Page 116 of Pioneer Summer

“Too close to what?”

“To me.” He put his hand over Yurka’s as though he were going to move it away but reconsidered and held it instead. “I really like it when you do that ... We had almost a whole month, but we didn’t do hardly anything ... We didn’t even lie down together like this ...”

“Well, you wouldn’t have let us. But we still have today left.”

Volodya turned his head slightly and buried his nose in Yurka’s hair. He inhaled Yurka’s scent. He let Yurka’s hand go and lightly stroked his neck,then his ear. Yurka gasped with pleasure. Volodya chuckled, then whispered, “You want so badly to be touched ... It’s like you’re electrically charged: the sparks fly even if I barely touch you.” He sighed. “Same thing for me, though,” he admitted.

Yurka wanted to touch Volodya, too. And although he knew Volodya would immediately resist him, he resolutely lifted the edge of Volodya’s shirt anyway, to touch Volodya’s stomach with trembling fingers. Volodya flinched, biting his lip. “Don’t, Yur,” he protested half-heartedly, but he didn’t move Yurka’s hand away.

Yurka was quaking on the inside as he cautiously stroked Volodya’s smooth, warm skin with just the very tips of his fingers. “It’s like you’re afraid of me,” Yurka said.

Volodya shook his head. “I’m afraid of myself. You were wrong when you said I can’t overcome my fear and change. The hard part, actually, is holding myself back from doing the things that ... the things I’ll regret later.”

“And what makes you so sure you’re going to regret them?”

“Because they’ll cause you harm.”

“Here we go again! Harping on that again, huh?” Yurka sat up and glared down at Volodya resentfully. “We have one hour left to be together, but you’re still thinking about whether you might hurt me. But I’m already hurting! Any more of this and I’ll lose it; I’ll lose everything: you, myself ...” He paused and took a breath. “At least here, at least this one day, be the way you want to be, Volodya. For me. I want to remember you at your best, as special, as my first. And I want to be that for you!”

Volodya stared at Yurka, flabbergasted. He propped himself up on his elbows, then sat up, too. “Yur ... ,” he said, then his voice caught and he spent a moment clearing his throat. “I’m such a degenerate. I keep thinking about just the wrong thing—”

“No, it’s the right thing, dammit! That’s the right thing!” insisted Yurka, cutting him off. “Volodya, I’ve left too much behind, here at camp—”

“I understand—”

“—but I want to leave itallbehind!”

Volodya stared at the ground and was silent for a minute. Then he fixed Yurka with a penetrating gaze: “But this’ll be forever, Yur. You’ll never be able to forget it. Or undo it.”

“Why would I want to undo it? Or forget it? What is there to be afraid of? Nobody’s going to know about it, after all. You and I are the only ones who’ll know what we did—and that we did it for real. So that even twenty years later we can be positive all this was real.”

“Yet another shared secret?”

“Not another one. The only one. The biggest and most important one.”

Volodya remained silent for another minute, searching Yurka’s face and eyes carefully as though trying to find doubt in them. But Yurka returned his gaze, stubborn and resolute.

“Are you absolutely sure, Yura? I ... It’s ... Listen. At any moment you can tell me to stop, and I will.”

“Okay.”

“No, not ‘Okay’: You promise me that if you start having any doubts at all, even for a second, you’ll tell me.”

“I promise.”

“Close your eyes.”

Yurka closed them obediently. He caught his breath, anticipating Volodya’s touch, but on the contrary, Volodya drew back. Yurka could hear Volodya fussing with the backpack. Yurka froze, barely breathing, afraid to weaken the resolve it had been so hard for Volodya to build. Volodya drew near again, squeezed his arm gently, and then tenderly kissed Yurka’s neck, his lips just barely touching the skin. It tickled again.

“Will it hurt?” Yurka blurted out of nowhere.

Volodya chuckled. “We won’t do anything that could hurt for you. I told you, I won’t ever demean you—for anything.”

“Demean me?!” said Yurka angrily. “How can you say something like that! I love you and I’m ready for anything! I’ll—I’ll kiss the hell out of you, from head to toe!”

Volodya burst out laughing.

“No?” Yurka was flustered. He knew he’d sounded naïve, but he hadn’t been sure what else to say. And he was in no hurry to open his eyes, so he was just guessing at Volodya’s reactions. “Then I’ll do something else instead. I’ll do anything, anything at all, I just ... I just don’t know what ... Will you tell me?”

---