society pressures, lots more guys would feel comfortable getting each other off when the need arose. Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 02 It turned out Tyler had figured out his own sexuality and was a 50/50 bisexual. He told Trey he was open to trying more stuff sometime. Tyler wanted to suck and be sucked, but was unsure about anything anal. I asked where all that led and Trey told me all about how he had let Tyler suck his cock that same night. Trey didn't return the favor, but said it wasn't out of the question for him to try it someday, if he ever felt like doing it. Trey wasn't insecure about telling me all this. He just wanted to make sure he hadn't freaked me out. Trey said he didn't want to alienate me in any way because he valued my friendship so much. I assured him that all this talk had done was make me feel even closer to him because he trusted me enough to tell me things that were so deeply personal and that he wanted his best friend to know all about him. He accepted that and said it made him feel so good to have told me, and that I understood. I asked him lots of questions. Trey preferred pussy and could never see himself falling in love with a guy, but he said there was place in his repertoire for occasionally getting off with a guy. He thought people should "evolve" sexually to the place where they followed their instincts and did what felt natural, without all the bullshit about religious guilt, societal disapproval, etc. I agreed with that wholeheartedly. For some folks, that might mean only having sex with the opposite gender, or only with the same gender -- but for most people, Trey figured, it would be a mix. He saw himself as a guy who would get off with another guy as a convenience occasionally, and put his bi percentage at about 10%. I asked him what about it appealed to him and he explained that he liked the simplicity and directness of just "getting off" without any strings. He said Tyler had the perfect easy-going attitude that was like "hey, dude, want me to get you off?" Trey said that was really just perfect sometimes. Other times, he liked the passion of having really good sex with a chick, whether it was fucking some random girl hard, or really making slow love to one you really liked, building toward a mutual orgasm and then basking in the warm glow afterwards and having the cuddling turn into another fucking session when his dick started to get hard again. They were very different things, and he had a place for both in his sex life. I was fascinated with how much sense this all made. I was suddenly aware of how much of my instinctive recoiling at "homo" stuff was cultural and not innate. After Trey stopped talking about the Tyler episode, we tried to look at the clock again and could barely make out the numbers now. We had been rolling hard on this X for about 3 ½ hours and we still felt amazing. I needed to piss again and we walked with our arms around each other's shoulders back down to the water line on the deserted beach. I noticed with some relief that some feeling and heft was beginning to return to my dick. I reported this detail as I let loose a steady stream. Trey playfully crossed swords with me, pissing across my stream and laughing. I had never seen another guy pee before, except a passing glance at a public urinal. Trey's total lack of inhibitions made me smile. Trey reported that his dick was starting to feel like it might recover too, then said "That means some of the X is beginning to wear off, although I still feel fucking amazing." "Me too buddy," I responded. "I don't think this feeling will ever wear completely off because of what we've said and felt here tonight." We went back up to the blanket and kept talking. Trey wanted to know what I thought about his revelations, insisting I give it to him straight up. I told him I couldn't be dishonest with him right now if I had wanted to. Then I assured him that I was truly fascinated by it all, that nothing he had told me repulsed me, and I just needed time to process it all. I reminded him that while he had been having sex with girls for years before his experience in Tyler's basement, I had been a virgin until a few months ago. I was just beginning to figure out my sexuality, but told him this conversation had really opened my eyes to the fact I wanted to do a lot more exploring. Trey had done 90% of the talking tonight and all the soul-bearing. He said it was now my turn to talk. He said he never felt better than he did right now, mostly because of what I had told him about how important he was to me, but also in part because he had gotten stuff off his chest. I explained that I had lived such a tame life that there were no comparable confessions I could make; nothing I could say that would expand Trey's horizons like he had mine. "It's not about me, dude," Trey clarified. "It's about you being able