As before each episode is a stand-alone story but may refer to events that happened before.
As should be clear by now, I was basically a normal kid; so I started looking forward to summer vacation months before the end of the school year. I liked the idea of spending more time on ordinary but enjoyable activities such as relaxing at home with a good book or watching TV, playing with my dog, spending time with my friends, getting tied up… all the usual stuff. By Memorial Day weekend, the anticipation I felt for the first day of summer vacation was so keen that I could almost taste it.
However, right around then, the taste of summer was replaced abruptly with the taste of bitter ashes. I was told in no uncertain terms that I would have to spend my first week of summer vacation with my grandmother… in another city… away from my friends… away from my cousins... and away even from my dog!
It turned out that my grandfather (Mom’s father; my father’s parents were both deceased) needed to have an operation of some kind. Not a critical one, but necessary, and it was scheduled for just about the time that school would end. He was going stay a week to ten days at the hospital. My mother’s mother would be lonely with no one to keep her company (she had few peer-aged friends) and so somebody would have to stay with her to help keep her spirits up. When no other relatives volunteered themselves, I was “volunteered†for the job. I learned that I’d “volunteered†after the fact.
My first inkling of this came when my mother returned from visiting her mother and notified me that I’d be going. She explained this in a tone of voice which warned me that arguing about the matter would prove not only unavailing but unhealthy.
Not unhealthy physically, but there were implied threats to my allowance and the relative freedom to go wherever I wished and visit whomever I wanted, and to invite over whomever I liked for sleepovers. If I wanted to continue to enjoy these privileges, I had to do my duty by my grandmother. And so I expressed none of the outrage I felt when my mother finished delivering this totally unexpected and horrifying edict. Instead, I meekly agreed to comply. But inside I was seething with teenage rebellion and railing against the injustice that Fate had so casually dropped on me.
Granted, it was only going to be for a week; maybe ten days. But it was going to be the *first* week to ten days of summer vacation. I felt like a little kid who was told that Christmas was being canceled! I’d be away from all my friends… and my dog too… and spending time with a little old lady whose idea of a fun time was playing Yahtzee, Spades, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, and various other card games. Oh, and Bingo! She just *loved* going out for a fun night playing rousing games of Bingo!
She lived in a city where I knew no one else but her and my grandfather, so I’d have no one else to spend time with or even to talk to. Even better, she’d be out most of time during the day because she still worked for a living despite being old enough (67) and well-off enough to retire, so I’d be spending a lot of time all by myself in an empty house. This would be great if her house was close to where my friends lived, but she lived about fifty miles away. And she was allergic to dogs, so I wouldn’t even be able to bring Blackie along for company.
My God! What a boring way to begin summer vacation! If I was missing a week of school, I might not have felt so bad. But the first week (or even ten full days) of vacation! My heart sank right down to my boots… well, to my sneakers, anyway.
It’s not that my grandmother was a bad person or anything. I loved her, even though I generally saw her (and my grandfather) only a few times a year – mostly on birthdays and holidays – and even then only for brief visits lasting no more than a few hours.
Sometimes they’d come to see us; sometimes we’d go to see them. Usually, though, I’d be pretty much left out of conversations unless my cousins were along as well, and so I found the visits unmemorable and generally tedious. Even when the occasion was Christmas, Thanksgiving, or my birthday and I got presents, a good meal, or a nice cake out of it, I found these occasions uninteresting for the most part.
My grandparents were O.K. but they didn’t talk to me much in general, whether or not it was a special occasion. They seemed to find my older brother more interesting to talk to; I don’t know why. And my cousins Walter and Randy were the veritable apples of their eyes. I wondered why *they* couldn’t have been “volunteered†for this errand of mercy.
If one or both of my cousins had been assigned to come along with me, this would have helped. An interesting time would have been guaranteed. But there’d be no room for two of us, and certainly not for all three. As it was, I’d be sleeping on a couch that turned into a bed, and it was barely roomy enough for one person to sleep in. Two could sleep in it only if they were really, really close! Well, I *was* that close with both Walter and Randy, but none of us wanted this fact publicized. So, the bottom line was that my mission was going to be a solo affair.
Perhaps the worst part was being away from Julia. She and I had made plans to spend more time together once school vacation began, and some of those plans, at least, had now crashed and burned.
