After I got over my devastating eviction from Ron's life, I gradually picked up the pieces of my own world. I was teaching elementary school by day, studying to finish my University degree in the evenings, and in what was left of my time coaching kid's soccer and playing junior men's. I was also trying to become "normal" with a series of very attractive young ladies. This was my bisexual period. It didn't really work, however. Although the young ladies were happy enough with whatever sex we had, to me it was lacking the power and intensity of sex with Ron.

As if those things weren't enough to keep me busy, I had become bitten by the travel bug. One summer, I took the train from Perth in the south-west of Western Australia to Brisbane in the north-east, about 2000 miles for the return trip. On a spring break I hitch-hiked all over the south-west of Western Australia. On another spring break, a straight friend and I drove all over the north-west of the same state, exploring places few tourists went in those days. And another summer, five friends and I drove in two beat-up old cars from Perth, across the Australian desert, the Nullabor Plain, to the east coast, and up the east Coast to the Great Barrier Reef, then back, patching up the cars, which suffered recurring break-downs, as we went.

After completing my university degree, I decided to take the "big trip," - to take a working holiday traveling round the world. Way back then, just traveling to Europe or the States on a holiday was prohibitively expensive for the average Aussie. The fares were pretty-well identical to what they are today, but in those days, that amount of money was a year's wages for someone like me. The solution was to travel a bit, work a bit, and travel some more, until you finally got back to where you started. My plan was to travel to Canada, work for a year there, visiting as much of Canada and the States as I could, travel on to England, and while working there for another year, travel extensively in Europe, and finally travel overland through Europe and South East Asia to Singapore, and finally home to Perth again. It didn't work out like that, however.

After traveling through South-east Asia, the Philippines, Hong King, Hawaii, and the west coast of USA, I finally reached Vancouver, Canada, and took a teaching job for a year 80 miles north of vancouver. I decided to stay for a second year.

In all that time, I had heard little of Ron and karen, except through my mother. My younger brother and Ron's younger brother were friends, as were my younger sister and Ron's younger sister, so bits of news got passed on.

Just before Christmas of the second year, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, so I took a month's leave-of-absence and flew home at a reduced fare which Qantas offered for such occurrences in those days. When I got home, Mum has already been operated on, the growth was found to be non-malignant, and she was home and back to her household duties. I had a month to relax.

On only the third day back, I got a very surprising late-afternoon telephone call. It was Karen. I don't know how she knew I was home, but I guess the news travelled through the grapevine of brothers and sisters. She was distraught.

"Ted," she said, "It's about Ron. I need your help." I was shocked to hear from her at all, and even more shocked that she was asking me for help. Her news was even a bigger shock.

"Nearly two months ago, Ron was hurt at work," she told me. "A hammer fell off a ladder and hit him on the head. He's been in a coma ever since."

I know this sounds like something straight out of a soap opera, but I swear it's the truth. Karen continued:

"His family and I have been sitting up with him 24 hours a day. The doctors say it helps if people the patient knows can keep talking to him. It may help then from sinking deeper into the coma. You and Ron were friends for a long time. Would you take some time to sit with him?"

"My god! Why didn't anyone tell me?" I asked.

"There was no point," she said. "You were way off in Canada, and we'd heard your mum was sick also, so we didn't tell your family."

"Of course I'll sit with him," I agreed. "When do you want me?"

"Right now would be good," she told me. "Or whenever you can."

"Where is he?" I asked. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"He's in Royal Perth" she told me. "He's on the eighth floor. Room 821. I'm calling from the pay-phone in the lobby right now."

"I'll get dad to drive me in."

I explained to my father what was going on. He was only too happy to drive me in to the city. He had recently switched trades and was now a taxi-driver, an owner-operator, and figured he might pick up a few fares in the afternoon rush after dropping me off.

I went straight up the the room Ronny was in. He looked perfectly normal except for a tube in his arm, some wires to his chest and wrist, an oxygen mask, and a small bandage on the top of his partly shaved head - that and the fact that he was sound asleep and very pale.

Karen turned as I came in. She had the two girls with her. They were both sitting on the floor scribbling in coloring books with crayons. Debbie saw me first.

"Uncle Teddy," she cried, and came running to me, arms up-stretched to be lifted. I was surprised that she recognized me. It had been five years. Vicki was too young to have remembered me at all. She shyly hid behind her mother. "Daddy's still sleeping," Debbie told me seriously. "He's been sleeping for ages and ages, just like Sleeping Beauty.

