I'm afraid I took Ron's announcement that he was going to marry that little slut Karen very badly.

"You bloody bastard!" I screamed at him. "Why didn't you tell me before this?"

I didn't even wait for his reply, but quickly pulled my shorts on and stormed out the door of the shack, off toward the beach. I was angry and miserable. Ron called after me before I had got very far.

"Ted! Stop!" he cried. "Listen to me!"

I stopped and turned and waited for him in the hot, early morning sun. I sneered at him:

"You said you were my best friend. You said you love me. And all the time you were planning to marry Karen behind my back!" I accused.

"It's not like that!" he protested. "I don't have any choice. Karen's only 14. If I don't marry her I go to jail!"

"But you're not even 16 yet."

"My age doesn't count."

"But you didn't rape her! She let you fuck her!"

"It doesn't matter. It's still statutary rape, according to the law, because she's only 14. As it is, we had to get a judge's permission to get married."

"Do you want to marry her?"

"No, not right now, anyway, but I have no choice. I'd probably get 2 to 5 years in jail otherwise."

"What about us?

"You'll be my best friend always."

"Well, when do you get married?"

"Next Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock," he told me. "At the registry office in Perth. There'll just be me and Karen, my mum and dad, and her mum. She doesn't have a dad. You can come if you want.

"Nah," I said. "I hate weddings - especially yours, if its not to me." I managed a smile.

"We're having a barbecue tea in mum and dad's backyard after. Will you come to that?"

"I dunno ..."

"Please! For me?" he begged. "You don't have to bring a gift or anything."

Of course, I did go to the little reception, and I did bring a gift. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was, but I know I didn't have much money, and my mum help me choose it and gave me some extra money to pay for it.

There were maybe 25 people at most at the wedding barbecue, mostly his family and cousins, and the neighbors from across the road. I made my excuses soon after supper, as soon as it got dark. I really choked up while giving Karen a kiss goodnight and Ron a congratulatory hug. I was crying all the way as I pedalled my bicycle home.

Ronny and the pregnant Karen lived at first at his parents' place, in the bedroom recently vacated by his oldest sister, who had moved into a place of her own, but then they moved in with her mother, in the same suburb where Ron worked. I never did visit them there, and saw very little of them.

Over the next five years we drifted further apart, we lived in two separate worlds, as he became a father of a lovely daughter, and two years later of a second daughter. He also finished his apprentishship with the glaziers, and was hired full-time by them as a journeyman. With his stable income they were able to get a low-rate government-assisted mortgage to buy their own modest two-bedroom home in a new suburb some miles from me on the other side of the river. I saw even less of them because I did not have a car, and reaching them by public transit was a nightmare.

I was very busy with my own life too, including my own very brief teenage marriage - which was also because of pregnancy, finishing high school, spending two years at university and teachers college, and starting teaching elementary school full time. Our two worlds rarely orbited close to each other.

But it was my teaching job which gave me enough money to buy my own car, which gave me mobility. I could occasionally drive across town to Ronny and Karen's and spend some time with them and the girls. I didn't do it too often, because they didn't have a telephone yet, and it was too far to go on the off-chance that they would be home. Another reason was that Karen was a nagging bitch! If she wasn't nagging Ron to do something or other, or because he had done something else wrongly, she was nagging at or screaming at the two kids. Only rarely was she pleasant, and that was usually after she got a couple of beers under her belt and mellowed out.

Eventually, though, both Ron and Karen, and my parents, who I still lived with, got telephones, and Ron and I could speak more often, and occasionally arrange to meet at a pub near his place for a quick drink — and even a quick BJ or butt-fuck in the back seat of his car or mine if it was dark enough and there was no-one round.

One warm summer afternoon, Ron phoned to see if I wanted to go prawning with him and his little family. He had heard the prawns were really running in the river at Mandurah, about 60 miles south of Perth. He didn't have a prawn net, but he knew I did. I also had a current licence for prawns. It sounded like a great idea to me. I love fresh prawns, and really enjoy dragging for them, so I drove over to his place with my net.

Leaving my car in his driveway, we loaded up his older Holden sedan with Karen, his two girls, Debbie and baby Vicki, a cold supper, some cold beers, a large bucket for the prawns we were going to catch, my prawning net, our bathing suits and old sneakers for wading, and set out in the late afternoon on the hour-long drive south.

A prawning net is like a huge mesh sock, about 15 feet long, with the opening stretched between two 5-foot wooden poles. The bottom edge of the sock opening is weighted down with lead weights to keep it on the river bottom, and the top edge has cork floats to keep it on the surface. Two persons take the poles and stretch the net open between them. They walk along in the shallow water, about chest deep, draging the 'sock' behind them. A sweep is usually a couple of hundred yards along the river and back. Any prawns or fish which can't scurry out of the way fast enough get swept down into the 'toe' of the sock, which has a drawstring to close it while dragging, or to open it out to release the prawns when back on shore.