to express things, say things, think things that might be bottled up. You'll feel like a man liberated from prison." I had no idea what to say, so Trey supplied possible topics. He peppered me with questions about my sexual fantasies, anything I was embarrassed about or felt weird about? He asked me, as an example, exactly what I thought about when I jerked off. I said he was right, that I had always treated masturbation as off-limits, now that Trey mentioned it. But that was stupid. He had been so open and nonchalant about it in talking to me, and I really wanted to be as healthy as he was about everything sexual. "So let's talk about that first then. It'll be fun." Trey was insistent and while a small part of me resisted, I was glad he pushed me. I told him that in the past, jacking off was a hurried and guilty activity that brought some temporary relief, but was never anything I could do leisurely. The big change in my habits was that as I shed the guilt, I had realized there was nothing wrong with jerking off, in fact it would be seriously abnormal if I didn't do it. Trey had showed me that, especially when he told me he jerked off almost daily, even when he was getting steady pussy. Since that conversation with him at the Thai place, I explained, I had started making time during my day for jacking off, when I could be alone and completely at ease and not worry about anybody walking in. It was relaxing and fun. Trey's long showers were a perfect time, as were the times I was in the room alone while he was out with some girl. It was a huge relief to talk about it this way, and strangely exciting too. I told him I thought I was completely over any residual guilt for masturbating, and now that I was getting laid like a normal 18 year old, I had some first-hand fantasy material in my head to use when I needed it. My jack off fantasies, I explained, were so far all replays of sex I had experienced over the past few months, since it was all so new and exciting to me. Trey pressed in: for example, did I do it every day? Had I done it today? I looked him the eye and responded with a grin: "Yes, every single fucking day, sometimes more than once, most recently about 8 this morning, while you were showering and I woke up, like always, with major wood." Damn, that felt good to say. I even said "fucking" without sounding like a choir boy who needed his mouth washed out with soap. Trey said "good," but wanted more: "Tell me all the gory details, from start to finish from before you even touched your dick, until after the cum flew. Come on, dude, tell me what you were seeing in your mind when you were working your cock this morning." "OK, I'm getting there," I said with a laugh. "So I've fucked like 6 girls total, and like you told me when I was a total virgin, a good blowjob is a rarity. But there was this one girl, you remember her, from University of Arizona? She was here for like four nights in August and I got together with her the first day she was here. Dude, that girl gave outstanding head." I told Trey how this one particular blowjob had become my go-to fantasy when I needed to get off. Even if I didn't start a jerk off session with this one, it's the one I returned to when I needed to blow my load. "Describe it, dude. What made the head so good?" Trey sounded like his teeth were chattering. I gave him the play-by-play: how as soon as we went into the room and closed the door, we kissed a just a few seconds, then she dropped down to the sitting position on my bed while I was still standing. She unzipped my shorts and pulled out my dick, then immediately started sucking it when it was not even close to hard yet. "She slowly and lusciously sucked the whole thing into her wet mouth, stopping to look at her handiwork as it grew to its full erect size as she sucked. She kept saying it was so perfectly shaped and how it felt so good filling up her mouth." "She used two hands to pay lots of attention to my balls while she sucked my cock. When she wasn't plunging up and down on it, she stared at it like it was some prize. It was really hot." "So back to my jerking off, I started out this morning in my bed, as soon as you left the room, by positioning my cock so it was pointing straight up toward my navel, then I started rubbing these two fingers (holding them up) up and down the sensitive underside of my dick, while lightly running my other hand across my balls. Then I slowly started jacking up and down, trying to imitate the way she engulfed me with her warm wet mouth." Trey interjected excitedly: "Wet or dry, dude? I always lube my rod up." "Definitely wet," I replied. "You know that little bottle of Astroglide I keep in my top drawer by my bed? You're the one who told me to buy it, in case a girl's pussy got dry. Well, anyway, I used a big squirt of it this morning as I fucked my palm, imagining it was her wet mouth." Trey