Hold Fast by Kevin Major

thinking it over, I began to fall off to sleep. I was tired, but what kept me half awake was all these wild thoughts that started running around in my head about me and Brenda. Some of them was just aboutas private as you can get. And my hands under the covers didn’t exactly do much to stop them. No need to say any more than that. It’d only get me embarrassed.
    When I woke up the next morning all I could feel was my underwear wet and sticking to me. Make no wonder, considering the dream I had after I went to sleep. It didn’t bother me much. I knew what was going on and it happened before, anyway. The worst lousy thing was the stains it made. Thank heavens for the guy who invented printed sheets.
    I don’t like to say it, but sometimes sex and all that goes with it can scare the shit out of a guy. I mean, I’m normal and all that, but you hardly knows what to do sometimes. I’ve been feeling it more and more over the past few months. I’m getting more erections than I’ve ever had before, especially when I wakes up in the morning. Just guaranteed, guaranteed to be hard, especially if I’ve been dreaming. Erection — that sounds pretty scientific. That’s a word I picked up in a film we had in guidance class a couple of years ago. Us fellows started using it all the time after we had the class. Just for a laugh. I knew most of what they showed in the films anyway, but I’m glad I seen them because the way they showed it sorta tied everything together. And now I knows all the goings on with regards to females too.
    But still, like I said, sometimes sex can scare the shit out of a fellow. The thing is — you’ve got all this information plus you knows what you feels like yourself, and then you got to figure out how to go about dealing with it. And then again, just how much of it have girls got on their minds.
    Sure, you can carry on a lot. Take a gawk at all the sexy magazines you can lay your hands on. Tell dirty jokes. Fire around comments. The fellows our age, the way we talks among ourselves, you’d think we was already all a bunch of sex maniacs.
    But actually being with a girl, all that is different. If you really likes her, you don’t go on with all kinds of dirt because she’s liable to drop you faster than she would a stick of dynamite. It’s just that it gets to the point where you’re not sure what you should be saying to them or what you should be doing. These days it almost makes you wonder whether or not you’re normal if sex is not on your mind all the time when you’re alone with a girl.
    Well, as far as me and Brenda was concerned, there wasn’t chance enough for it to become much of a problem. We wasn’t together long enough for that. As you probably guessed, I didn’t make it out to Simon’s Bay to stay for the weekend like I wanted to. And the way I got turned down loused up my life in the house even more than it was already.
    I talked it over with Gerard and Brenda, and that afternoon when I went back to the house I asked Aunt Ellen if I could go. I told her who Gerard was, how everything was all set, what time I would be going and getting back, all that. She didn’t say yes or no. All she would say was that I’d have to ask the army sergeant first. I might a known.
    When supper was cleared away that night and I knew that he was by himself in the living room, I went in to put the question to him. He was lying back on the chesterfieldreading the newspaper. There was no sense beating around the bush. I came right out with it — the same thing I said to Aunt Ellen.
    He looked at me, never stopped to think about it for one second, and said, “No.”
    Not another word. Just no. And went back to reading the newspaper then. Like he was a judge in the supreme court or something. Sure b’y, I thought, play the big boss. But if you thinks you’re going to get away with it that easy, then you