Freestyle Exercise

Joshua liked to sit beneath the trees in late spring, when the
blossom began to fall from the branches like pink snow and extinguish
the dewy sparkles on blades of grass. He didn't like having to clear
the mulch from the lawn the next day but he could always conscript
Matthew or David to do that whilst he sat inside. There would be less
mulch this year, anyway. Only two of the trees had chosen to blossom.
The third, the oldest, Joshua feared would soon need to be felled. No
fruit had grown on it the previous autumn and there was black rot at
its extremities. Matthew may have grown out of climbing trees several
years before but David was still a keen suburban adventurer and trees,
like ponds, were always impossible to resist. They'd never had a pond
in case the boys fell in and now this apple tree looked to becoming
just as dangerous.

Joshua could hear David playing out in the street. He'd dug up a pair
of mismatched tennis rackets from somewhere and had decided to try for
Wimbledon with Lee from down the road. The fact that neither of them
could find a tennis ball was no obstacle in the face of preteen
ingenuity. Whilst Lee had gone home for lunch David had fished into the
kitchen drawers, looking for all the rubber bands they had in the
house. He had then made his own tennis ball, though he could only find
enough rubber bands to make a ball the size of a ping pong ball. It
hadn't lasted them long either. Gifted with more bounce than a
conventional tennis ball, Lee had hit it too hard with an over-arm
serve and it had bounded past David, over Mrs Tucker's fence and out of
sight. Neither of them dared go and ask for it back. They came to
Joshua expecting him to go for them but he just laughed and returned to
his garden chair.

The boys were playing with a football now. Football with tennis
rackets. The football they'd found needed a good pumping up so it
wasn't going to bounce away from them, nor was it going to do much
damage to the tennis rackets. Joshua brushed the fallen blossom from
the open page of his newspaper and smiled as he listened to David and
Lee disagree over the rules of their newly invented sport. The first
sign of summer wasn't the disappearance of the daffodils; it was the
sound of the kids emerging to play outside.

* * *

Beyond the fact that it left Rachel unsatisfied, Matt's biggest issue
with coming too soon was that he felt like he hadn't earned it. He'd
only been able to last more than three minutes on one occasion, and
Rachel had come by then, so it actually felt like he'd achieved
something. If he came before he was ready then it wasn't a climax, as
far as he was concerned, it was an accident. Rachel couldn't have been
more supportive. He would always offer to make her come another way,
but sex was over after he'd climaxed. Sucking her off wasn't sex. It
wasn't even cheese and biscuits and a glass of after dinner brandy. It
was just sucking her off.

Matt hugged Rachel and Rachel hugged him back. She liked to hug. She'd
told him. The first time they had sex, he kept stopping to give her a
hug. He also wanted to calm down and make himself last longer, but
she'd quickly indicated that every time he stopped it was prolonging
the experience for her as well, so she was never going to catch up with
him that way. Matt had thought sexual frustration was when you
desperately wanted sex, not when you just couldn't work out how to do
it right. One of these days Rachel would stop saying, "The only thing
more natural than sex is worrying about sex" and move on.

Matt needed a glass of water. His lips and throat were dry. They always
got that way. He didn't know why. It's not like he had particularly
exerted himself. But he always found he held his breath and tensed his
muscles. And he always broke a sweat. He'd been uncomfortable about
that at first. Now he always kept a glass beside the bed. Sometimes he
felt like stopping in the middle for a sip. It couldn't be nice for
Rachel to kiss him and find his mouth all sticky. She'd noticed he was
reticent to kiss her once but she hadn't said anything. Matt could tell
from her look how she felt and that just made him feel bad. Even when
he tried to make it better for her he only ended up making things
worse.

Sex simply wasn't enjoyable.

Rachel had her arms tucked beneath his, resting across his back with a
hand lightly hooked over each shoulder. She squeezed gently. She could
always tell when something was wrong. Matt lifted himself away from her
and sat on the side of the bed. He tipped a corner of the bed sheet
over his lap, took a sip from the glass and scratched an itch behind
his ear that wasn't really there. He didn't look back at her for a
while. He felt guilty. He guessed he looked sheepish. She ran both
hands over his back. He wanted to turn round, smile, jut out his jaw
proudly like he'd just blown her away. But she was still waiting for
that.

"How many fingers?" she asked.

She was pressing her fingertips into his back, at different locations
along his spine. He smiled. She always did this when he turned his back
on her. She'd told him once that even though it's home to the central
nervous system, our spines aren't very sensitive at all. She was a
veritable mine of such trivia.

"Seven," he said.

"Nine," she said. "How many now?"

"Three."

"Yeah! You earn a kiss."

She slid out of the bed to sit beside him. She was so close he could
feel the warmth of her thigh against his own. Then she touched a hand
to each cheek and moved in with his prize. For the better part of three
seconds, everything was okay.

* * *

"Oh, crap," went Lee.

"Go and ask for it this time."

"No. You go."

"You hit it over."