kept asking questions: "Full hand sliding over the head and covering the whole territory, or do you like jerking it below the head and making the skin on the shaft go up and down?" He made a quick, jiggly jerking gesture that made me laugh. I continued, in full graphic detail like Trey wanted: "Full-on, with lube all over the whole thing, lots of emphasis on the head of my dick and the ridge. Remember I'm jacking off by simulating that girl's sucking style. I went slow at first, but changed it up a lot, like she did." Looking over at Trey, I said: "Good thing you take long showers, buddy. I took my time blowing a load this morning." We both laughed out loud. At Trey's urging, I went on to describe exactly how I did it, kneading my balls with my left hand like she had, while making love to my cock with my right hand and raising my hips up in little thrusts. I even stared at my engorged cock like she did. "The girl had insisted on getting me off this way first, before we fucked. Instead of treating the head as mere foreplay like I usually did, I just went with it. Her mouth felt better than pussy, or at least that's what I thought at the time because of all the visuals and things she was saying as she sucked my cock." "She worked me up to the point of no return with her mouth and when I warned her I was about to cum, she furiously jacked me off, like really fast, using her saliva as lube, until I shot big gobs of cum in the air, all over her, and my bed." "So when the blowjob in my fantasy was reaching that explosive crescendo, I moved my hands faster and faster, imagining it was her and not me working my cock." "Tell me about cumming, dude, every detail." Trey was such a perv, and I loved it. "OK, so I am now jacking it fast and furious, working my balls at the same time and I felt the cum rising. I thrust my hips up like this (showing him by thrusting my hips up off the blanket) and shot this big stream of jizz straight up in the air. It hit me right in here in the chest. The second surge oozed out, lava-like over my hand and I used it and the shots that followed as extra lube to finish out the orgasm. I milked every drop out just the way she had ... It felt so good." "By the time you came back in the room, I had come down from the chest-heaving orgasm and cleaned up with a bunch of Kleenex. They're still in the trash can by the desk." Damn, that was crazy to tell him about that. But it felt so good to be able to say it. He was so right that it was liberating as hell to be so honest about something I was brought up to feel guilty about. Trey: "Shame is bullshit, dude, unless you've done something you ought to be ashamed of, and there's no way getting a little pleasure is a bad thing." "You are so right. I feel like a weight has been lifted off me these last few weeks, having sex with girls like a normal guy my age, jacking off whenever I felt like it, and being able to talk about all of it so openly with you." "So tell me some things you haven't done that you want to do." Trey wanted to keep squeezing sex fantasies out of me. I was feeling like I was making huge strides in leaving all my baggage in the past, but I just didn't have a lot to report on this topic. "I don't know dude, I mean I want to fuck more girls for sure. Every pussy has a different feel and every experience is so different. I love getting head and who doesn't want more blowjobs? In terms of sex acts, I'm learning to eat pussy better -- and would love to hear more tips from you on how to do it. I really get into it. And I need to be bolder at asking for what I want in bed, taking control of the action." "Ever try to put it in a girl's ass? Do you want to?" Trey wanted to know. "Nope, never went there. Assholes seem dirty, man and I don't want shit on my dick, but maybe with the right girl and with a condom I should see what it feels like." "Yeah, man. It's tight as hell. Most girls hate it, but once in a blue moon, you'll find a dirty girl who really gets off on it, and that can be hot. It's totally cool if it doesn't appeal to you, though. This is all about having fun, dude. Get in touch with what seems right to you at the time -- and go with it." I had been thinking more about Trey's big revelation about Tyler. I wanted to talk some more about those strange new horizons too. We opened the last two beers, still a cool from the insulated lunchbox they were in, and now it was me who was asking the questions: "Let's go back to Tyler. Cool with you?" "Absolutely, dude. Completely comfortable with it. Ask away." "OK, I get the part about his being bi and wanting your cock, and I totally get it about how it felt good to you to get off. That part's clear, but what did you feel when you were playing with his dick?" Before he could answer, I got even more specific: "Was it the novelty of playing with another dick? Or did you consider what it was attached to, I