When they got back to Lukas’, Matthew wanted to go upstairs and see Lukas’ part of the house. He had seen it before, of course, only a week or two back, but he wanted to know if he could see any evidence of what Lukas had been doing that morning, dancing, being in the shower, the jocks he had worn, or something, to convince himself that what had happened was real.

It hardly seemed like it could be.

Out on the boat, with the wind blowing, and the sun shining, it seemed like such a thing couldn’t be true. There was no way. Though if Matthew could see some evidence, some hard evidence of what had happened, then he would have to believe it.

‘Have you still got that studio?’

‘Studio?’

‘The dance studio.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I come up and have a look at it?’

‘Sure. If you want to.’

They were easier with each other now. They’d had coffee at the marina together after coming back in, and they’d even laughed on the boat, something that made things seem more impossible to Matthew.

It was like there were two Lukases. A Lukas on the inside, and a Lukas on the out. It didn’t seem, talking to Lukas, that Lukas could be the same person whose body he’d been in.

They walked down the hall together and Lukas opened the door.

The studio was the same. Just as it had been, but empty. There was no sign of the bottle Lukas had been drinking out of, or of his leotards under the parallel bars, which Matthew had half expected to see.

Aside from this, it looked just as it had.

Matthew walked over to the ropes in the corner.

‘Do you climb these?’

‘We used to.’

‘Do you want to have a race?’

‘A race?’ Lukas seemed to think that this was incredible. Impossible.

‘Come on,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll race you.’

‘Can I take my shoes off?’

‘If you want.’

Matthew outstripped Lukas, reaching the ceiling when Lukas was two-thirds, maybe more, of the way up. Matthew hit his head.

‘Ow!’ he said.

Lukas reached the top.

‘You beat me,’ he said, breathing heavily.

‘I always used to.’

To think they had climbed these ropes. In leotards. As twelve year olds. How gay had they had been?

‘See how long you can hang on,’ Matthew said.

‘I’ll fall.’

‘I’ll catch you.’

‘How can you catch me if you’re there, and I fall.’

‘I’m a superhero,’ he said.

Lukas frowned. And smiled uncertainly.

He slipped a bit.

‘I better get down.’

They climbed down the ropes slowly, trying not to burn their hands, though when Matthew got to the bottom, his jeans were riding up into the crack of his arse. He had to grab them at the thighs and pull them down. It was so fucking uncomfortable. His balls had been squashed all afternoon on the boat, sitting on either side of the seam of his jeans while he sat at the tiller. At the coffee shop. And the jocks felt like a rag, twisted all through his gear, and up the crack of his arse.

Matthew didn’t know how Lukas could stand it. The feeling of hurting his balls. He hated it. There was no way he’d do any of the things Lukas had been doing. Shit, no. No way he’d tie a cord around his balls, or squeeze them in a pair of tongs. No way he’d hit them with a fucking brush or crack them on a parallel bar. Lukas must be crazy.

But had he really done those things?

It didn’t seem like it now, standing in the studio and breathing heavily, looking at Lukas. It didn’t seem like Lukas could have really done those things. Had he really been in Lukas’ body? It was only this morning.

‘Can I use your bathroom?’ Matthew said as they were walking up the hall.

‘Sure,’ Lukas said.

There was one way he could check. That lotion Lukas had used. If that was in his vanity, then it had to be true.

Matthew closed the door behind him and tiptoed over to the vanity. He slid out the drawer silently, and frowned. There was a whole lot of stuff in there.

And then he saw it.

It picked the bottle out. It was called Regaine. And was the sort of thing you’d get from a chemist, obviously.

Matthew unscrewed the lid, saw that it was an eye-dropper, and felt a chill ripple through his body.

Shit, he said to himself.

He closed the lid and put it away.

And flushed the toilet.

#

In the morning, he practically jumped out of bed when he heard the alarm go. It was seven-thirty. He had hardly needed to set it this early, but had said he would definitely be at Lukas’ by nine.

He flipped the covers off and got into the shower half asleep. His cock, as usual, was hard as a rock, as it was every morning, but he didn’t feel like pulling himself.

He was sick of that, after yesterday.

After he had come home he had pulled himself again, and then pulled himself three more times before he had gone to bed.

It was those fucking tablets, he said to himself.

The whole of yesterday seemed candy-coloured now, like a candy-coloured dream. He threw his head back and let the water run over his face. Out on the boat, at Lukas’ place, his mother in the garden. All of these things seemed unreal. Or too real. Hard and bright and impossibly colourful. And he had been racing.

