Matthew eventually agreed to give Lukas the jocks he was wearing after they had swum out beyond the breakers and discussed it. Lukas couldn’t walk up onto the beach naked, though they had been treading water for ten or fifteen minutes before Matthew started to untie the cord on his board shorts.

He supposed he really should give Lukas the board shorts. They had a cord, even if they were too big for him. He could tie them. But there was no way Matthew wanted to walk up onto the beach in a pair of jocks, even if they were navy blue.

His dick was shrunken. It was cold. Lukas’ lips had turned purple. And he was shivering.

‘Here,’ Matthew said. ‘Hold these for a moment.’

He handed Lukas the board shorts and pulled his jocks down over his feet.

There was a moment when he felt the cold water circling all around his gear, and up in the crack of his arse, moments when the both of them were naked as they exchanged clothes and struggled to get dressed again. The feel of it, being naked in the water, the risk of it, made Matthew hard. He wouldn’t like to have been left naked and have had to have walked up onto the beach with nothing on. There was no way he would have been able to do it – to get his cock to go down so that he could.

He was only glad that Lukas couldn’t see he had an erection again.

It didn’t feel a hell of a lot better when he had pulled the board shorts back on. He still felt naked. They were too thin to wear with nothing underneath them, made of polyester or nylon or something.

Lukas struggled to pull the jocks up.

‘Fuck, they’re pretty big,’ he said.

Matthew nodded.

They would probably be swimming around him.

Matthew waited until he could get his cock to go down.

‘Do you want to go back in?’

Lukas did want to.

‘I don’t suppose you want to try and catch another wave?’

Lukas shrugged uncertainly.

‘Come on.’

He agreed, and managed, amazingly, to ride it right into the shore. When he stood up he was holding the jocks around his waist. And Matthew was right beside him.

They walked up to the towels and lay down on them. On their stomachs. Their faces toward each other.

‘You did pretty good on that last one.’

Lukas nodded, his teeth chattering.

‘You’ll get the hang of it if you keep trying.’

‘I should probably get a boogie board or something.’

‘A boogie board?’

‘I’ve got no buoyancy.’

‘Don’t start that again.’

Lukas swallowed and closed his eyes.

‘Do you want to get something to eat,’ he said, opening his eyes again, ‘when we warm up?’

‘I haven’t got any money.’

‘I’ve got some.’

Ten minutes later they walked up to the change rooms and had a shower, Lukas holding his jocks up by the side with one hand all the way, while he carried his jeans, his T-shirt, his towel and his sandals in his other hand. By the time they got into the change room the jocks had slipped up and sideways to reveal one whole cheek of Lukas’ arse at the rear, and at the front, his sack. They were so large he had to pull them up over his hip to get them to cover himself.

The change room was dark and cool. With a concrete floor. And the sour smell of sweat. At the top of the walls there was a space, with louvres, and the wind, which had picked up, was moaning through them. The trees outside casting changing shadows on the concrete floor.

Along one wall there were three showers without stalls.

They put their stuff on the bench and got into the showers. At first Lukas tried to hold the jocks up and wash himself but it wasn’t possible.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Matthew said.

Lukas let them drop to the floor and moved his hands all over his body, rinsing his hair, running his fingers behind his ears, swiping his hands over his back, over his chest, his thighs, pushing them around his genitals and scratching them with his fingernails. Lifting each foot and running his fingers between his toes.

Even now, when they were just having a shower to rinse off, he was washing himself like he hadn’t had a shower for weeks.

Matthew tried not to look at him.

Lukas bent down and picked up the jocks. He rinsed them, holding them close under the shower head, wrung them out, and then rinsed them again.

A boy, aged maybe seven or eight, ran into the change room, looked at the two of them in the shower, and then ran out again, after looking closely at Lukas with wide eyes.

Lukas turned the shower off, and Matthew turned his off, thinking it was the longest shower he’d ever had after a swim. I mean, it was only to rinse the sand off, he said to himself.

Lukas stood under the shower head wringing the jocks out, his arse poking backward as Matthew dried himself behind him.

He stepped out and flipped the jocks out, shaking them, put them on the bench and picked up his towel. He began by drying his hair, standing perfectly naked in front of Matthew and obviously not caring, though all this time Matthew had had his shorts on.

He dried his stomach and his chest, and then as he was drying his gear he said,

‘Do you think it looks stupid that I don’t have any pubes?’

Matthew frowned and looked down at his hairless groin.

‘I mean, I think I’m getting them.’ He let the towel hang over one hand, along his thigh, and stretched the skin above his penis out. ‘Can you see?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Matthew said.

Lukas dried his arse and his thighs, putting his feet up on the bench to dry his calves and ankles.

Matthew was already ready to go as Lukas pulled his jeans up, and zipped the metal fly over his pale stub of a cock. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, sat down and put his sandals on, and then stood up again ready to go.

He looked so fresh and clean, his cheeks glowing, his lips red, his hair so blond, that Matthew felt jealous of him. He was so fucking good looking, Matthew thought. No wonder everyone turns around and looks at him.

He would like to look like that. Not with a little cock and no pubes. But with blond hair, and red lips, and green eyes, and with white teeth when he smiled. Rosy skin. He’d have a girlfriend then, for sure, if he had his cock and Lukas’ looks. And was his size, or maybe a bit smaller. He was probably too big. Maybe not too tall but too solid. Lukas had called him a fatty.

‘Here,’ Lukas said, handing him the jocks.

‘Just leave them,’ Matthew said, taking them and tossing them onto the floor. He didn’t want to put something wet in his bag, and he didn’t want it to look to Lukas like he would wear them again.