mean is he a good looking dude? Or did that matter? I'm trying to get my head around the thing that made touching him and getting him off appealing to you." Trev replied, "Good questions. Yes, he's an attractive dude; but no, I don't want to kiss him or anything. It started with a fascination with what would it be like to touch a cock that was not my own. I have a strong need to explore and see where my boundaries are. It seemed like the perfect time to do explore that." That made sense to me. It was interesting that Trey was exploring, like I was. He was just further down the path. It was my turn to press him for gory details: "So what was it like to make a dude come? Were you squeamish? How did you feel about it after you did it?" "I was totally driven to get him off, dude. It was part of the whole experience, to see his dick shoot his load and feel it pulsing in my hand while it fired. I had to finish the job once I started it." Trey continued: "And no, it didn't gross me out. After all, it was just jizz, dude, like I had seen and felt and had dripping all over me a bazillion times jacking myself off. I felt no shame, guilt or anything like that afterwards. I had just blasted out a load myself and it was like we were helping each other out. The best way to describe my attitude about it is that I was fascinated by the newness of the experience." "Did it make you want to try more stuff?" I asked. "Well, yeah, I mean after we jacked each other off, it was an easy step to let him suck my dick. He really wanted to and I love getting head, you know that. I didn't even hesitate." "Wasn't it weird that it was a dude and not a girl sucking your cock?" I wanted to know. "It was different for sure to see a guy's head down there, but it felt so fucking good. Tyler took more of my meat in his mouth than anyone ever had; he was so much more eager than most chicks. A lot of girls seem to suck cock out of some sense of duty, or just to get you hard so you can fuck them again -- you know, a means to an end instead of an end in itself. But Tyler was really into it himself, like he was the one getting off on it, you know? He wanted my cock. It was fucking hot." "So how did the blowjob end? Where did you cum?" I needed to visualize this. "It was Tyler's decision. I gave him plenty of warning, but he just kept sucking my dick, determined to get me off in his mouth. He acted like he was working for a reward is the only way to describe it. The intensity of it was driven by how badly he wanted it. I felt my orgasm building and just fired away. He gulped and swallowed all he could handle like it was the best thing he had ever tasted." "Shit! I can't imagine wanting a cock shooting jizz in my mouth." I really couldn't. "Yeah, but he did," Trey responded. "It was exactly what he wanted. To each his own, you know. I loved being the one doing the shooting because it felt so damn good. His eagerness made the whole scene hot in an extra-exciting, taboo kind of way." "So what did you talk about afterwards?" "It was cool, dude. Tyler said he had always wanted to do that. I asked him what it was like and what it tasted like and all. He told me my pre-cum started to flow while he sucked me and that it was almost sweet. Tasting it really turned him on, making him want to work harder for the load itself." "I asked what it was like when I blasted off in his mouth and on his face since he couldn't handle how much I was shooting. He said it was incredibly exciting to him to feel the spurts he had caused to come out of my cock as they hit his tongue and the back of his mouth. He liked the taste too, while saying it probably wasn't for everyone." "Didn't he want a blowjob too?" I recalled he had said he wanted to suck and get sucked. "Yeah, he mentioned it, but after losing two loads in less than an hour and blowing my mind with all-new experiences -- like, holy shit! I just had sex with a dude! -- I was in no state of mind to consider anything like that. He understood. I think he got what he really wanted most anyway." I wanted to know what developed after that between him and Tyler and if Trey had even had any sexual encounters with other guys. Trey said no, Tyler was he only one, and that I was the only other person he has ever told. Trey went on to explain that Tyler loved to suck his cock, and Trey had no regrets about it, so Trey would go over there pretty often for the last year. It was a sweet arrangement, no pressure or anything, and completely on the down-low. Trey never sucked Tyler's dick because he just never felt the urge, but he did jack him off, just about every time he went over for a blowjob. "I got real comfortable with it dude, like I would show up after school and we'd go downstairs, smoke a bowl and pop in some porn. Tyler sucked me better than I have ever been sucked by any girl. And he swallowed all my cum, every time. It was awesome." I