"Hello, Ted," said Karen. Although she had gained quite a bit of weight since I had last seen her, she looked very haggard.

"You look like shit," I said bluntly.

"I know," she agreed. "I've been here sitting with Ron every day. I'm just so tired. I'm going to load the kids on the bus and go right home and sleep."

"The bus?" I said. "Why didn't you drive?"

"The insurance ran out," she replied. "I didn't have the money to reinsure."

"How much?" I asked.

"Sixty dollars for the year," she told me.

I had a billfold of travelers' cheques in my pocket. I pulled out one for a hundred Australian, signed it and handed it to her.

"I can't take this," she said.

"Yes, you can. For Ronny - and the girls. The Royal Automobile Club is right by where you catch the bus on the way home. Renew the insurance on your way home. Spend the extra on the kids.

Now, what do I have to do here?" I nodded toward Ronny.

"Just sit with him and talk to him," she told me. "Can you stay till midnight?" she asked.

"Yes," I nodded.

"Good," she said. "His sister will be here to take over at midnight after she gets off work at the drive-in. His brother Murray was supposed to be here this evening, but he got called out of town on some emergency. If you have to go to the bathroom or anything, just ask a nurse to watch him for a few minutes. They're very good like that." I found out later that Murray now worked for the telephone company as a linesman. He would be gone for a few days, and I would be taking his shift, if I was available. Of course I was available.

After a little more small-talk, she and the girls left me alone with Ronny. I sat there by his bed watching my sleeping friend, thinking of all our years together, thinking of the recent conversation with Karen, how our last major meeting had ended, how I had been banished form her world, how it had not even been mentioned tonight.

I talked to Ronnie about everything I could think of. I talked of our childhood together. I talked of all the adventures we had had together. I talked of my travels, and my life in Canada. Something I did not talk about was our sex life, or the calamitous prawning trip. Those things would have been too much for me to face right then. It was enough that I was back with my old friend, but he was deep in a coma, and might never wake from it!

I sat with my friend until midnight, when his sister arrived. She told me that she had talked to his doctor on the way in. He had told her that they were still holding out hope that Ronny would awaken. There had been several signs of brain activity in the last 24 hours, including some involuntary movement in his extremities, such as twitching fingers and toes.

The last buses and trains had gone for the night, so I was faced with a long walk back to Mum and Dad's. On an off-chance, I called the Taxi Co-op which Dad ran his cab through. He was out on the road, and they radioed him for me. He would pick me up as soon as he dropped off his current fare.

I sat the evening shift with my friend for the first three nights. On the fourth day, Karen phoned to ask if I could switch with Ron's sister and take the midnight shift. That was fine by me, so I had an early nap and Dad gave me a ride to the hospital just before midnight. Ron's sister left right away, and soon after that, the nurse came by to ask if I wanted anything. I told her a coffee would be nice, and she brought me a mug of that awful urn coffee you get in hospital cafeterias, but it was better than nothing. Leaving, she dimmed the lights in the room, leaving just a dim nightlight over Ron's bed. Soon after that, the main lights in the hall outside were also dimmed, leaving me in a sort of half-night with Ron.

The bed was adjusted so that Ron was propped part-way up. I presume that was to keep him from choking or something, but it the half light it made it more friendly, as if he was just reclining there listening to me babble. While I softly talked at him, the hospital grew quieter and quieter as everyone settled down for the night.

Occasionally there would be the squeak squeak squeak of a nurse's shoes along the hall-way, and once an hour the night nurse would come by, check Ron's pulse, and the readings on the cumbersome machine he was attached to, make a few notations on his chart, ask whether I needed anything, then depart again.

By the early hours of the morning, I was running out of things to talk to Ron about. I was feeling brave, so I started recalling all the times Ron and I had indulged in sex play over the years, right from the first time, which I have already recounted to you. Soon I was feeling right horny, recalling all those wonderful times. I had a woody swelling in my pants. I glanced at Ron's sheet-covered form. Believe it or not, he had a woody, too! I don't know what caused it - maybe just bodily functions, maybe a wet dream in his comatose state. Who knows? I do know that it was standing semi-erect under the thin cotton sheet.