"Only because of your crap serve."

"You hit it too hard."

"Go and ask your dad."

"He won't do it."

"I'm not doing it either."

"I'll go in."

And David wasn't referring to Mr Robinson's garden, either. None of his
arguments with Lee lasted longer than a few comebacks because one of
them would always threaten to go home and then the other would back
down. Lee screwed up his face at not getting there first.

"I'll go if you go too," he said.

"Okay, but I'm knocking. You're talking."

"No, you talk. He doesn't like me."

"I'm knocking or I'm going in."

Lee screwed up his face again, shouldered past David roughly and
deliberately and went up to Mr Robinson's front door. Then, before
David could reach him, he bounced the knocker against the door
twice.

"You're still talking," said David.

"I'm just gonna stand here and be quiet."

"Then you'll never get the ball back."

"It's your ball."

It hadn't occurred to either of them that Mr Robinson might not be in.
Their parents had told them they always had to knock and ask for their
balls back, even if those balls had rolled into the front garden and
going to knock on the front door was an extra trip. They'd also been
told they'd have to be patient and wait if nobody was in. They never
took heed of that instruction. Lee looked relieved when Mr Robinson
hadn't come to his door even after he'd knocked a second time.

"He's not in. Let's go get it."

"We don't know where it landed."

"It's in the back garden. It can't be that hard to find."

"What if it landed in the pond?"

"Then put your wellies on."

"I'm not going to get it."

"Well, let's look first. We don't even know it's landed in the
pond."

David couldn't argue with that. He followed Lee around the side of the
bungalow. There was a gateway in the passage but there was no gate
attached to its hinges. Instead, the gate rested against the wall, as
it had been for as long as David could remember. Anybody could sneak
into Mr Robinson's back garden, and not all of them would be after
wayward footballs.

"I can see it!" hissed Lee.

It was at the bottom of the garden.

"See? You hit it too hard," David whispered.

Lee looked pretty chuffed.

"You could never hit it that far," he said.

David waited at the end of the passage, wary of going any further into
the open and exposed garden. He knew full well that next door could see
into Mr Robinson's backyard. His was the last bungalow in this row.
From there to the end of the street were houses. Crouching in the
shadow of the fence between the two gardens, David peered up at the
upstairs window to see if anyone was watching.

"Hurry up," he murmured.

Lee had gone to fetch the ball of his own accord. He obviously wanted
to make it especially clear to David just how far he had managed to
strike it. He strutted back with the ball tucked under his arm as if it
were his own garden. He got as far as the patio, then something grabbed
his attention, he froze and his face lit up. His grin just grew and
grew.

"What are you doing?" asked David.

"Shut up!" Lee hissed, smacking his lips with a finger.

"What are you looking at?"

Lee didn't reply. He just crooked a couple of fingers on each hand.
David frowned and slipped out of his hiding place, uncomfortable though
it made him feel. Lee, meanwhile, crept on tiptoes across the patio. He
had both hands on the windowsill by the time David reached him. He was
peering inside.

"What?" David whispered.

Lee turned an electric expression on him, then returned to looking
through the window. David snorted. Lee was both older and taller than
he was. He didn't have to stand on his toes to look through windows. As
soon as David had, though, he ducked right back down, his heart
thundering in his chest. Now he knew he was shorter for a reason, and
should never have looked.

Mr Robinson's daughter was lying naked on the bed with somebody heaving
on top of her. She had her arms wrapped around his flushed and bony
back, and was kneading it like sticky cookie dough. It was only when he
saw Matthew's coat draped around the back of a chair that David
realised what he was watching.

But Lee didn't know.

"Aww, look now!" he breathed.

David shook his head.

"Go on, look! Look!"

Half of David wanted him to run and tell somebody Matthew was killing
Mr Robinson's daughter. But the other half made him stay and look
again.

* * *

Joshua was getting an in-growing toenail. The big toe of his left foot
had been feeling funky all morning but it was only now that he had got
his sock off and was rubbing the skin around the cuticle that he could
tell.

"Do you have to do that at the dinner table, Josh?"

He'd had one before, back in his student days, and hadn't told anybody
about it at the time. He hadn't fancied going to the doctor and having
him tear it out. Instead he just kept his socks on all day and night,
pretended it wasn't there and hoped it would go away. And it did. It
took the better part of the third year but the nail had re-established
itself and the old nail had grown out ahead of it. That's how Joshua
knew that it took an entire year for a toenail to grow out, an
observation both David and Matthew had been delighted to hear when they
had gone through that stage of fascination with all things
grotesque.

When David appeared at the table, Joshua slipped his toes back into his
sock and his foot back into his slipper. Then he unfolded his napkin
and tucked it into his collar. David was being very quiet. A few
moments later the front door opened and shut without the customary
bang, then Matthew came in and slid into his seat. He slumped forward
on one elbow and began to crush salt crystals with his fingernail. At
least they were on time for dinner, thought Joshua.

"I've got an in-growing toenail," he announced over dessert.