Julia was sympathetic about the matter, though; she had a widowed grandmother who needed a lot of time and attention from friends and relatives. She and her brothers were frequently shanghaied into spending time with their grandmother on day-long visits or even for sleepovers. Julia told me I should be glad I only had to do this *once* for the summer. It might have been twice a month!
Well, Julia made me feel like a selfish heel, but she was nice about it and at least this wasn’t going to affect our relationship; that was good.
I made arrangements ahead of time for my friend Tom to look after my dog Blackie while I was away so that Mom wouldn’t be burdened taking care of such an energetic dog. I knew Tom (probably with Freddy’s enthusiastic assistance) would take very good care of Blackie while I was away. Additionally, his dog and mine got along well together; Blackie liked to romp with Hilda. So I knew that Blackie would be comfortable and happy for a while.
Despite what Julia had said to me, and the fact I’d made sure my dog would be taken care of, I was more than a little “down" on the day that my mother drove me over to Grandma’s. I felt more like a convict on his way to spend fifty years at hard labor in Folsom Prison than a kid spending a week with his lonely old grandmother.
We went on a Saturday morning and arrived before lunchtime. Grandma was in a good mood and she seemed glad to see me when we arrived. She asked me all about school, recent events, and family, including my brother and especially my cousins (who she adored, of course, even though neither of *them* had volunteered to waste a week visiting her).
I don’t think I managed to hide my feelings. In short, I probably acted like a spoiled brat. But the adults pretended not to notice.
Mom stayed to visit for a couple of hours, then kissed me goodbye and left me with Grandma. After that, she went to see Grandpa at the hospital before heading home. He’d been admitted there early Friday morning, had gotten his operation later the same day, and was already recuperating quite well. Grandma had seen him before we arrived and we both visited him that afternoon after I got settled in.
The visit to Grandpa at the hospital wasn’t memorable. I remember the visit but I don’t recall a word of what was said except for a political discussion that we had about a then-ongoing Presidential campaign (Nixon was running for a second term with George McGovern as his primary opponent).
Grandpa thought Nixon was the best President we’d ever had and that McGovern would ruin the country if he got elected. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, could do no wrong! And, for reasons unclear to me, whenever Grandpa mentioned McGovern, he characterized the man as being my “friendâ€. It was “your friend McGovern†this and “your friend McGovern†that. I’d never even said that I particularly liked McGovern, only that I detested Richard Nixon! But to Grandpa, Richard Nixon was the shining white knight who was the epitome of all that was noble about the United States of America. Nixon was going to save the country from the dark and terrible forces that threatened it both from outside and from within!
The reason this part still sticks in my memory is because the famous Watergate burglary that doomed Richard Nixon’s second term as President occurred that very same night, although I don’t think I realized the irony of this until much later.
After we visited Grandpa, Grandma and I went out to eat at some restaurant, but though I thought the food was okay she criticized everything.
Grandpa used to be a chef who’d owned his own restaurant before I was born, and Grandma had helped him to run the place, so at least she knew what she was talking about. She was a pretty great cook too in her day, and luckily for me Mom had inherited both her parents’ culinary talents, so I was always a well-fed boy. Regrettably, I never learned how to cook anything much more complicated than Hamburger Helper and Rice-a-Roni myself.
After the meal, we spent the night playing Bingo. Grandma won $15, but I didn’t win anything myself.
That first night was a relatively quiet but sleepless one. I missed my friends. I missed my mother. I missed Julia. I missed my dog. In short, quite unambiguously, I wanted to go home!
The next day, Sunday, was dull and boring. Grandma and I had pancakes for breakfast. We went to church for Mass; she was a Catholic. We visited Grandpa again at the hospital. I went to the store and bought a bunch of comic books and a few paperback novels. We had meatloaf for dinner. We spent the afternoon playing Yahtzee. We had more meatloaf for supper. We watched TV for a while; the only thing I remember was that one of the programs was Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Television. Finally, the day was over and I spent another difficult night trying to sleep.
I wasn’t looking forward to another week of this. Or possibly ten full days! God, why were you doing this to me?
The next morning, Grandma fixed me breakfast, made me something that I could warm up for lunch, and left for work at 8am. By 9am, I was so bored that I resorted to watching an episode of the Flintstones. Fred had been kidnapped or something by a space alien and was being impersonated by a clone – who could only say Yabba-Dabba-Do in a stiff monotone – that the alien had sent out as a spy in Bedrock. I was feeling about as brain-dead as the Fred Flintstone clone was acting by about this time.