asked Trey to describe one of these encounters, well after the initial one, where he would just go over there to get sucked off. I was so intrigued at the idea of being able to just amble over to a friend's house and get a blowjob like that. Zack & Trey's Perfect Partnership Ch. 02 "We would both get completely naked. Tyler had a nice lean body and it was exciting to see us both naked. We usually started out with him between my legs, slowly savoring and sucking my dick. It was fun to watch. "Before we started, he would set out a bottle of lotion or lube and while he gave me head, I would reach over and play with his dick if I could reach it. If he was out of reach, Tyler would move around to where I had good access. I always gave him sloppy lotion hand jobs while he sucked me. "I enjoyed playing with his cock and balls and I loved seeing him shoot out big gobs of white-hot jizz. It definitely added to my excitement when he got off first, which he usually did because sucking my cock was so exciting to him. Seeing him shoot would always trigger me blasting my load in his gulping mouth. Watching how hungrily he swallowed all he could get and how loved tasting my jizz was the hottest part of all. No chick does that!" Trey then grabbed me tightly and looked into my eyes: "OK Zack, here's a further confession that I need to make and until now wasn't sure I could; Dude, I've jacked off lots of times thinking about Tyler gobbling up my cumload." Damn. I just let my thoughts flow at that revelation and said the first thing that came to me: "That sounds so hot I may jack off thinking about the two of you doing it, and I wasn't even there!" We laughed and talked again about how therapeutic this night had been. Then I started saying what was forming in my mind as a way of looking at all this: "Trey, this is all so incredibly interesting. It's like I've been looking only at the 50% of humanity that's female as possible sources of some sexual fun and now you've got me thinking that there's another 50% out there I could maybe find some fun with at times, a different kind of fun at that." "Exactly! That's where I am evolving to on the sex front, and you know, sometimes you have to go past your boundaries in order to know exactly where they are." Around midnight, we decided the X had worn off enough to where we could be in a cab without it being too obvious we were on something. We called a taxi to pick us up at the beach parking lot. Back at the hostel, Trey said, "Let me see your eyes, dude." He looked into my eyes and said "Shit, that was some fine X dude; your eyes are still so fucking dilated they look like saucers. How about mine?" I looked at his eyes and his pupils were huge, like they covered his whole eye. So that's why we couldn't read the clock before. Back in our room, Trey got a couple of cold beers out of the mini-fridge. It was only our third beer each in like 5 hours, so cold and good. Neither of us wanted this trip to end. We sat on the same bed and had our arms across each other like you'd see best friends do on a kindergarten playground, back before cultural inhibitions made you self-conscious about touching your best friends. Trey assured me that we'd be awake for a long while yet, as X wears off real slow. I was suddenly keenly aware of how he had been my guide through all this, from supplying the magic pills to telling me what to expect then leading the therapy session conversations through all sorts of wonderful subjects. I then wanted to give something important back to him, always an instinct of mine from that first day when I wanted him to have that first money I had earned. Feeling zero inhibitions about anything for the first time in my life, I grabbed the laptop we had bought to supplement the hostel computers and said to my buddy: "Think back to the way this whole crazy night got started, Trey, when you were telling me how horny you were back at the Thai joint about 6 o'clock. All that talk about sex has made me horny too, especially that last part." Then I looked him in the eye with a confident smile and asked: "So, Trey, want to watch some porn with me?" Knowing all the things Trey had done with his buddies back in Florida and that he and Tyler had watched porn while getting each other off a lot more recently, I wanted to be a part of that with Trey. I could never in a million years have suggested that even 6 hours ago, but now it seemed like exactly the right thing to say. Trey hugged me like a soccer player hugs the teammate who just scored the winning goal and said: "Fuck yeah I do!" Trey then put one of his legs across mine on the bed and said: "I had promised myself before we started not to suggest anything tonight that might make you feel uncomfortable, even if I thought you'd like it. It makes me so fucking happy that you're the one making that suggestion." "Well you're the only person in the