Prawns come into the shallows after dark, drawn by shore lights, and the food in the shallows. We arrived at a spot about 5 miles from the mouth of the river just as the sun was setting, not quite dark enough to start. It gave us time to eat the sandwiches Karen had packed, and to crack a couple of bottles of Swan Lager — which helped make Karen more pleasant and kept her from whining at us about the kids, the mosquitoes, the heat, or anything else which crossed her mind.

Soon after it got dark, Ron and I changed into our bathing suits and old shirts - to keep mosquitoes off - and old sneakers, grabbed the net, and waded chest deep into the water, the sock billowing out behind us in the water. We followed slowly along parallel to the river bank a hundred and fifty yards or more, maybe a 15 minute drag, before we turned for the return walk. It was easy pulling, and we didn't need to dodge other prawners. We were the only people at this spot, probably because it was a way upriver from where most go, and also because it was a weeknight. The long drive down from the city and back is enough to put most people off on a weeknight. Ron and I were both on summer vacation from our respective jobs, so we weren't deterred by the drive.

Both the night and the water were pleasantly warm, and we enjoyed chatting as we waded along in the dark river, so we wouldn't have been disappointed if we only got a few prawns. We rarely got our limit of 2 gallons per licence anyway.

When we dragged the net ashore, the toe of the sock was bulging promisingly, and we could see the glowing eyes of quite a few prawns in the light of the lantern Karen held aloft and the full moon which was just rising. But we really expected most of the bulge would be riverweed and other garbage. When we undid the drawstring and emptied the net on the ground, we where amazed by what we saw. In one run we had a good gallon or so of prawns, which were flipping everywhere while we scooped them up and tossed them into the garden bucket we had brought with us. We had hit a goldmine - or a shrimpmine!

A second sweep brought in as many again. We had reached our limit already. But we were greedy, and our bucket wasn't quite full. A third sweep captured even more than either of the previous sweeps. We had no containers to put the extra prawns in anyway, but as I said, we were greedy. In the trunk of Ron's car, the spare tyre sat in a sunken wheel-well. We took that out, and emptied the prawns we had already caught into that. The wheel-well was boiling with wriggling prawns, but it wsn't full yet, so we made another run in the river water. That caught us enough to fill the wheel-well, but the bucket was now empty, so we made one more run to fill that. Yes, we certainly were greedy!

Of course, we were now well over our legal limit. We probably had 10 gallons of prawns. We covered the ones in the trunk wheel-well with towels and stuff, stowed the tire and the bucket of prawns in the car itself, and set out for home, praying that we didn't get stopped by a Fish and Wildlife inspector.

We had started prawning about 8 pm, and we were on our way home, loaded down, by 10. We were back at Ronny's before 11. While Karen put the girls to bed, we immediately set to work cooking up our catch.

Ron had built himself a brick, wood-burning barbecue in the backyard and we soon fired that up and had all Karen's largest pots filled with salted water heating to boiling on it.

Thank goodness the prawns only take two minutes to cook in boiling salted water, or we would have been there all night. As each batch were ready, we scooped them out, dumped them on newspapers we had spread all over his cement back-verandah/patio floor, and added another batch to the same boiling water. Then we sat down with fresh beers to savour these tiny delights.

Even with our asssembly-line cooking system, by midnight we were nowhere near finished cooking. We had also all had enough to eat. Karen was ready to crash, and told us, "You two blokes finish up here. I'm off to bed. Make sure you clean up after yourselves. Ted can crash on the sofa if he wants."

It was another hour or so before we finished cooking, stowed our catch in Ron's "beer fridge," cleaned up the pots and the patio, and were able to relax. Ron turned off the verandah lights, and we both went and sat on a cushioned wooden garden lounger out on his back lawn. We were alone together for the first time in a long time. None of the neighbors could see us because of the 5 foot wooden fence surrounding three sides of the property, and Karen was sound asleep. We took full advantage of the situation.

In no time at all we had discarded our clothes - just the swim trunks and shirts we had been prawning in, long since dry. We both need to fuck and be fucked. The days of Brycream and Hair-ol had passed however, and spit fucks were never very much fun.

"Just a sec," Ron said, leaving me sitting on the lounger while he scooted off to the barbecue, which had a little storage area buiilt in to either side. He returned with a bottle of cooking oil. "I keep this by the barbecue for when I'm using the griddle," he explained, as he rubbed some on his dick, which soon glistened in the moonlight. I was lying on my back. He kneeled on the lounger between my legs and lifted them. He leaned forward, guiding his bare knob-head to my wating hole, and for the first time in maybe a year, I felt him entering me. We were together again, just as we used to be so often.