I remember wondering dully what else I could do to pass the time when I heard some kids yelling somewhere outside the kitchen window.
Idly curious, I went to the kitchen to look out the window to see what kids were doing in my grandmother’s backyard. But they weren’t in her backyard... at least, not quite yet. Beyond her backyard was the back of a school playground on the adjacent street and there was a high, solid wooden fence in between the two. A couple of boys about two years younger than I was were sitting on the fence, yelling to some other kids on the other side of the fence; I couldn’t see the other kids. Then, as I watched, they dropped off of the fence right into my grandmother’s backyard as casually as if they’d done this dozens of times before.
Wondering if my grandmother knew who these kids were, I silently watched them unseen from the kitchen window. What were they up to? Both boys were slender in build and middling height (perhaps 5’ 6†and 110 pounds) with sandy-blond hair in the long pageboy cut that was common at the time. Both wore dark-colored shorts running halfway to their knees, striped polo shirts, long tube socks (white with colored stripes, a popular trend for the early 1970s) and converse sneakers. They looked so much alike that I was sure they were brothers; I’d learn later on that they were fraternal twins.
They were still walking into the yard when three smaller boys, all about 11 or 12 years old, suddenly climbed up onto the top of the fence from the other side, clambered over the top, and dropped down into the yard to follow the first two. They weren’t approaching the back entrance to the house, however; they simply wandered about in the backyard while scarcely even looking at the house. They seemed to feel that there was (supposed to be) no one at home. All three boys wore T-shirts, full-length blue jeans, socks, and sneakers. They also each carried medium-sized paper bags clutched in one hand, but at the time I couldn’t tell what the bags contained.
I wondered where they thought they were going. Other than the rear entrance of the house (actually the rear entrance to the adjacent garage), the only way out of the backyard was though a narrow opening between the far corner of that side of the house and another fence that ran at an angle to the other. This gave the backyard roughly the shape of a right triangle, with the fence they’d climbed forming one side and the opening at the corner opposite to this, only that corner was truncated to form a fourth, much shorter side roughly parallel to the fence they’d climbed over. However, they weren’t walking toward that opening. Instead, they simply stopped in the middle of the yard and began talking to one another.
Then the two older boys abruptly began to wrestle each other. They were quite lithe and wiry and wrestled for several minutes while I watched them with more than a little fascination.
The TV was still on, and Fred Flintstone was confronting the space alien and an entire horde of fake Fred Flintstones, but I’d stopped paying attention by this time. I only found out many years later what happened when I happened to see the same episode on Cartoon Network and recognized it. At my grandmother’s house, I only had eyes and ears for the far more interesting entertainment taking place in the backyard.
After a fierce struggle, one kid managed to bully-pin the other; straddling his chest and holding his arms down. There was a loud, slow count to ten by all three of the younger on-lookers, and the match was over. But instead of letting the loser up, the winner flipped him over onto his stomach and continued to keep him pinned down by sitting on the small of his back. As if this were not interesting enough, at the same time the three younger boys opened up the paper bags they carried, pulled a coil of well-used rope from each, surrounded the other two boys, and began to tie up the boy who’d lost the match!
O.K., this had my full attention. I was quite engrossed by this point. I watched with absorption as the losing boy had his wrists tied together behind his back and his ankles and knees tied together as well. Then the other boys flipped him over on his back again, taunting and teasing him… and then all four boys proceeded to sit on him!
My jaw must have fallen to the floor around this time, though I don’t remember picking it back up. The best part of home had followed me… to my grandparents’ backyard! TUG was perfectly normal, but somehow it was the last thing I’d expected to find here! This visit was supposed to be boring! A hospital, Fred Flintstone, and Bingo!
But Fred Flintstone would need to wait. The winner of the wrestling match was taunting the loser as he straddled his chest, and began playing slapping his face, twisting his nose, and pinching his cheeks.
Suddenly I realized that this was taking place *live*. It was right in front of me and not on a TV set. I could actually interact with the others! As soon as this seemingly-obvious thought occurred to me, I dashed to the back kitchen door, ran into the garage beyond, and opened the nearby sliding door that led into the backyard.