world I could have ever said that to, Trey. Now let's get some action on this screen before I change my mind." I knew I wanted to do this, but was anxious to hurry it up. Trey typed furiously away at the computer, saying one of his buddies in Florida had sent him some sizzling porn last week that he had only watched a few seconds of so far. We leaned back against the wall, sitting side-by-side, sideways on my bed, the laptop on Trey's knees, leaning in where we could both see the screen. A movie started featuring these guys and girls around our age, with Greek letters on their t-shirts and typical college memorabilia visible in the "dorm room" where it was being filmed. It was two guys and two girls, playing some stupid drinking game and chugging small cups of beers. All four of them were good looking and had hard bodies. "You lose!" the pretty little brunette announced brightly to one of the guys, who stood up and started taking off his shirt, then his shorts, down to his boxers. Then the girls "lost" again and took off their tops, revealing nice sets of real-looking breasts. Things quickly progressed to where the girls "lost" and had to fondle the guys' cocks through their underwear, with giggling and laughing as a soundtrack. Within a minute, everybody was naked and the girls were on their knees, sucking these two guys' sizable but not stupid-big cocks. The blond in particular gave great head, taking one of the guys down to the balls as his eyes rolled back in his head. I started to feel my cock grow as the camera zoomed in on her wet sloppy sucking on that big tool. Still feeling complete freedom from inhibitions, I stood up, shucked off my jeans and returned to my spot next to Trey, my half-hard dick making a tent in the fabric of my boxers. With a sly grin, Trey lifted his butt up and pulled his jeans off too, revealing some tight knit boxer briefs that showed off his growing bulge even more than my boxers did. He didn't say a word, but just started rubbing himself through the fabric, working himself up. He looked right at me. I wanted to stay in the lead on this, for Trey's sake and my own point-proving to myself about breaking through old boundaries. I pulled my t-shirt over my head then slipped off my boxers, my cock springing out about 3/4 hard. I then tugged playfully at Trey's briefs and said: "Come on, dude, don't leave me hanging out here like I'm the only perv in this room. Lose 'em!" Treys quickly got naked too and as we started to slowly play with our own cocks, smiling at each other. I noticed how thick his was compared to mine. I was an inch longer, maybe, but I was fascinated by his thickness. I also liked the way the soft skin bunched up a little around the head of his cock as his left hand slowly moved the skin of his shaft up and down. As the sex on the screen really heated up, I looked at Trey right in the eye and said, "It feels so fucking amazing to be able to say this out loud: I want to touch your cock. I want to feel it in my hand and jack it like I'm doing mine right now. Can I?" "Fuck yeah, dude. I wanna touch yours too." I confidently reached over and took yet another step down my path of exploration and discovery. Trey's thick meat felt so good in my hand. I marveled at how much different it felt then my own dick. Trey was staring at my dick, which was in his hand now: "This is a nice cock, dude. I had no idea it was so big. No wonder that girl from Arizona liked it so much." Trey's big grin was contagious as usual. Trey and I played with each other's tools for a couple of minutes, gently and slowly. Then I asked Trey what he liked to lube his cock up with when he jacked off. It turned out he preferred conditioner -- no wonder he took such long showers! A middle school buddy had told him how slick conditioner was and he had been hooked on it since, but when he wasn't in the shower, he liked lotion. I got up and retrieved a travel-size bottle of lotion some guest had left and walked back to the bed, my big hard-on bouncing out in front of me. I grinned and Trey grinned back, then I plopped down on the bed and proceeded to lube us both up for some serious mutual hand job pleasure. Trey looked at me like "who is this guy?" and began working my pole the way he said he liked it himself. He massaged my furry balls gently and ran a couple of fingers down below them, rubbing and lingering on the space below my balls that he called the taint. It sent shivers up my spine. I did the same to him and we talked each other through what we were doing, asking for lots of specific feedback about what felt good, what to keep doing and what wasn't working. It was the most incredibly uninhibited thing I had ever done, after a whole night of breaking down the barriers of inhibition one by one. I loved it when he would rub the spot under the head, below my piss slit and Trey gave that special attention. He was into me playing with his large balls, which I was surprised to see he kept shaved smooth. He said it made it feel better when he fucked and that he had shaved them since he was 16. More interesting information! We watched several hot scenes from the porn video and even though there were girls squealing with orgasms and was jizz flying everywhere in the film, neither of us was getting close. Trey said that was completely normal too, that really good X made it hard to bust a nut. It felt amazing, though, sitting right next to each other, our legs touching, and our hands working on each other's cock and balls as we told each other what sensations we were feeling. After the video's credits were playing and I had exhausted the small lotion bottle, I asked Trey to cue up something more edgy, to see if we could get off. "Go ahead and try to shock the farm boy!" I challenged him. He knew exactly what I was getting at and soon found a bi-sexual movie with lots of guy-on-guy action. The taboo of even watching this made my cock swell up even more. I watched intently as this normal, good looking twenty-something dude started sucking a nice looking thicker than average cock like it was the most important thing to him in the world. I was amazed at how he swallowed the big cock in front of him all the way down to the balls. I wanted to feel that, I thought. Trey and I were making slow progress on each other's nuts as we watched the bi movie. I asked him if that's what Tyler did to him and Trey said "oh, yeah," then went on to described the differences between a guy who knows what he's doing sucking your cock, versus a girl, as always in graphic detail. Trey said there's something deeply satisfying about watching a guy who really wanted your load gulp it all down like he was starving, then lick up any stray drops or spurts trying to get every drop. Trey was breathing heavy like he was getting close when he told me that he had left out a few details when he told me about the Tyler sessions. I wanted every detail and playfully squeezed his balls, saying "Tell me the whole truth or I'll squeeze a lot harder!" Trey gasped and laughed, then said "I sometimes shoot really big loads, dude, like more than Tyler could handle, you know? And so sometimes some cum would escape his mouth and dribble down on Tyler's chin. Or sometimes, when I'd first start shooting in his mouth, he would almost choke trying to swallow it all, and he'd pull me out of his mouth and cum would fly everywhere." I was feeling my orgasm build as I visualized that scene, then Trey continued: "So there's this glob of jizz on his chin, right, or, or some of my cum would land somewhere on my body because Tyler had taken the damn spurting thing out of his mouth for a second to swallow and I'd kept shooting. Then after I quit cumming, while Tyler was thoroughly cleaning my cock with his tongue like he always did, I would always scoop up any stray jizz I could find with my index finger, then feed it to him. And he'd hungrily suck it off my finger." The image of Trey feeding Tyler his jizz off his fingers put me over the edge and I told Trey I felt like I was about to shoot off a fire hose, thinking about what he had just said. I warned him to aim that thing in his hand away from himself if he knew what was good for him and just as I said it, I said 'Oh fuck, of fuck, holy shit, I'm gonna cum, oh fffuuuuucccckkkk' and thrust my hips forward, unleashing a huge volley of white cream. I was spasming and cumming all over the place when Trey, who had been staring at my pulsing cock as it spurted, started shooting too, some of his jizz hitting me above my left eye as he blasted out surges of hot cum. I watched in fascination as his big thick tool shot out his load. I caught most of it, feeling it between my fingers and using it to rub all over Trey's cock and balls, trying to make his orgasm last and last. Trey was doing the same thing to me and when I saw my jizz on his fingers I thought how hot and dirty it would be if Tyler licked it off his fingers. My cock was still jerking with little oozes of jizz when Trey grabbed my hand and made me quit squeezing his spent cock. We fell into each other, laughing out loud until we had tears in our eyes as we hugged through the sticky mess we had made. It was the most explosive orgasm of my short sexual life. "I don't think I'll jack off in the shower quite as often now, knowing you're right there in the other bed with that amazing hand job technique, dude." Trey said out loud what I had just thought. After a minute, I shoved Trey off of me with a huge grin and said "Come on; I need a helper to clean all this spunk off me in the shower." I grabbed two towels, opened our door and looked down the empty hallway. The coast was clear, so we made a mad dash to the men's shower, buck naked in the hostel's hall, happier than I ever imagined was possible.