Bad Boys and Brothers

This experience took place around the time that I was in third and fourth and fifth grade and living with my parents in a seedy neighborhood of unpaved streets. All us little kids were cautioned to stay away from certain "bad boys" who lived in the middle of our block.

My young friends and I were so sheltered that we didn't know exactly what the brothers did that gave them a bad reputation. They were a little older than we were and they made life miserable for us (and everybody else) whenever they got a chance.  We knew there was more to their meanness than we could understand, something that only the adults really grasped.

Years later it became known that the boys' father was in jail and the mother was alcoholic. There was also a hunch that the boys (at least the two older ones) had bi-polar swings in personality that were sometimes violent. From what we kids observed, the boys were cruel to people's pets. They often snuck out of their windows at night, making the cops suspicious because they were loitering around way after dark. For that reason they were sometimes escorted home in a police car which they seemed to enjoy. I know now that they also engaged in shoplifting, burglary, racial bullying and criminal mischief.

I didn't know those details as a kid, though, just that the boys were "bad." I was cautious to stay on the public sidewalk when I passed their house on the way to see one of my friends. If the bad boys were at home they would yell and mock as I passed. Once they doused me with the hose. Sometimes they followed me or shouted at me to come in and play with them. That frightened me. I was afraid that they would haul me kicking and screaming into their house and I would never get out alive.

Sometimes I took the alley to my friend's house instead of the front sidewalk. This route was dangerous also. The little delinquents once chased me down the alley until I ran gasping and crying up to my friend's back door. His mother saw it all from the kitchen window and yelled at the brothers that she never wanted them near her house again. The next day her car had four flats.

Today the boys would probably be called psychopathic.

There came a time when the two older ones were convicted of auto theft. Fourteen and fifteen -- and already had a criminal record. They were sent away to detention. Jimbo, their younger brother who was somewhat close to my age, was left behind. Now lacking the older guys' influence, he appeared lost but no longer a threat, sort of useless without his brothers to back him up.

One day he was out in his backyard when I passed along the alley.

"Hey, come here!" he called to me. "I need some help."

He was trying to repair a bicycle whose chain had come off the sprockets, and needed another pair of hands. The two of us together fixed the bike, and then Jimbo said he needed to piss but didn't want to go in the house. I was embarrassed by the word "piss" and astonished at the idea of urinating outside, but of course we were soon peeing together at the back fence.

One thing led to another and we became frequent piss pals, revealing only a brief glimpse of our peters as we daringly let them poke out of our open zippers for a quick pee and then cramming them right back again.

Then one day Jimbo said rather proudly that he wanted to show me something. He pulled his pants way down to exhibit his entire package and said, "Look! Hair!"

He did indeed have a few little filaments above his dick. I was completely stunned by the incident. Not just by Jimbo showing off his entire prick and balls, but also by the discovery that he wore no underpants.

"You can tickle my hair if you want to," he confided. We entered a phase of touching and massaging each other. Jimbo always became erect. Soon I was growing stiffies also, but neither one of us was far enough into puberty to have an ejaculation. The massages always ended with each of us generously playing with the other guy's stiff business.

Once I got over my guilt at us touching each other's off-limits spots, Jimbo became my most important friend. I felt like I was doing him a favor because nobody else would hang out with him. Besides that I was sorry for him because he apparently couldn't afford underwear. And, face it, I enjoyed the mutual tickling and touching that we gave each other.

Our friendship lasted about six months. That's when the older brothers returned. A black curtain instantly descended between Jimbo and me. The older brothers were bitter about their incarceration, and their jail buddies had taught them a new bag of tricks. They were more angry and more violent than before. Every family in the neighborhood was their target. Jimbo sometimes gave me a wistful look when we happened to see each other, as if he was apologizing for turning against me. I think maybe he wanted me to understand that he had no choice. To me he seemed pitiful, cussing and stealing and threatening kids along with his brothers -- and yet wearing no underpants.

The boys were playing with a stolen gun one night and accidentally fired it through a wall, striking their mother in the arm. Jimbo came running to our house for help (my mother was a nurse). He stayed on our front porch, crying, until a policeman came looking for him.  All three boys were sent off to a mysterious "clinic" that I suppose was a juvenile mental health facility. After release they each went to separate foster homes.

Why tell this story? It still haunts me and there's no other forum where I could tell all the details. I believe that I knew the "real" Jimbo for six months. The two of us enjoyed our private activities with each other, loving our tickling fingers and stiffening boners. We never talked about the mean stuff he used to do with his brothers. But once the two big boys were released from detention Jimbo relapsed and they all became hard-core little petty criminals. Sometimes I flatter myself into thinking that having me for a friend over the long haul could have changed Jimbo.

Regi Sharp