In the few seconds that the other boys were out of my sight, they must have heard me coming (I wasn’t in the least bit stealthy in my haste to get out there), because when I ran out in the backyard the four boys on top were already hastily untying the fifth one and looking in my direction with panicked looks in their eyes.
However, when they saw that it was merely another boy only somewhat older (if considerably bigger) than they were and not an adult as they’d expected, and that I was obviously curious rather than hostile, their panicked looks faded, though they were still untying their defeated playmate.
“Hi,†I called to them in as friendly a manner as possible. “What’cha doing?â€
“Just playing,†one of them answered cautiously. “Who are you?â€
“Jason,†I told them. “I’m visiting my grandparents for the week.â€
“In this house?†one of the other boys asked. “We thought no one lived here. We’ve come out here lots of times, but we’ve never seen anyone.â€
I should add that my grandparents’ backyard wasn’t very well tended to. The grass was mowed only often enough to keep it from becoming a field and the paint on that side of the house was peeling badly. There were also various pieces of old, broken-down lawn furniture and other pieces of junk lying all around the place. So, if these kids only came along during the daytime when no lights were showing from inside and neither of my grandparents were at home, their assumption that the house was deserted wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
“No, my grandparents live here, but they’re normally at work this time of day,†I told them conversationally.
By this time the fifth boy was untied and the others were hastily stowing their rope away, evidently having decided that they should leave. “Well, we didn’t mean to trespass or do anything,†the boy who’d wrestled down the other one told me, still apparently wary of me. “So we’ll just go and…â€
“Wait a minute! You don’t have to leave!†I hastened to assure them. “You’re not bothering me! In fact, I was getting bored before I heard you guys out here. You can stay if you want, especially if you don’t mind me joining you.â€
I meant every word. Even the oldest boys were a couple of years or so younger than I was, but they were older than some of the boys I hung around with back home, I was bored out of my mind, and this was a golden opportunity that I did *not* want to miss out on. After all, if they liked to tie up one of their own number, maybe they’d tie *me* up too!
“Well, okay, thanks,†said the boy. “When we heard you coming, we thought we’d gotten someone mad at us and they were gonna chase us out of here, even though we’ve played here dozens of times after school let out and no one ever came out before.â€
The five of them then introduced themselves to me. The boy I’d been talking to was Billy, and the other boy he’d defeated in wrestling was Ryan; they were both just a few weeks past their 14th birthdays. The other boys were Jack (12), Alex (11), and Andy (11); all pretty typical of boys their age in size and appearance. Other than Ryan and Billy, these five were unrelated to one another, all five attended the middle school on the other side of the fence and they even lived on the same street the school itself was on. Ryan and Billy, however, would be attending a high school that was a few blocks away in the fall.
As it turned out, the three younger boys would often come out into my grandparents’ backyard to play after school let out because it seemed quiet and private, and no one ever appeared to notice them or object. They usually left before my grandparents would have come home and noticed them, and they never came out here on evenings or weekends when my grandparents would more likely have been around.
In fact, this was the first time they’d come out here when school hadn’t just let out since late last summer, which was when they’d started doing this. So it wasn’t too surprising they’d never noticed my grandparents, or that my grandparents had never noticed (or possibly had never felt concerned about) signs of their visits to the backyard. Part of it was probably that the kids hadn’t stopped by during the winter, so they’d never left tell-tale tracks in the snow.
“So, what were you guys doing before I came outside?†I asked as casually as I could.
“Oh, we were just goofing around,†Bully replied, a bit shyly.
“It looked like you were having fun wrestling,†I said in an encouraging tone. “You guys like to wrestle a lot?â€
“Yeah,†replied Billy with a little more confidence. “We’re all pretty good at it.â€
“They always wrestle each other, and we always get to tie up the loser and torture him!†one of the younger boys piped up with considerably less reticence.
“Yeah, it makes them fight harder to win,†added one of the others.
“Really?†I asked, trying to conceal how intensely interested I was in all of this but probably failing. “You do that a lot?â€
“A coupla times a week anyway,†Ryan admitted. “Sometimes I win; sometimes Billy does. Letting the others torture the loser makes us more determined to be the best wrestler. We’re already the best wrestlers in our weight class in school.â€
“Really? Cool!†I replied with some enthusiasm. “Think you could wrestle me?â€
Ryan and Billy looked me up and down a bit doubtfully. I could hardly blame them, as I was a full head taller than either and outweighed each of them by about fifty pounds… though that was hardly all muscle. Though I’d slimmed down from being a pudgy boy at age thirteen, I was still more flabby than muscular. However, I did have a genuinely bigger build than the twins, who were built like my rather slender cousins but were younger and shorter than they were.