He took a couple of deep breaths and bent forward, coughing.

There was no way he was taking those again.

He had arranged with his mother to get a lift, though when he arrived at Lukas’ it was five past nine.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to wait for my mum.’

Lukas was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. A pair of sandals.

‘It’s okay,’ Lukas said. ‘We’re still having breakfast.’

Matthew had to go in and say good morning to Mr Sorensen. And had to talk about how they were going up the coast, and even ask him if it was okay to drive Lukas’ car while Lukas finished his tea.

‘Well, of course,’ Mr Sorensen said. ‘It’s his car.’

‘We’d better go,’ Matthew said, when Lukas got up from the table.

Lukas nodded. ‘I’ll just clean my teeth,’ he said.

He raced up the stairs while Matthew waited in the hall.

By the time he came down it was almost nine-thirty. Matthew was anxious to go. It was only when they were half-way up the coast that they started to talk about where they were actually going to go.

‘You want to go to Whale?’ Matthew said.

‘Yeah. Okay,’ Lukas said, sounding happy about it, definite and pleased.

They had used to go to Whale Beach as kids, when Lukas had used to tag along with Matthew’s family. It had been years since Matthew had been there. Ten minutes later, Matthew had already turned off on the road to Whale when Lukas said,

‘Do you want to go swimming?’ his voice rising on the swimming.

‘Well of course,’ Matthew said.

Lukas stopped for a minute. ‘I thought you just meant go up the coast. Have lunch or something.’

‘Shit no. We need to go to the beach.’

‘I haven’t got any trunks.’

Matthew realised all at once that Lukas hadn’t brought a bag, hadn’t brought anything.

‘Well you can swim in your shorts.’

‘I’ve got jocks on.’

‘Well you can swim in those. Heaps of guys swim in jocks.’

Matthew said it without thinking. A moment later he was wondering what the fuck sort of jocks Lukas was wearing. There was no way he was going on the beach with Lukas in some little kid’s jocks. Spiderman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something. Fuck no.

‘There’ll be a shop or something. If you want to buy something,’ Matthew said. ‘You probably should.’

Whale Beach was tiny. There was no town or anything and the only shops that were there were there for the tourists. The shop that sold beachwear was closed.

‘We should have gone up to Locust, or something,’ Matthew said.

They could drive back out, and go up there, though the road back to the highway was at least half an hour out again, and then another fifteen or twenty minutes up to the turn-off to Locust. It wasn’t worth it.

‘I haven’t got a towel,’ Lukas said.

‘Well I’ve got a spare towel.’ Matthew put his backpack onto the sidewalk and opened it up. He always had a spare towel. One for drying himself after he had a shower, though it wasn’t a beachtowel.

‘It’s a bathtowel,’ Lukas said as Matthew handed it to him.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Matthew said, not looking at Lukas, pissed off with him actually. There were people everywhere. People all over the beach. A hundred or more. And it was a hot day. A perfect day.

What the fuck had Lukas been thinking not bringing trunks?

They walked onto the beach. Matthew was wearing flip-flops and board shorts. All he had to do was lay out his beachtowel and take his T-shirt off.

He flung out his towel and straightened it while Lukas flung out his bathtowel beside it. It was obviously a lot smaller, and looked it. Though it was simple. Dark green. It wasn’t like it had a rose pattern on it or anything.

Matthew peeled his T-shirt off and bunched it up in his hands. He lay down on the towel and put his head on his T-shirt, turning his head away from Lukas.

Lukas was taking his T-shirt off.

Matthew could see his shadow.

Lukas stopped.

Matthew turned his head and looked up at him.

‘Well, come on,’ Matthew said.

Lukas had his hand on the button of his jeans.

‘You think?’

‘Just do it. No one’s going to fucking care.’

Lukas twisted the button and pulled the zipper down.

Matthew propped himself up on his elbows and pulled his bag toward him. He started looking through it, looking for his sunglasses, though he cast a glance back at Lukas as Lukas pulled his jeans down to his knees and pulled them over his feet.

What the fuck? Well, that wasn’t so bad, Matthew thought, frowning and turning his head down. They looked white. Just white ones. Though they had something on them though. Some little pattern like tiny little orange balls all over them.

Lukas knelt down on the towel and Matthew got a better look.

Oh fuck, he thought.

They were so fucking thin he could see Lukas’ skin through them, and they weren’t even double fabric at the front. He could see the shape, and even the colour of Lukas cock, his sack.

And they were what? They were Simpson’s jocks. They had tiny little Simpson heads all over them, Lisa and Bart and Maggie and Homer and Moe and the rest of them, like little spaced apart balls, though they were so faded you could hardly tell what they were.