But we were both pretty anxious and excited. It didn't take long before he came inside me, and as much as I wanted more of his dick in me, he pulled out.

"Now you bummy me," he begged. "I haven't been bummied in years." It was true that the few times we had made love in the last few years, it had always been him doing me, the way I preferred it, but now I rose and let him take my place on the lounger cushions. A Just as I had done, he lay on his back and lifted his legs to expose his hole. I rubbed a few drops of the cooking oil on my dick and on his hole, the kneeled on the lounger. His hole was ready for my dick, and it slipped in easliy.

"Oh, yeah! Fuck me!" he cried. And I did. For much longer than he had fucked me. I sometimes had a premature ejaculation problem, but not this time. I fucked him hard, I fucked him easy, I fucked him fast, I fucked him slow, and fucked him hard again, until finally I blew my wad and spasmed all over, and sank down on top of him. And just as they say in the movies and trashy romance novels, the stars spun above us. "That was wonderful," he whispered in my ear. "We've got to do this more often!" Little did we know!

Their toilet and their laundry were at opposite ends of their back-verandah/patio, and we used these to get the cum out of our holes and the cooking oil from bodies and dicks. Then we went to our usual worlds - Ron to his world with Karen, and I to my solitary one, to sleep, dressed in my swim trunks and shirt, on their sofa.

The next morning, those two worlds collided.

I was awakened by Karen's pottering in the kitchen. It seemed to me she was making unnecessary noise as she smashed and crashed pots and pans and dishes around, and I figured she most be one of those women who wake up in a bitchy mood, so I pretended to be still asleep.

Soon Ron came out from their bedroom, presumably awakened by her clatter. He shook me to wake and move over, and sat beside me on the sofa when I stirred and sat up.

"Hey, hon!" he called into the kitchen area, which was through an archway from the living room. "Why all the noise?"

She came storming into the living room, obviously raging.

"Don't you call me 'hon,' you poofter!" she screamed at him. "You are just a dirty faggot! You and your poofter boyfriend there!" Ron started to protest, but she cut him short. "How could you?" she demanded. "How could you let him fuck you, then come and get into my bed like nothing happened?"

How did she know? Did she see us? She had been fast asleep, hadn't she?

"You thought I wouldn't know, didn't you? Well, you're wrong! One of the girls was having a nightmare, and I woke up and looked out the window to see what you guys were up to. And what did I see? My husband being fucked by his boyfriend! You are both couple of filthy homos!

I felt I should say something, but as soon as I opened my mouth to speak she let loose with another tirade.

Standing there in her dressing gown, she pointed at the front door.

"Get out of here! Get out of here both of you, you dirty perverts! You both make me sick, you homos!"

Ron stood to confront her.

"I'm not going anywhere," he told her. "We have to talk this out." He gestured to me to go. "Ted," he said, "I think you had better go. I'll call you later. I promise."

I took his advice and headed out the front door, with Karen screaming after me, "Yeah, run, you coward faggot! Get out of my house!"

As I retrieved my other clothes and prawning net from the trunk of Ron'e car, I could hear them shouting at each other through the open front door. Among the words I caught were "homo," "faggot," "disgusting," "pervert," and "divorce."

Driving home, I was devasted. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head. Would Karen tell people what she saw? Would she tell Ron's Parents? Would they tell my parents? Would she leave Ron? Would Ron leave her? Hmm, that was a calming thought. If he left her, maybe he and I could be together. But, no! Not in this world where two guys togetther were poofters, faggots, sicko perverts.

Over the next three days, my fears and worries didn't diminish. They increased. Ron had not kept his promise. He hadn't called me later. Nor the next day. Nor the next. All sorts of scenarios crossed my mind. Had she called the police? Sodomy was still a crime in Australia at the time. Would we both go to jail?

It was not until the fourth day that I got a call from Ron.

"She blames it all on you," he told me. "She never saw me fucking you. She figures you got me drunk and seduced me. I didn't tell her otherwise. It would only have made things worse." I felt betrayed, but worse was yet to come.

Karen had deliverd an ultimatum:
She would not leave Ron or divorce him as long as he agreed never to be alone with me again. For appearance's sake, we would be allowed to meet at his parents' or my parents' homes on special occasions, such as Christmas or our birthdays (which were a day apart). She would not say anything to any of our friends or relations. I was not welcome at their home, nor was I to phone there. If he wanted to keep his daughters, Ron had no choice but to agree.

"I'm sorry, mate," he told me, "but that's the way it is. I know Karen can be a bitch, but I do love her, and I do love my daughters. I love you, too, but my little girls come first."

So that's the way things stood for the next five years. Karen's world had survived, and mine was shattered to pieces.

Concluded in Part 6: Worlds Apart.

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