I am half-embarrassed to tell this, but I couldn't resist. I folded the sheet back. They had dressed him in a front-opening gown, but I folded this back to expose his cock. Standing beside him. I reached across and grasped his dick. It was hot and firm, and got even harder as I held it. I began to wank him, ever so slowly and gently. As I did, his dick responded even more. Soon I was fondling a rock-hard stiffy. A few more rubs and it stiffened more and jerked, and cum spurted over my hand and onto his belly.

I suddenly felt very guilty, and cleaned him up as best I could with my handkerchief and stuffed it back in my pocket.

If this were a soap opera, Ron would have awoken as he blew his load, recognized me and his love for me, and we would have lived happily ever after. But it didn't happen like that! However, it it true that a few days later, he opened his eyes and returned to the land of the living. It would be nice to say that I was there for the wonderful occasion, but that wouldn't be true, either. One of his sisters had the privilege of seeing his awakening.

Karen phoned me to tell me the good news. I wanted to go in to the hospital to see him straight away, but she told me to wait. The doctors wanted to keep him under observations for a few days, and to start him on physiotherapy. His arms and legs had atrophied dreadfully. But they figured he would be home within the week. I would be welcome to come visit with him then.

  So, I was banished for their home no longer!

  It took longer than expected for Ron to be released from the hospital, and a few more days after that before I could get over to visit him. It was close to the end of my month 's leave-of-absence.

The day I did get over there was the same day that he was feeling strong enough to get dressed and get outside, with the help of a walking stick. Karen led me through the house to where he was sitting on the same lounger we had fucked on, four years before. He rose, a little unsteadily, to greet me.

"'Ow yer goin', mate?" he greeted me with the usual Aussie greeting. "It's be a while since Iaid eyes on you!" We both sat on the lounger.

"Yeah," I replied. "I've got the advantage there. I saw quite a lot of you a couple of weeks ago." The double-entendre was unintended then and now, but I have to admit, it exists. "I gotta say, you look a hell of a lot better now." It was true. He did look a hell of a lot better. His color had returned, and he always had a dark, swarthy look, so he actually looked more tanned than I.

Karen flitted in and out of the house while we chatted, ostensibly to make sure Ron was comfortable, but I wondered whether she was making sure we weren't getting it on again. The girls were at school, so at least we didn't have them hovering, too, cute as they were.

We took the time to fill each other in on what had been happening in our lives since last we met. Of course, I had told Ron all my news over the several nights I sat with him while he was unconscious, but obviously, he didn't remember any of that.

He told me that Karen only rarely brought up seeing us fucking, and less after he confronted her and threatened to leave both her and the girls if she didn't shut up about it. Of course, he would never leave the girls if he had the choice, but she took him at his word and stopped harping on it.

In one of the breaks we got from Karen popping in and out of the house, I told him how I had wanked him off while he was out of it.

"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. "You didn't!"

"Yes, I did," I told him. "And you blew your load!"

"You never could get enough of my dick, could you?" he laughed. "Too bad the old lady's hanging round," he said. "I could do with a bit of man sex right now."

But it never happened then, or later. A few days after that, I left for Canada. I would not see Ron again for another three years.

The next time I saw him, he was again in hospital. About a year after the coma, he had gotten a fairly substantial settlement for the industrial accident which put him into the coma. He and Karen used most of it to pay off the mortgage on their two-bedroom house. He never did go back to glazing, but went back, but took a course in industrial scuba diving, and got into underwater salvage and welding.

He had no sooner started working at his new trade when Karen left him for another guy, some neighbor she had started seeing while he was in hospital, and continued to meet after his recovery. Although Ron's homosexual interlude with me was never brought up, the threat was there, so when Karen said she wanted a divorce, he didn't contest it. Karen laid no claim on the house, as she would be living with her new guy, and the girls would live with them. So Ron go the house and child support payments till the girls were sixteen. As Debbie, the eldest, must have been already a teenager by this time, it wasn't much of a hardship on him, especially when he sold the house at a substantial profit, and still had much of the compensation insurance settlement money.

After four years in Canada, I decided to call it quits. I sold the small house I had bought, quit my job, and set out to see the rest of the world as I had originally planned. I drove, trained, bussed, and hitch-hiked across canada and down to New York City. I hated it. I arrived during the worst smog attack they had ever had. Although I was staying only two blocks from the Empire State Building, from the street you could only see about ten stories up because of the yellow smog. It burned my lungs to walk up even a few stairs, and left me gasping for breath. I got the first plane I could to London. To hell with budgets!