They hit the concrete floor with a wet plopping sound, and Matthew supposed they would become one of those mysterious pairs of jocks, left in public places, that never seemed explicable, but were somehow so enticing.

It occurred to Matthew that both of them had come wearing jocks, though neither of them had them now. In the frail, polyester board shorts, he felt naked, and he had to keep fighting with himself, had been fighting with himself ever since they had come out of the water, and all the time in the change room, in the shower, fighting with himself just to keep his cock down. An erection, in these loose shorts, would have been a disaster, would have been a tent.

They ate at the Whale Beach Grill.

Matthew had a steak, and Lukas had fish.

His meal cost twenty-five dollars and he said to Lukas he would pay him back but Lukas said don’t worry about it. When he opened his wallet to pay Matthew saw what looked like five or six hundreds in there.

Even though Matthew had said he wouldn’t, the following morning he took two of the tablets again. He didn’t want to go into Lukas’ mind, into Lukas’ body. He just wanted to feel that feeling again. It was such a rush. No wonder the things had been antidepressants. What doctor now would prescribe them, he wondered, when they were amphetamine based?

Christian had said they were sometimes used for chronic pain. And Matthew could believe it. He couldn’t believe how anyone could feel bad on these things.

His mother had gone out, and Matthew wandered around the house looking at things. He had the same drifty feeling that he had had when he’d taken them before, but he didn’t feel like he was going out of his body. And after yesterday, he didn’t want to do anything to Lukas.

He frowned.

And felt sick.

Despite everything, no matter how he looked at it, there was no way he could believe he had really been inside Lukas’ body, inside Lukas’ mind. Even now, on the drugs, it seemed too incredible, though he had had proof after proof to convince him. Not only the Rogaine in Lukas’ vanity drawer, but the loofah on the shelf of his shower, the back-scrubbing brush, and in his bedroom, on a pile of clothes in the corner, the pale green leotard that Lukas had worn the day before yesterday. And then there was the key business. The padlock. The jocks. But still, all of it seemed unreal, like a dream.

If he could walk around in Lukas’ body. Convince himself. Really take Lukas over and make him do something that couldn’t be denied, then Matthew might have more faith in it.

At the moment, on the drugs, he felt like laughing at the idea.

His mother came home, though he figured he could face her. He was sitting in the kitchen, on a stool at the bench, eating a sandwich he had made, some fifteen minutes after she came in, when she confronted him. She came out of the laundry with something in her hand.

‘Where did you get these?’ she said, her voice rising to an incredulous pitch.

Matthew squinted, his mouth full.

What has she got? he started to wonder, and then he felt like he was choking. He coughed. He knew all at once what she had. He had to swallow, to control himself, and felt his eyes watering. He didn’t know what to say.

His mother was holding Lukas’ Superman jocks. He must have left them in his jeans, from the day before yesterday, and she had gone and picked them up off his floor.

He put his sandwich down.

‘Can you mind your own fucking business,’ he said, ‘and not go picking my clothes up. I’ve told you I don’t want you going in my room.’

‘Don’t you speak to me like that,’ she said, coming into the room. ‘These are some little boy’s underpants. They were in your jeans, Matthew.’ The cadence of her voice was jumping all over the place.

‘They’re mine,’ Matthew said, taking a swig of his milk.

He put it down while his mother scanned his face, working rapidly over it, her expression flitting here and there and trying to fix on something when she could settle on nothing but perplexity.

‘Have you taken something?’

‘What?’

‘You’re on something. I can tell just by looking at your eyes.’

Matthew stared at her. He picked his glass up and hurled it at the opposite wall. It crashed against the tiles and shattered into fragments.

‘You’re the only drug-addict in this house, Ellen,’ he said, feeling as he said it that it was totally unlike him. ‘And yes, I’m a pedophile. I stole these off a little kid and knifed him in the heart while I was fucking his arse.’

He pulled the underpants out of her hand and walked out of the room. He turned after getting through the door and came back again.

‘And if you want to know who’s acting weird in this house, then it’s fucking well you. What the fuck are doing washing my clothes? When was the last time you did a load of washing for anyone, you drunken fucking bitch?’

Matthew ran upstairs and slammed the door to his room. He locked it and found the loudest and angriest thing he had, a Prodigy CD. One he didn’t even like. He slammed it into the disk player and turned the volume up. He took two more of the tablets and threw himself onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands behind his head.

Fuck that, he said to himself.

His fucking mother!

The jocks in her hand. Like an image burnt into his retina.

He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

Oh, man. How fucking bad was that?

What had he fucking said? That he was a pedophile and…That was…shit, some fucking thing he had read, some guy fucking a little boy and stabbing him while he came in his arse.

Oh, man.

He rolled over and clutched the back of his head with his hands, covering his face with his biceps.

What must she be fucking thinking?

His mother?

He felt like crying.

Felt himself starting to cry.

She had read fucking stories to him when he was a little boy. Coming into his room, even before she went out, all done up in an evening gown, with a diamond necklace and earrings. And she would kiss him on the forehead and say, ‘How did I ever come to have such a beautiful boy?’

He cried.

She had been like a princess. With her blond hair. And blue eyes. He had thought she was the best mother in the world, before she had started drinking.

‘What the fuck happened?’ he said, sobbing the words out, his mouth opening into a rictus of pain.

His fucking mother!

What had he said that stuff to her for?

He cried.

Blew his nose on a tissue.

‘I can do whatever I fucking well want,’ he said to himself.

He turned the music off and closed his curtains, turned the strobe on and found the glasses. Found the baseball jocks, pulled them over his head, stared at the ceiling for a moment or two, knowing he was far gone. Drifted. Pulled the glasses onto his head, and went to find comfort in Lukas’ body.