“You’re too big for either of us to wrestle!†Ryan finally said.
“How about if you both wrestle me at the same time?†I asked.
They seemed more willing to consider this possibility but their reaction was still rather on the underwhelming side. So I played my ace.
“Better yet, I’ll wrestle all five of you at once,†I suggested with a strong note of self-confidence in my voice; “and if I lose… then you can tie *me* up!â€
Well, that did it! In fact, two of them proceeded to tackle me before a formal agreement to my proposal was declared and all five of them were clutching at me before I was quite ready to defend myself.
Not that I tried terribly hard!
Well, I did put up some resistance just for show, and I probably would have eventually lost even I was actually determined to win… but since I didn’t want to any such thing, the result of the wrestling match was a forgone conclusion.
Within a minute or so, Ryan was straddling my chest pinning down my wrists, Brian was straddling my shins pressing his hands down on my kneecaps, one of the other kids was straddling my belly, and the remaining two were gleefully taking their ropes out and tying me up with them the same way they’d tied Ryan earlier.
A couple of minutes later, my hands were tied behind my back, my feet and my legs below my knees were tied together, and four of the boys were kneel-sitting on top of me.
My visit to Grandma’s house wasn’t turning out to be so bad after all!
Being well-experienced with being tied up, I assessed how well I’d been tied this time. I thought they’d managed it well enough for kids, but their rope-work was much less expertly done than what I’d grown used to over virtually my entire life. I estimated that, left to myself with no one pinning me down or acting to prevent me from trying, I could have freed myself within five minutes. Even so, I was as happy as I could be!
Ryan, still straddling my chest, suddenly grabbed his shirt and pulled it off; revealing a nicely toned upper body underneath. “It’s getting hot out!†he pointed out. “You don’t mind my taking my shirt off, do you?â€
Did I mind? He was *perfect*.
“Not at all!†I replied quite honestly. “I’m feeling kind of hot myself.†I really was, too; and probably not just because the sun was shining down on me. Ryan smiled pleasantly, tossed his shirt casually aside, placed his hands on his knees, and simply smiled down at me.
Behind him, Billy sat knees-up on my belly and pulled off his own shirt. The three younger boys hadn’t exerted themselves as much, however, so they kept their own shirts on even though they wore full-length pants rather than shorts. I was dressed much as they were, but for some reason I was getting very warm indeed by this time.
After a moment the other boys decided unanimously that some torture was in order. Ryan began to tousle my hair and play with my face the same way Billy had played with his. Billy began to bounce on my belly. Two of the others just sat on my legs and poked me here and there. The last one suggested pulling of my sneakers and tickling my feet.
Before this idea could be tried out, however, there were sounds of more kid’s voices on the other side of the fence, calling the names of the kids I’d already met.
“Hey, Billy! Ryan! You out there in the yard?†inquired one boy.
“Yeah, Pete… Hank… come on over and check this out! We’re sitting on some guy over here!†Ryan loudly announced to the unseen kids loudly enough (I thought) to be heard throughout the entire neighborhood.
Seconds later four more boy’s heads popped into view from the some side of the fence and looked at us with mild astonishment for a moment. Then all four of the new boys clambered over the fence and ran over to join us.
Ryan and Billy introduced them as Pete (13), Hank (14), Ned, (13), and Greg (14). Hank and Greg were slightly larger and taller than Ryan and Billy, while Pete and Ned were somewhat smaller but still larger than the other three boys I’d already met.
They all seemed friendly and curious as they just stood around watching the other five sit on me and asking questions about who I was and why they were sitting on me. The five gleefully told their story while making no move to get off me – which was perfectly fine with me. None of the other four made any attempt to join the first five in sitting on me, though; there would scarcely been any room for any more sitters anyway unless one of them sat on my face, and I wasn’t bold (or rash) enough to suggest that any of them do anything like that!
“Hey, we’d better get to classes now before one of the teachers comes out here looking for us,†one of the newcomers suddenly asked.
“Shoot, it’s that late already?†Ryan asked in evident dismay as he looked at his watch and grabbed his shirt to put it on before standing up. “We’d better hurry.â€
“You still have school here?†I asked in some puzzlement as I saw my hopes for a day-long TUG crashing and burning.
“Just summer classes,†Ryan told me as he had me turn over as he crouched down beside me and untied my wrists. “Arts and crafts and that sort of thing; it’s just something to kill time with during the summer. Classes begin at ten and go to two with an hour’s lunch break in-between.â€
“Oh. I didn’t know. I was hoping you guys could stay a bit longer.†I told them.
“Wish we could, but we gotta go,†he told me. “But we’ll come back and wrestle some more after class,†he suggested with a smile. “We can come back here at two o’clock!â€
“Okay!†I replied in a voice that made it obvious I’d be quite happy to see them after they finished their classes.
“Okay if we leave our ropes here?†asked Billy as the other kids finished untying me and hastily stowed their ropes in their bags. “We don’t want to take them to class with us.â€
“Sure! Nobody will take them!†I assured them.
The kids grabbed up their shirts, left their bags of rope beside the fence, and quickly left. I went back into the house, where the forgotten TV was still on and playing a new program; a soap opera, I think. I switched it to some game shows and idly watched various contestants fumble their ways through their half hour of fame and potential fortune, but I wasn’t paying attention. After that, I idly ate the lunch Grandma had prepared for me without really tasting it (or even remembering what it was afterward). My mind’s eye swam with the images of the kids I’d met. I hoped they’d return at two as they’d said.
Actually, they came at one-thirty, and started yelling to me as another new program was starting.
“Hey, come on out and wrestle if you ain’t chicken!â€
I hastily clicked off the TV, called through the window that I was coming, and hurried out to meet them. Billy and Ryan were there, but instead of the three younger boys they’d been with before, there was another kid between their age and mine named Daniel with them instead. Daniel was almost as tall as I was but somewhat thinner in build, though not as tall or as thin as Stevie. He had long, wavy, and flamboyantly red hair, freckles (every redhead I met back then seemed to have freckles!), and a huge toothy grin. He loved to laugh. He was athletically muscular (which I could see right away because he already had his shirt off) and probably weighed about 150.
“We told Daniel about you and he wants to wrestle you all by himself!†Billy and Ryan told me. “Winner gets to tie the loser up until four.â€
Well, I think we all knew who the ultimate winner was going to be, but I made a good show of it all the same. And actually Daniel was a damned good wrestler; although I outweighed him by about thirty pounds, he was strong, wiry, full of energy, knew a lot of holds and tricks, and he was almost able to beat me fair and square.
Almost, but not quite; I had just a bit too much of a size and weight advantage.
We wrestled for at least fifteen minutes, with Ryan and Billy cheering Daniel and then cheering for me quite impartially. It was quite a struggle, but I was beginning to outlast my opponent when I decided to have an inconvenient accident, slipped, and fell on my back. After that it was all over but the tying.
Daniel was as skilled with tying people up as he was in wrestling. He was also a lot more thorough. By the time he finished tying me up, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of it in a mere five minutes. His rope-work was still noticeably less tight or secure than anything my cousins or most of my older friends could have done, but it was better than what Tom, Stevie or the other younger kids could do. All in all, I estimated I could have freed myself in about half an hour if I had to.
About the time Daniel finished tying me, Alex and Andy belatedly showed up, and Jack came along a few minutes after them. So now I had six boys ready to torture me.
Bliss!
However, much to my regret, only Daniel sat on me at first while the others just stood around us and watched him slap my face and taunt me for about a half hour. After that, I spent an hour and a half enduring some pleasant light torture from all six of them.
About the only time things got a bit rough was when Andy and Alex – the two smallest, lightest kids of the six – decided to do some belly flops on me. Either would stand over me, kick both his feet out, and literally drop onto my belly! Even from a lightweight like either of these two (weighing perhaps 80 pounds each), that hurt quite a bit. Luckily for me none of the other boys wanted to do it. If Daniel (who was almost as heavy as both of them together) had done it, he could have seriously hurt me!
At any rate, the boys were more interested in getting to know me and telling me about themselves than in torturing me more than casually, and so we had some pleasant story exchanges until the others finally had to go home. Alex suggested leaving me tied up, but I don’t think he was serious; in any case, Daniel untied me without going along with the joke. Since I indicated I’d be there the whole week, they agreed to meet me there at the same time the next day. And then they went their way and I went back into the house, idly watching TV until my grandmother got home.
For the first time in my life, I’d had a TUG situation with other boys *without* the help of my brother or cousins to smooth the way. Always before, I’d stumbled into the situation by pure luck and things had been pretty much arranged for me (not always with my acquiescence first, especially concerning my brother and his friends in earlier childhood). Here… well, it was still pure dumb luck that I was in the right place at the right time, but I’d had to work for it a little bit without a mutual acquaintance there to introduce me and then tie me up. In the end, though, I’d managed it. TUG on my own!
I wish I still had such dumb luck, but I guess I used up my entire lifetime’s quota in regards to TUG in my adolescence.
That evening, my grandmother and I played various card games and watched more television. Now, however, I was much happier and probably much better company for Grandma than I’d been before. She probably noticed this, based on the way she smiled and talked, but she didn’t comment on it.
Each of the other weekdays, when I was alone in the house, the six boys would climb over the fence to visit me for an hour or so in the morning before their school art classes and again in the afternoon for another hour or two. Sometimes we’d have a preliminary wrestling match (with me versus any two or three of them), which I always lost (sometimes fair and square if Daniel was one of the ones I wrestled along with someone else); and sometimes we’d just go straight to tying me up.
From the second day on, though, we went into the garage to do the tie-ups. It had two levels, with the second level used as an attic. There was an old discarded mattress in there (surrounded by boxes of old magazines) for me to lie on when I was tied up and being sat on and tortured.
A couple of times, the art classes let out early and some of them would be wrestling or bully-pinning one another before I even knew they were in the backyard.
And in the evenings I’d play more card games with Grandma (or we’d go out and play Bingo) and then we’d have dinner. My improved mood persisted, so everything was swell for everybody.
One evening Grandma and I even went to a movie together, though I forget now which one it was. We also visited Grandpa for an hour or so at the hospital every evening. He seemed to be recovering well and was in good spirits, though it looked like he’d have to spend a second week at the hospital.
But when Saturday came I was descending into the doldrums again. Grandma was staying home and as there were no art classes on Saturday, I expected that I’d seen the last of my new friends unless I was still there on Monday. And sure enough, none of them appeared in the backyard that morning. So I started to feel a little blue.
Then, around noon, I was standing on the front porch reading a comic book when Daniel, Ryan and Billy came walking around the corner of the house from the backyard. “There you are!†one of them exclaimed. “We were calling for you! No wonder you didn’t hear us if you were way over here!â€
I *hadn’t* heard them from where I was. It was no surprise if Grandma had not heard them either from inside the house, as she was almost as deaf as my own mother.
“Want to wrestle some more?†one of them asked.
I was tempted, but I didn’t want to do it in the backyard where my grandmother might see.
“Climb over the fence with us, then,†suggested Daniel. “We can wrestle behind the school. No one will see us there.â€
“Okay, just let me tell Grandma where I’ll be,†I told them. They went on ahead behind the house while I went inside to tell my grandmother I’d be out for a while.
I looked over to her and she looked up and smiled at me, but I didn’t get a word out before I looked up beyond her into the kitchen and saw that the spaghetti sauce she was cooking was on fire! The flames were at least two feet high!
It looked like the fire had been going a while. It’s not surprising she hadn’t known about it, however; there wasn’t much smoke, she was facing away from the kitchen, and a partition blocked her view from the chair she sat in even had she looked in the right direction.
I yelled and pointed. She reacted quickly enough once she knew about the fire and took care of it herself; but to this day I wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t been there, or hadn’t gone into the house just then and saw the fire myself.
The sauce was ruined, so lunch would be delayed. I told her it was all right, and that I’d be out for a while with some friends anyway. So, recovering my mental poise much more quickly than I might have had I been older, I hurried out to the schoolyard where my friends awaited me. I took the long way around though; for some reason I didn’t want my Grandma to see me scaling the fence out back (which she would have noticed while she was in the kitchen making a new batch of sauce).
The backyard of the school was small and not much to look it. It was a middle school rather than an elementary school (the elementary school was a couple of blocks away) so there was no playground equipment. However, there was a set of stairs at the rear entrance. There was also a landing about ten feet high with stairs leading down at right angles to it going in both directions along the wall, with an open space down beneath it that was roofed over by the stairs. Additionally, there were two support posts inside that were about six feet apart; just right for either tying two people to them (one each) or laying one person down between them and tying him to them both.
The others asked me if I’d like to pick an option. I wasn’t entirely adverse to the idea. And so, five minutes later, I lay between the posts with my hands tied around one of them in an embrace with my ankles bracing and tied to the other, and with Daniel, Ryan, and Billy sitting on me and teasing and tormenting me.
Pete, Hank, Ned, and Greg were there as well. They had Jack, Alex, and Andy tied standing to three small, separate trees that stood between the stairway and the fence that led to my grandparents’ backyard. The younger boys didn’t seem too happy about being tied up, but they weren’t seem distressed about the situation either. I gathered that this was a regular occurrence for them, though nowhere near as frequent as it was for me.
Daniel straddled my chest while shirtless and made things interesting for me, while Ryan and Billy sat upright on my belly (occasionally bouncing gently on it). It was all innocent TUG fun, however. There was never once any hint that any of them would be interested in taking things to a more intimate level of the type that happened between many of my friends and I back home. This was fine by me; for me, TUG and friendship were the main things.
We all had to go our various ways after an hour or so but agreed to meet again behind the school later in the afternoon. However, after I got home and had lunch, Grandma wanted me to stay home and play cards with her out on the front porch. Bummer. At one point I could hear the others calling to me out from the backyard; the front door was open and so I could hear them through the kitchen window. My grandmother, though, was oblivious to them because of the deafness issue.
I told her I needed a drink and dashed into the house. The three youngest boys were out in the backyard calling “Chicken!†to the back window; apparently thinking I was suddenly afraid to come back out to get tied up and tormented by them. I regretfully (very regretfully) told them I couldn’t make it because my grandmother wanted my company as well.
I’m not sure they believed me, as they seemed to be jeering me somewhat rather than showing any understanding about the matter. But eventually they climbed back over the fence and vanished from sight. I was sorry to see them go, but I had to choose my lonely old grandmother over my new friends; they still had one another to spend time with and she had nobody but me.
That was the last time I saw any of them. Attempts to find them later that day or the next day turned up nothing. I didn’t know where they lived and I couldn’t find any of them outdoors. This was a bit depressing. I figured, though, that I’d be able to see them Monday when they went back to their school.
However, I was disabused of this notion on Sunday afternoon. My mother and Aunt Yvette drove up in my aunt’s car with a not-terribly-happy-looking Walter riding in the back seat. It seemed that since my grandfather would be in the hospital at least another week, the adults had decided that it would be unfair to me to make me spend so much more time at my grandmother’s house than had been planned. So they’d decided to shanghai Walter and have him take my place for the next week.
Walter was about as pleased and delighted about this turn of events as I’d been, though he had the grace and maturity to hide it a bit better than I’d done (at least, from everybody besides me).
I was happy that I’d soon be back home with the rest of my friends (and with Mom and Blackie too), but I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Daniel and the other kids I’d met here.
Though we didn’t dare try to play any TUGs between ourselves while we were briefly alone together at Grandma’s, I told Walter about the other boys, thinking that perhaps they could help him to pass the time as they had with me. Walter wasn’t too interested; he felt that the age gap between him and the others would be too great. However, he promised to pass my goodbyes on to them if they came into the backyard again, and to give them my address if any of them felt like writing to me.
None of them ever wrote to me. But Walter told me later that he did meet them and pass my message on. According to Walter, they just shrugged, left without saying anything (I guess they didn’t find him any more interesting than he found them to be), and never came back.
Mom, Aunt Yvette and I waved goodbye to Walter and Grandma as we left them to go back home. I felt a bit sadder leaving Grandma’s house than I’d expected I would be when I’d arrived. However, I perked up when I got home and Blackie was there to greet me.
Randy was there as well… already missing Walter. He wasn’t used to being without anybody near his own age for company, so he asked if he could sleep over that night. Well, that was fine with me. Julia wanted to have a date that night too, but Randy had a date of his own, so it worked out pretty well… especially as we went to different places rather than do a double-date thing like we’d occasionally done before.
At any rate, Julia helped make the evening special, and Randy helped to make the later part of the night interesting in his own way as well.
It was nice to be home!