To hell with budgets for the flight, anyway, but it did take a big chunk out of my budgeted travel money. So, for the next six months I traveled round Europe by the cheapest means I could find, eating as cheaply as possible, and staying in some very seedy, but cheap, places.

I still have the budget notebook I kept as a record for those months. Below is the entry for October 17th, my 29th birthday, which I spent on the beach at Nice, France:

The nine dollars listed for supper was sheer extravagance, as was the $1 ice-cream, a birthday present to myself. The ice-cream was a huge sundae, which substituted for lunch. As for the supper, a couple of days before I had hooked up with two American girls and an American guy, all of whom were about 21. In the getting-to-know-you process we had looked at each other's passports. One of them had seen that the 17th was my birthday, and unknown to me, had made reservations for us as a great little restaurant, and after an afternoon of lying on the beach, they took me there. They had ordered a cake and champagne and party hats and whistles as a surprise. The price of the champagne and the other drinks was far more than the meal, so they paid for those, and I insisted that I pay for the dinner. For nine bucks we had some endless pasta and sauce, a whole roast chicken, salad, bread, coffee, and a small dessert. Not bad for 4 people.

The nine dollars also paid off in another way. After we walked the girls back to the pensione where they were staying, the boy smuggled me into his room at his pensione, and we spent the night together. I don't remember anything about him all these years later, except that he was blond, tall, and had a great dick, knew how to use it, and loved to top!

I know the previous passages are off the topic of my friendship with Ron, but I have included them to show you that I did have matters other than Ron on my mind in those intervening years, including a couple of heterosexual affairs and a couple of very intense homosexual ones as well in Canada. One of those gay relationships continues off and on to this day.

Anyway, I managed to take in a large chunk of Europe in those six months, from the UK in the west to Greece in the east, and Sweden in the north to Spain in the south, and even across to Morocco in North Africa, getting lucky in some unexpected places at unexpected times, such as the birthday present in Nice which I have just recounted.

Eventually, it was back to London, where I took a ship home to Perth arriving just before Christmas. Not long after I arrived home, I got another phone call from Karen, just to let me know Ronny was in hospital again. He wasn't critical, or anything, but they had been keeping him there until they could find out what was wrong with him. Although they were now divorced, she was visiting him in the hospital regularly.

Once I got settled I went to visit Ron in the hospital. I forget the name of the hospital, but it was somehow connected with the medical school at the University of Western Australia.

When I entered the semi-private room where Ronny was, he was sitting up in bed, cheerfully flirting with one of the nurses.

"Hey! "Ow yer goin', mate!" he cried gleefully, happy to see me. He introduced me to the nurse as "me cobber from Canada."

"Well, I'd better let you two blokes get re-acquainted," she said, and , pulling the curtains round the bed, bustled off on her rounds.

We gave each other a big hug. It had been a long time, but my lust for my friend stirred anew immediately.

"Karen phoned me that you were in here," I told him. "She didn't say what was wrong with you."

Ron explained to me about his illness. His legs and feet and ankles and even his balls had all swelled up. The doctors at first couldn't figure out what had caused it, or how he had gotten it. They had now decided it was a very rare disease related to the tropical disease elephantiasis. They had concluded that Ron had somehow contracted it when he had cut himself while doing underwater salvage and demolition work on an old submerged wreck of a ship. It wasn't a very good explanation, because the ship had been submerged in salt water for about 50 years, but it was the only explanation they could come up with. They had just started him on a series of drug treatments recommended by some European research hospitals which had some limited experience with Ron's condition.

"The drugs are working, I think," he told me. "My balls and ankles aren't nearly as bad as they were." He pulled back his covering sheet and lifted his hospital gown to show me. His legs were as thick as carved billiards table legs, and his ankles like those of someone with severe goiter, but his balls were amazing. The skin of his scrotum was stretched till it was almost transparent, and the nuts inside the sack were about the size of oranges.

"Do they hurt?"

"Only when I try to walk," he told me. "Then they bash into each other and it's like being kicked in the nuts over and over again. That's what got me in here in the first place. I could put up with the thick ankles, but not me knackers being pounded when I tried to walk. I've been in here five weeks already."

The only exercise Ron was getting was in the hospital's therapy pool, and they had to push him there in a wheelchair. They took him to the pool when there was no-one else using it, because he was unable to get a swim-suit on because of the swollen balls so he got to go skinny-dipping.