Shit, Matthew thought, turning his head away quickly.

The fucking elastic at the waist, around the legs, wasn’t even tight, and he could see up the insides of Lukas’ thighs, into the hollows of his groin, could see the fucking skin of his sack there. The things weren’t even big enough to stretch around Lukas’ sack. The kid was practically naked.

Matthew felt his heart racing. Felt his head pounding.

Oh, man, he thought. He felt himself getting hard. Why the fuck are you getting hard over that?

He lay still, but kept his head turned away, while Lukas lay down beside him. He knew he had his sunglasses in one hand, on the side Lukas was lying, but he didn’t want to move to put them on. He looked out over the people he could see on his side.

Old people, mostly. No kids, or only very little kids. And a couple of girls in the thirties, who looked okay. A guy who would have been thirty, maybe, or in his late twenties, wearing a pair of speedos. He was pretty big. Had a big tanned chest and biceps.

There wouldn’t be anyone from school here. It would be pretty unlikely. Still, though, if there was someone and they saw him with Lukas, with Lukas dressed like that.

Matthew turned his head and faced the other way. He frowned and pulled his glasses up to his face. He put them on, struggling to lift his head and do it with one hand.

Lukas was lying on his stomach and had his head turned away. His arse was poking up in the air. A couple of rounded little hills. It didn’t look so bad. They could just be speedos. White ones. And no one was looking, as far as Matthew could see. Down the beach a ways there were some young guys playing with a frisbee. Some guys his and Lukas’ age, though Matthew didn’t suppose they’d be anyone he knew.

He turned over and sat up. He hadn’t put any sunscreen on. He rifled through his bag and stole a glance at Lukas’ arse. No, that didn’t look good. You could see his skin through them, and there was a ladder on one cheek about the size of a dime. The elastic was loose around his legs, and they were creased into the bottom of his arse crack.

Shit, Matthew thought.

He squirted some sunscreen onto his hand and started rubbing it into his legs, ignoring Lukas. He rubbed it into his shoulders, arms, his chest, and contorted himself to rub it into his back, paying no attention to Lukas, but looking out over the beach every now and again to see if anyone was watching. No one seemed to care.

‘Do you want some sunscreen?’ Matthew said.

Lukas turned his head and squinted in the sunlight.

‘I don’t really need it.’

‘You’ll get burnt.’

‘I just go red.’

‘Yeah. It’s called sunburn.’

‘It goes away.’

‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

Lukas shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not really.’

‘You’ll get cancer.’

‘I really don’t care.’

Matthew frowned at him and put the sunscreen away.

He lay down again, on his back this time, and turned his head to face Lukas. ‘Tell us when you’re hot,’ he said.

Lukas nodded, closing his eyes. He turned his face away.

Fifteen minutes later, Matthew was hot.

‘Do you want to go in?’

Lukas propped himself up on his elbows.

‘Do you think?’

‘Well, we didn’t come here to lay on the beach,’ Matthew said.

Lukas turned over and they got up.

As they were walking down to the water’s edge, Matthew saw a woman with a toddler turn her head and stare at Lukas. He walked a bit ahead of him, and it was only as he was ankle deep in water that Lukas came up beside him.

They started to walk forward into the waves.

‘Wow. It’s pretty cold,’ Lukas said.

It was.

Lukas crossed his arms over his chest and they stepped over a wave. The bottom fell away and they were waist deep in water after another two or three waves. As the tide receded, Matthew caught a glimpse of Lukas as the water dropped around his thighs.

He may as well have been naked. Wet, the jocks were about as transparent as a net curtain.

‘Let’s go out further,’ Matthew said. The best place, always, was to get beyond where the waves broke.

They ducked under the next wave or two and surfaced in rolling water behind the breakers. Treading water.

‘So have you learnt how to body surf yet?’

‘I haven’t tried.’

Matthew had always been teaching Lukas how to body surf, though he had never seemed to get the hang of it.

‘I haven’t got any buoyancy,’ Lukas added.

‘That’s bullshit,’ Matthew said. ‘You don’t need buoyancy.’

‘I haven’t got any body fat.’

‘What? And I have?’

Lukas frowned, wincing, and smiled. His lips were dark red.

‘You’re a fatty,’ he said, flashing his very white teeth.

‘Oh,’ Matthew said, splashing a bit of water at him. ‘I’m a fatty, am I?’ He splashed a handful of water and hit Lukas in the face.

Lukas started splashing wildly, and the two of them covered each other in water. Lukas ducked under the surface and came up behind Matthew. He splashed a handful of water over the back of his head. Matthew turned and grabbed Lukas’ arm. He pulled his back toward him and started tickling Lukas’ torso, his arms wrapped around him from behind.

‘Do you want a tickle fight, Sorensen?’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Is that what you want?’

Lukas was writhing, squirming each and every way and trying to get free.

‘No,’ Lukas said, wriggling to get free. He bucked his body and Matthew’s hands slipped down, brushing against Lukas’ jocks, which were swimming around his body like a loose rag. The palm of Matthew’s hand pressed against Lukas’ penis, a hard, cold stub.

‘Don’t, Matty,’ Lukas said.

The name, more than anything, made Matthew stop.

‘Here,’ Matthew said, holding him by the arm after Lukas had struggled free. ‘Are you okay?’

Lukas nodded. Matthew released his arm. And they treaded water, looking at each other.

High above them, a plane was raking itself a white path through the sky.

‘It’s a pretty nice day,’ Lukas said.

Matthew nodded.

‘Are you cold now?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Are you going to try body surfing?’

‘Okay.’

They swam over the bulge of the breakers.

‘Just stay beside me, and I’ll tell you when to go,’ Matthew said. He turned around, looking at the swell coming. Let one, two, three waves pass, and then said, ‘Okay. Swim.’

Lukas swum beside him and they caught the wave at the same time, one hand out in front, the other behind. There were moments when Lukas was beside him. And then he folded under the wave.

Matthew rode it in and stood up knee deep in water in time to see Lukas pull himself out of the foam. He stood up, disoriented, his jocks around his thighs, his bare little arse showing for every one while he tried to wipe the water out of his eyes.

He grabbed his jocks as Matthew came up beside him and pulled them up to his waist. They were barely hanging there, sucked against his skin, Lukas’ cock a hard little stub maybe an inch long, a wet pocket of cotton hanging underneath it as though Lukas had no balls.

Matthew turned his head and looked around. No one seemed to have noticed.

‘Are you right?’ Matthew said.

Lukas nodded.

‘That was pretty good. Better than you use to be.’

Lukas nodded again. He was shivering.

‘Duck down in the water,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s colder cause you’re in the wind.’

They went back out again and Lukas managed to ride the next wave in, not right into the shore, but a fair way in.

On the next wave, and the one after that, Lukas got dumped again. And again there were moments when he was standing naked, his jocks around his thighs, while he tried to orient himself.

Matthew started to find it funny. The guys who had been playing with the frisbee were out in the surf now, and they were watching every time Lukas came up, nodding and laughing at him. Matthew caught their eye once or twice and smiled.

What made it seem okay was that Lukas didn’t seem to be aware that people were watching him now. A few of the people on the beach were maybe watching, the mother with the child, and these guys his own age. There were four of them.

And there was a boy building a sandcastle.

No one else seemed to be watching. And Lukas had got so used to it by the fifth or sixth wave, that he didn’t even seem to be worried about it.

It didn’t look that bad, Matthew figured, because Lukas looked like a kid. With no pubes, which was obvious, and a little dick, people would have taken him for a twelve year old.

On the seventh or eighth wave, when Lukas got dumped again, he was standing in the shallows with his jocks around his ankles, trying to clear his head before he could find the wherewithal to bend down and pull his jocks up. He dragged them onto his thighs, a twisted piece of cloth, rolled tightly, and then stood there for ten or twenty seconds untwisting them before he could pull them up to his waist. Matthew stood there, looking at Lukas’ cock, which was nothing but a hard little end, a foreskin. His sack underneath it was so shrivelled with the cold that it was a rounded bulge, too tight to contain anything, it looked.

The next wave was a disaster.

Lukas held it almost to the end and then tumbled. When he came up, he was on his hands and knees, his arse facing backward, his head facing the shoreline. Matthew could see the pink little rose of his arse, and between his legs, Lukas’ shrivelled little gear. And then the next wave hit Lukas, pounding into his arse and driving his head into the sand. His legs and his arse flew up into the air. There was a moment when Matthew could see Lukas’ little gear, his legs stuck up the air, askew, his jocks caught around one ankle. He flipped over, and when the wave receded, he was lying in the surf.

Matthew went to help him. He pulled him up by his arm. Lukas stumbled and lost his jocks from around his ankle. Matthew saw them suck seaward in the undertow, tried to step on them, but missed.

He pulled Lukas away from the shoreline until they were waist deep in water.

‘I’ve lost my jocks,’ Lukas said.