I visited Ron as often as I could, but it wasn't every day, because it involved traveling into the city on the train and out the other side on the bus, and making a transfer as well. But in the next two or three weeks, the improvement got to be noticeable.

Sometimes there would be someone in the other bed in Ron's shared room - sometimes not. This was one of the "not" days. Ron was part sitting up in the adjustable bed when I arrived, chatting with his favorite nurse again. She drew the drapes around us as she was leaving, saying, enigmatically, "have fun," as she left. I drew up one of the hospital stools.

Ron was bare-chested, and I noticed his hospital gown folded on the console at the side of the bed. I presumed he had somehow managed to get some boxers or pajama bottoms on his lower half. He was in a really good good.

"The drugs are really working," he told me. "My ankles are just about back to normal, and my balls are only the size of apricots now. I can even walk without too much pain."

"That's great!" I told him. "Maybe you can get out of here pretty soon."

"Yeah, I hope so. But in the meantime, I'm really randy, mate." He winked at me.

I must be thick, because I didn't catch on.

"Well, you'll be out of here soon," I consoled him.

"I need to get off sooner than that," he hinted. "I've got a raging stiffy right now. Wanna see?" He flung the sheet back to give me a look.

His balls were still swollen and purplish, like a couple of plums, but so was the knob of his uncut rock-hard cock, which looked absolutely delicious.

"How about a suck-off?" he asked me.

"What if the nurse comes back?" I asked.

"She won't," he smirked. "I told her I was going to get you to suck my dick!"

"You did what?" I exclaimed. "She'll think we are homos!"

"We are homos, mate, and she doesn't care. She's a lezzie herself!"

I didn't take any more convincing. I bent over my buddy, still seated on a stool by his bed and took that red-hot knob in my mouth. "Mmmmm," he murmured. "Do it good and slow. I've got a hell of a load in those big nuts!"

I sucked and licked and tongued his rod. I bobbed up and down on it. I took it as far down my throat as I could. I felt his hand fumbling with my zipper, and he managed to get my stiff dick out of my pants and played with the foreskin, pulling it back and forth over my knob as I sucked.

I don't recall how long I sucked him for, but it was a long time. My jaw was aching by the time he blasted a mammoth load. I had to swallow several times before he finished shooting. It was as I remembered his cum, mildly salty, and ever so good.

"That feels better," he sighed. "The first thing I want to do when I get out of here,' he told me, "is fuck your bum. It's been a long time!"

"I'll be waiting," I assured him, as I wiped my mouth with my handkerchief. "I want your dick in me again."

But, of course, like most things we plan, it never happened like that. I managed to get a temporary teaching job, and rented an apartment near the beach. I settled in to a life of teaching school by day and partying by night with guys and girls I met in the apartment block. It was a 3-storey, 24 unit, party house, and there was someone throwing a party practically every night, and everyone in the building was invited

In the meantime, Ron got out of hospital and moved in with a lady he had met before his most recent sojourn in hospital. She was 15 years older than him and had a son and a daughter almost Ron's age. She also owned a very lucrative antique business in the city, which she left her son to run, and the two of them moved into a home near Mandurah, 60 miles south of the city, near where we had caught so many prawns.

He had left the company he had been diving for, and was again on compensation, pending another settlement. In the meantime, they thought he might be able to pick up the occasional under-the-table diving job, once his legs were back in condition. However, between the time in the coma and the time with the swelling condition, Ron's legs never did recover fully. Even with physio, his legs were forever after very spindly, and he was put on permanent disability pension by the government.

Because Ron and his lady, Barbara, lived so far from me, and I had no car, the only time I saw them in the next months was when they came up to the city to check on her business or on a shopping spree.

I totally disliked the high-school I was teaching at. It was way out on the outskirts of the city. I had a daily lift to the job, but had to take public transit home, a 2 hour trip. The kids were OK, but the school administration was rooted in the past, strict to a fault, even toward the staff. There was continual antipathy between administration, staff, and students, and the wages were only half what I had been earning in Canada. So, when I got an offer from the school-board in Canada where I had been teaching, I jumped at it. By the end of May, I was on my way back to Canada for another 5 years.

Over the next 25 years, Ron and I fell into a pattern of behavior. About every four or five of those years, I would make a visit home for one reason or another - a sabbatical, a family occasion, a family illness, or just a holiday. And every time I did, Ron and I would get together sexually at least once. Mostly it was a quickie bj or mutual grope in the bathroom or toilet of wherever it might be, usually my mum and dad's, but once a quick stand-up fuck behind the men's toilet block of a pub near his place in Mandurah. In broad daylight, yet. The chance of being caught at it was high, but that just added to the thrill.

He had married the older woman, Barbara, and early in their marriage had told her that he and I were lovers. She didn't mind, and didn't resent me, probably because she knew that I was never round very long before I would be off to Canada again. She also made it easy at times for us to be alone together.

Ron always looked just as handsome to me as when we had first in those first years of primary school oh, so long ago. He was older, and bald in back, and greying, and had lots of wrinkles round his eyes, but he was still handsome to me.

And I don't know if he saw me as handsome - I certainly don't - but I must have still attracted him, too, because whenever we did get together the bonds were as strong as ever, as if we had never been apart. And those rare times when we were together for days instead of minutes were the same as our youth. We never tired of each other's company.

About 13 years ago now, soon after I retired, I went home for a month for a very special occasion: my father's eightieth birthday. It was a very big affair, held in their backyard and carport, all covered over with tarpaulins to keep off the summer sun. It was at the end of January in Australia, the hottest time of the year.

Dad was still spry and active, and while I just about croaked in the unaccustomed heat, all morning and early afternoon Dad was up and down ladders erecting the tarps, or setting up folding tables, or getting the kegs chilled and ready, or building a temporary "dunny," hidden away in the back corner of the back yard for the guys to piss.

And lots of people were invited, including all the surviving relatives, their children and grandchildren., and they started arriving soon after lunch. Even Uncles Des and Kevin were there, both looking a lot older than when I had first had sex with them, back when they were about 19 - and I was about 13 or 14. Des did manage to quietly suggest to me that we should get together for a quickie while I was home, however, so he wasn't that old yet!

Most of the women relatives bought some kind of food for the occasion with them, even though Mum had hired caterers to to all that. Our family was neither Italian, or Jewish, but we might just as well have been!

Ron and his wife Barbara arrived mid-afternoon. They had driven up from Mandurah, and planned to stay the night in the city at the home of one of his daughters. They, too, brought a food offering with them. Ronny had managed to get hold of a large sack of fresh mangrove crabs from some fisherman contact of his. He and Barbara had cooked them up in an outside copper boiler before driving up this morning. He spent much of the rest of the afternoon and evening terrorizing old ladies and young kids with a couple of huge mangrove crab front legs and pincers.

The afternoon was stinking hot, and so was the evening, but as the sun sank and darkness descended, a slight breeze from the ocean relieved the oppressive heat a bit. By this time, all the 80 or so guests had been wined and dined by the caterers Mum had hired and were mellowing out a bit. Many of the guests, like Mum and Dad, were in their 70s and 80s. Most were now relaxing in deck chairs or garden loungers chatting about old times. Ron's wife, Barbara, was helping some of the other ladies with the rather massive clean-up.

Ron and I took the opportunity to have some alone time. All the revelry was taking place in the back yard, or in the double car port at the side of the house, screened off from public view with tarps. We snuck around to the front of the house amongst Dad's prize rose bushes and other garden plots. Although the front yard was open to the street, there was very little traffic on this cul-de-sac, and the street lamps threw little light into the front yard because of the bushy street trees. There was only a partial moon to light the front yard at all, and the shadows it threw were dark patches of black.

It didn't take us long to have each other's cocks out and in our hands. We kissed greedily as we jerked each other's dicks.

"Christ, mate, it's been so fucking long," Ron whispered in my ear as we nuzzled and fingered. "Get yer clothes off," he ordered.

"Someone will see," I objected.

"No, they won't," he said, already discarding his clothes into a patch of shadow beside Dad's roses. "People driving by can't see us because of the roses, and nobody's likely to come round the front from the party." As if to prove him right a car drove by just then, and only a quick flash of its headlights passed over us. I joined Ron in getting stark naked - shorts, shirt, undies, sandals and flip-flops, we discarded them all, and were stark naked on dad's front lawn.

Both of us had raging hard-ons, and after we played with each other for a bit, we took turns sucking each other's dicks. It all felt delightfully sinful, knowing so many guests were only a few feet away.

We sat on a low stone wall which surrounded one of Dad's garden beds. Ron lay back along the wall, presenting his oh-so-hard rod to me.

"Suck me," he begged.

I bent over him and covered his dick-head with my mouth. He arched upwards and drove it further into my mouth. In return, I pushed my face down on him, taking his woody further still down my throat, choking on it.

"I've been wanting this all afternoon," he sighed. "It was all I could think about on the drive up to the city."

I took my mouth off his dick long enough to assure him, "Me too. My cock's been wet with pre-cum all afternoon, hoping we could get together."

I sucked him for a while, then we changed places, I on my back on the rock wall, and Ron going down on me. The rockwork was really hard on the back!

Soon, Ron stopped in his gobbling my cock. "Want me to fuck you?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" I replied eagerly.

The rock wall was too hard on the back for fucking, so we resorted to the shadows where our clothes lay. We spread them to keep the coarse, prickly grass from our skins, and I lay on my back atop them.

"Get your legs up," Ron ordered. I hoisted my legs into the air and up toward my shoulders to give him access to my hole. "Gimme your spit," he said, poking his open palm under my mouth. I spat into his hand. He deposited his own saliva with it, and used them to lube up his dick and my ass, I was so horny for his cock, I swear my dick was already secreting its own juices wanting a dick in it. At any rate, as soon as Ron put his uncut dick-head against my hole, it opened up and swallowed his whole dick into me. I felt every inch of it slide up inside me. It was a feeling I had first experienced with Ron more than 40 years before, and had enjoyed again and again since then.

"I love bummying you," Ron told me as we fucked. "I love you," he added.

"And I love you," I added. "Fuck me slowly." And so Ron proceeded to fuck my ass slowly and passionately, there in the moonlight my Mum and Dad's front garden on my Dad's eightieth birthday, with a party going on in the back yard only a few feet from us.

In the middle of our fuck, we heard a cough, close by us.

"Be quiet! Keep still!" Ron whispered. We lay in the dark, he inside me, my legs still lifted, in a frozen fuck.

There was a man in the dark close to us. Apparently, he hadn't seen us in the dense shadows. He cleared his throat again. Neither of us could really see him, because of the angle at which we lay, but we knew he was there, only about three or four feet away. There was some rustling of clothes. He seemed to me just standing there.

We heard him say to himself, "Come on! Start!" Then we knew what he was here for. There was the trickling sound of a stream of piss. The man had come here to take a leak. I guess the lines at Dad's makeshift men's urinal at the bottom of the garden were to much for him. The stream of piss plashed into the dark onto the lawn right beside where we lay. I had visions of our clothes being soaked with piss.

It seemed like it took forever, but eventually he stopped pissing, shook off his dick, zipped up, and moved off back to the party in the back yard, leaving us to finish fucking in the front yard, laughing like crazy at our narrow escapes - from being seen, and from being pissed on!

It was a wonderful party!

If you like happy endings, the last sentence would be a good place to stop reading. If you prefer reality, read on.

I went back to Perth again only two years later. In the meantime, I had used my retirement to become a fully-fledged alcoholic. I had always been a heavy drinker, but all that leisure time pushed me over the edge and I went down fast. But I was one of the lucky ones. I had friends in the AA program who took me to my first meeting. For me, it worked. I have not had another drink to this day.

Anyway, when I went back to Perth that last time, I was about a year sober. It would have been a good time to backslide - 8000 miles from home, among old friends and relatives, and Mum's 80th birthday to celebrate. But I didn't. I stayed sober.

There was no big party for Mum's 80th, just a lunch for immediate family and a couple of Mum's old friends, so Ron and Barbara weren't invited, but I did want so much to get together with him.

The first time I got a chance, I phoned their home in Mandurah, 60 miles to the south. Barbara answered. She was very pleased to hear from me. I asked after Ron. She told me he was not home right now, but she would get him to call me as soon as he came home.

All that afternoon and evening I waited for his call, but it never came.

The next day, I phoned again. Again, Barbara told me he was not home but she would get him to call me. She made some excuse for the previous day. I forget what. I think it might have been that she had forgotten to tell him. That the upshot was that again I waited and again got no reply.

Over the next few days, this scenario repeated itself, with variations. My visit to Perth was fast coming to an end. I kept phoning and kept getting no return call from Ron. A couple of times, while talking to Barbara, I was sure I had heard Ron in the background, so when it was right close to the time for me to leave, I came right out and asked her:

"What's going on here, Barbara? You keep stalling me, saying Ron's gunna phone, but he never does. Is something wrong with him?"

There was a long pause on the line before she answered: "Well, yes," she said. "There is something wrong with him. He's ashamed of himself and doesn't want to see you."

"Ashamed of himself?" I exclaimed. "Whatever for? Why doesn't he want to see me?"

"Well," she replied, "it's like this: Ron has been drinking heavier and heavier all the time. He gets up and has a beer, then heads off to the pub to meet his 'mates.' He usually doesn't make it home again till the pubs close, and often not at all. Anyway, we heard that you joined AA and quit drinking altogether. So that's why he doesn't want to see you!"

"That's crazy!" I told her.

She went on: "He says you'd be a preacher and try to get him to go to AA, but I know it's really because he's ashamed of himself."

"Should I come down there?" I asked.

"I don't think so," she told me. "He'd just head for the hills if he were home - and the chances of finding him home are pretty slim. Maybe you will be an example to him as it is. Maybe he will clean up his act."

We left it at that. A couple of days later, I returned to Canada. I never did see Ronny then, and I would never see him again.

The last few years have sped past. I did hear through my sister, who still kept in contact with Ron's sister, that he was still drinking heavily, and that Barbara was very worried about him. I tried to phone a couple of times, but gave up trying when he refused to talk to me.

And time ran out.

Late last year, 2010, I got an email from my sister. She had just received the news that Ronny had been diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, a very deadly and very painful form of lung cancer caused by prolonged exposure to asbestos dust. This must have occurred during his first job, as a glazier, cutting holes for windows in asbestos sheeting over 40 years before. The prognosis was bad. Because his country doctor had not recognized the signs, Ronny was well beyond treatment by the time specialists discovered the condition. They gave him no more than 6 months to live, and sent him home with lots of morphine.

I phoned Ron's place as soon as I heard the news. Barbara answered the phone. I told her it was Ted, calling from Canada. I asked if I could speak to Ron. I gathered she put her hand over the mouthpiece while she conferred with Ron.

"Yes, he wants to speak to you. here he is." The was a moment or two of silence, but I knew Ron now had the phone.

"How you goin', mate?" I asked.

"Not too bloody good," came his reply. "I suppose you heard the news, eh?"

"Yes, I did," I told him. "I'm so sorry."

"Nah, don't be sorry," he counseled me. "I've had a bloody good go of it in this life. There's been me Mum and dad, me brother and sisters, and Barb ... and you." His voice was actually cheerful. "I got some other news for you," he went on. "I didn't actually join AA or anything, or any of those other wowser groups, but I did quit drinking! It's been nearly a year now."

"That's terrific," I told him. "I was so worried about you."

"We'll it's all grog under the bridge now," he joked. "I gotta admit, though, that when they told me I was gunna die, I was tempted to start drinking again. But I didn't. I thought of what I'd put Barb through, and I thought of you getting sober, and said to meself, 'Shit, the morphine's bad enough. You don't need booze fucking up your head as well.' "

"How's the pain treating you?" I asked.

"Bloody awful," he told me, "but I'm taking as little morphine as I can. I want to be able to appreciate what time I've got left, not zonked out. Anyway, mate, I'm gotta go. My throat's getting to dry to talk."

"I'll phone you again soon, I promise."

I gather that the meds or the disease made his throat very dry, and made talking for any length of time very painful. Barbara also told me that he was choking up with emotion also.

I kept my promise and phoned my friend every week after that. The conversations were always very short. He was always in good spirits, always insisting that he had had a good life, that he was not afraid to die.

One of the last times we talked, Barbara was not there. She was outside, hanging the laundry on the clothesline. Ron broached the subject:

"Do you remember the last time we fucked," he asked.

"Yes," I assured him. "At my Dad's birthday party."

"Yeah, when that guy almost pissed on us while we were doing it!" he laughed.

"Do you remember the first time we fucked?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he replied. "When we went on holidays in your Dad's caravan," he replied. "We had some great times, mate.

"We sure did," I agreed. I was quietly crying to myself.

"Well, me throat's packing it in. I gotta go, Ted. I love you, mate."

"I love you, too, mate," I told him. And he hung up.

A couple of weeks later, on April 10th, 2011, I got an email from my sister to tell me that Ronny had died, surrounded by his brother and sisters, and his wife Barbara, that he had been joking with his sisters right up to the end.

I wish I had been there.

This was my story. I would appreciate your comments: