Prairie Dogs, Pronghorns & Penis Sheaths
by Biff Spork
Chapter 8
Chastened
October 21, 2017 There are various ways in which climate change can make weather more extreme. Some of them are fairly obvious – if you warm up the planet, you're going to have more frequent and intense heatwaves. Warmer planet, you're going to have more extremely hot days. You tend to see more flooding events, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, so when it does rain or snow, you actually get more precipitation. The rain and snow falls in larger amounts, and that's something we've seen as well in recent years.
While we spooned our dessert, Marcus said that after we finished eating, we could watch a film in the home theater — he listed a few current blu-rays he had — or we could spend the evening in the games room with his granddad's pool table or his own gaming computer.
" Marcus," I said, "Let's not fart around. Let go to bed, now."
He jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we ran laughing to his bedroom. Once there we threw the robes off and had a long hug and kiss, holding very still so as not to incite any spurtings.
We stood back from each other, and he said, "Oh, I forgot to ask you if you'd like to sleep in my bed tonight, or if you'd prefer to retire to the guest room?"
" Idiot!" I said.
There was a large box on Marcus's desk. He laughed when he saw it and walked over, unsealed it, and opened it up.
" Bumps, I'm happy we'll be sleeping together in my bed tonight, but what's in here is going to make it excruciating. Excruciating, but safe." Marcus laughed and lifted a half dozen smaller boxes from the bigger package.
I walked over to his desk to look, but he pushed me back. "No, no, Bumper. This is another surprise. Just go lie down on the bed with your eyes closed and wait while I get this stuff ready."
After a few minutes of paper and plastic unboxing noises, he came over to the bed and had me stand up. I felt him attaching something to my scrotum. Then I felt some strings or something around my waist and in my bum crack.
" Is this another koteka?" I said with my eyes still clenched shut.
" No, it's not a koteka," he said, while adjusting whatever it was, "but it's kinda like a koteka. Okay, you can open your eyes now."
It was like a koteka except it was stainless steel. My penis was contained within a shiny tube of steel a little longer and fatter than my normal boner. It was attached to me by a smooth steel ring that was snugly snapped around my scrotum. The tube had a flexible mesh base that extended into a pocket just large enough to comfortably contain my balls, The tube was ventilated with little holes, so that my penis could erect inside and 'breathe' even while erect. The whole contraption was held firmly in place by a narrow silky band that went from the ring below my ball bag up my bum crack, to connect to another band around my waist that fastened to the scrotal ring. I felt my penis swell into an erection. The flexible tube offered little resistance and pointed skyward. I put my hand on it but felt nothing. My penis was perfectly free to do its thing but was absolutely isolated from any outside sensation.
" Dear Bumper," said Marcus. "Would you put mine on me?"
I put his on him, and we went over and stood in front of the mirror. "You see," he said. "I suspected that when we ended up in bed together, especially overnight, that we'd be unable to resist fondling each other's penises or rubbing together. So I did some research on chastity devices. I didn't like most of them because they stop you from getting a boner, and I figured that would be uncomfortable, and maybe even harmful, but with these, we can get boners. We just won't feel anything."
" So now, my dear Bumper," he concluded, "we can sleep together. I can hold you tight all night and wake up in the morning with you in my arms, without fearing that I'm going to have a weak moment in the night and rub off on you, like you're a sex doll or something."
" What about if we have a weak moment and just take these things off?"
" It's not something we could do in our sleep. It's a bit complicated to get them off, so we just have to exercise a little willpower, and we'll be okay."
I could see through the bedroom window that twilight was well advanced. "Okay," I said, "but let's go to bed right now. I really want to kiss and cuddle you for a long time. Please?"
" An excellent idea," he said. "I know Anna has put out a new bamboo toothbrush for you, so let's go do that, and we can pee through the holes in the ends of these things so we don't have to take them off."
After lights out, we hugged and kissed and cuddled. It was beautiful to feel Marcus's legs rubbing against mine, to touch our toes together and all the night to come awake with him inside my arms, and feel his kisses on my face. The night was one long caress, and when I woke in the morning light, we were so wrapped up in each other that I could hardly tell where I ended and he began.
We kissed each other awake and clanked our chastity devices together companionably.
" How do you get this stuff?" I asked, suddenly curious when I realized that there was no way I could ever have ordered and paid for the kotekas and chastity devices.
" I've got a credit card," he said, "and Jason just pays the bills when they come every month.
" Wow! And nobody ever says anything?"
" Nope."
" How much can you spend?"
" I don't know," he said. "As much as I want, I guess."
Marcus looked across the pillow at me and asked, "What would you like to do today?"
" Can we go see the buffalo?"
" Yup," said Marcus, "if we can find them."
In the bathroom, we released each other from our steel cages and did our morning ablutions. Marcus suggested we just go nude around the house like he often did.
" I like being nude too," I said, "but you know that when we're together, it's just a boner party. I don't think I can be naked with you for more than fifteen minutes without getting a hard-on, and I'll be embarrassed around Anna and Jason or anyone else if I'm naked with a boner. How about if we wear kotekas when we're around other people? That way we're as naked as can be, but we don't have to worry about boners. I really like wearing a koteka. It just goes to show that there's things we can learn from other cultures. Even if they're not so technologically developed as us, they've got a handle on some important stuff."
Marcus agreed, and we donned two smaller, more discreet kotekas from those in the eBay package. After we sat at the table on the terrace, Anna brought us glasses of orange juice without comment beyond a cheery 'Good morning, boys!' Five minutes later we were tucking into plates of tofu scramble, veggie sausages and hash browns.
Marcus called Jason on his phone while we ate. A few minutes later, he laid the phone down. "Jason says the buffalo were last seen in the back forty about fifteen miles down the river. He says if we drive carefully and quietly, we might see some antelope on the way, but it would be good to take a drone in case the buffalo have moved."
" The back forty? Acres? Is that a lot of land?"
Marcus laughed. "No, granddad used to call everything outside the wall 'the back forty', but it's not acres, it's more like forty square miles or more. I don't know. Granddad called it all, 'the property', but the wall just goes around the house a mile or two on each side of the house. The rest of the property outside the wall is 'the back forty', but that's not how big it is; that's just what we call it."
" Are we gonna drive the carts?"
" No, roaming around the back forty is all off-road, too rough for the carts in places. They're too close to the ground. Jason said he'll bring one of the All-Terrain-Vehicles up to the house for us."
Jason was waiting beside the ATV when we went out the front entrance. He belted me in and handed us each a crash helmet. "I don't care if you guys run around naked, but I don't want to be picking pieces of your skulls, so, please, wear these, and if you're moving, always wear your seat belts, so you'll be protected by the roll-bar. The drone and controller are in the carry box and so is a phone and a walkie-talkie in case you run into trouble or have a breakdown." While we put the helmets on, he continued. "If you find the buffalo, be a little careful around them. They're pretty tame and used to people because we feed them in the winter, but remember, they're wild, and the bulls can be moody and unpredictable. Finally, don't stay out late. It can be hard to find your way back in the dark and if you're not back by nine o'clock, I have to turn out a search party. Marcus," he said with a serious expression, "you know that makes everyone unhappy."
Marcus assured him we would be back for lunch. While he drove, Marcus started explaining how to drive the electric ATV.
" Tell me about the search party," I said.
Marcus groaned.
" Oh," I said. "Now I really want to hear about the search party. C'mon! Out with it, all the gory details."
" Aarrgghh!"
" Now, I want it now!"
" Okay, okay. I begin to see you're not a very nice person — excellent, world-class freckles, yes, good taste in kotekas, yes — but a disgusting tendency to dig into unpleasant, unnecessary details and ancient history."
" The search party?"
" Two or three years ago, I went out in one of the ATVs without telling anyone where I was going, and I didn't take a phone or a walkie-talkie. I stayed out after dark and got kinda lost. I drove around trying to find the way back to the house until the battery on the ATV went dead, so I was stuck out in the back forty. I wasn't in any danger, but when I was missing after dark, everyone started to get worried. Then they discovered an ATV was gone, and they guessed I was somewhere out in the back forty. We had a lot more staff those days, when granddad was alive, so about twenty people set out in different vehicles searching different areas. Granddad sent up the helicopters."
" The helicopters! You have helicopters?"
" Just two…."
" Just two!"
" Yeah, but we don't even keep them on the property anymore since I never use them."
" Two helicopters! And where is your private jet?" I asked facetiously.
" Oh, not here. It's at the airport, in a hangar."
It was my turn to groan. "Aarrgghh!"
" C'mon Bumpery, gimme a break. I never ride in the jet anymore. In fact, I asked the trustees to get rid of it. It may even be sold for all I know."
I grabbed him and kissed him. "Marcus, if I didn't love you, I would hate you," I said.
He blushed. I made him blush. I kissed his cheek again and again and kissed his shoulder and his arm and his knee. I kissed his elbow. I wormed my way up under his arm and kissed and tongued his armpit until he screamed. A few minutes later we came to a gate in the wall. He got out and palmed the gate open.
" You drive now," he said. "It'll give you something useful to do besides torture me." I moved over to the driver's seat and pulled slowly through the gate. He closed it and belted himself into my seat.
" Just drive slowly," he said. "You never can tell what we might see out here. This is a rare piece of land, virgin grassland. Never been plowed, never been grazed except by the buffalo and the antelope, and there's deer out here too. This is what it was like before Europeans ever came to this continent. I love it out here and so did granddad."
' Out here' was rolling grassland dotted with the occasional small tree. A faint breeze drew patterns in the short green grass like wind riffles on a pond. I guessed that a line of deeper green winding away on our left was probably the tree-lined river bank. It snaked its way toward low rounded hills on the horizon.
" But you never finished your story," I persisted. "Did they find you?"
" Of course," said Marcus. "The helicopters, and then the ATVs and the ambulance, our doctor and two nurses. It was quite a crowd but I was happy to be found. I was only ten and kinda scared to be out there alone in the dark. I was coddled and taken home and put to bed gently, but in the morning I was locked down under strict house arrest for days. Granddad said I needed to apologize, one by one, to all the people who had helped search for me. It took me a couple of days. Everybody looked at me very seriously. Believe me, it was not nice, but when I was finished, I felt a lot better."
We came to the fringe of trees that edged the river and drove parallel to it for about twenty minutes. When we reached the hills, Marcus signaled me to stop. I pulled over into the shade of an oak. Marcus got out and put his crash helmet on the seat.
" Let's take a little walk," he said.
We were close to the base of a hill, the first of a line of them stretching west. Marcus marched up the side of the hill, its grassy slope green and lush after the previous day's cloudburst. When we reached the top, Marcus sat down cross-legged and surveyed the gentle, peaceful landscape before us. I sat down beside him.
" Granddad and I used to come out here," he said. "Sometimes we'd sit here for a couple of hours, sometimes talking and sometimes just sitting."
We sat quietly for about fifteen minutes. Then Marcus spoke again. "After he died, I came out here early one morning with his ashes and scattered them on this hill, up here. He's here. He's part of this hill."
I looked over and saw a couple of tears roll down Marcus's cheeks. I put my arm around his shoulder and he leaned his head on mine.
" Nobody else knows where I put the ashes," said Marcus. "I brought you here because I know granddad would have liked you. And you would have liked him. If he saw us sitting here naked with our kotekas sticking up, he'd laugh and laugh. Then he'd give us both a hug and a kiss."
We sat there leaning against each other, immersed in the ancient landscape. A while later Marcus stretched and stood up. "C'mon," he said. "Let's go find those buffalo."
We continued to follow the winding course of the river for another half-hour. Marcus signaled a halt where he knew there was a good swimmin' hole. It was hot and we had not seen a sign of the buffalo, so we decided to have a swim and then drive back to the house for lunch. It was a beautiful swimmin' hole with a grassy riverbank and open woods separating it from the prairie. We took off our kotekas, swam in the clear waters of the pool, and then lay down in the sun to dry.
Once the sun had warmed me, I sat up on my elbows and looked down at the immense, urgent boner that had sprouted from my groin. "Marcus, are we going to have to get separate rooms or something when we need to jerk off or can we jerk off in the same room, or…."
Marcus got up on his elbows, looked over at me then down at his own boner sticking up and straining toward the sun. "Yeah," he said. "I've been thinking about that. I don't want to make any rules for you, but here is what I'm gonna try. Mostly, I like being drenched in this total horniness. It's almost like a cum that just goes on and on and on. So I think what I'm gonna try, for a change, is to not jerk off at all."
" Not at all?"
" Yeah, not at all. No matter how horny I get, I have to keep my hands off the equipment."
" Won't we go crazy or something?"
" What I'm hoping is that from time to time, I'll just spill over somehow — like when there's too much juice built up, it'll just come spurting out. I hope so. It should be fun. Imagine you're just standing around and suddenly, whammo! You're in the midst of an orgasm. Like yesterday morning when we were running in the rain, we didn't do anything to bring it on. It was just our bodies and our hearts that made it happen."
" Yeah."
" But look," said Marcus. "That's just me. If you have to do it and wanna just go off by yourself and rub one out, that's fine. Or even if you wanna do it in front of me, that's fine too. I just wanna try this other thing. I'm really getting off on lusting after you at maximum volume. I love being in love with you. I could hardly go to sleep last night because I just wanted to keep looking at you."
I scooched over to lie beside him, then turned and wrapped my arms around him. I pressed tightly up against him. "Marcus, I want you so much," I said.
" No moving, now," he said. "I'm on a hair-trigger. I love you Bumper, but if you move a muscle I'm going to lose it completely."
We lay perfectly still for long minutes. It was wonderful to be lost in an intense yearning, like balancing on one toe on the very brink of the Grand Canyon.
" Marcus?"
" Mmm?"
" Did you ever go camping?"
" No."
" It would be nice to come out here and camp for a few days, just you and me. I know how to camp. My dad and I did it a couple of times when I was younger. It's great to get away from civilization and other people for a while."
Marcus pulled back a bit and said, "You mean like with sleeping bags and a tent, like boy scouts?"
" Yeah."
" That's a great idea, Bumper. What do we need?"
I began to describe what we needed for camping and we got so carried away I jumped up to go make a list. Marcus laughed and pointed at my limp, dangling penis. "No more boner," he said. "Oh Bumper, this is gonna be so much fun!" We donned our kotekas and raced through the trees to the ATV.
After lunch, we ran to Marcus's bedroom. He logged in to his favorite online merchant so we could get the camping equipment and supplies we needed. It was a lot of fun to go on a buying spree with no thought of how much anything cost. Within an hour our shopping cart was loaded with dozens of items that would enable us to create a home away from home. There were solar panels to power the lights in the two-room tent and the mini-fridge, and a one-burner solar-charged hotplate as well as a foil solar cooker, camp beds, sleeping bags, air mattresses, a compost potty, fluffy pillows, a battery-operated hair dryer, deck chairs, portable dvd player, a towel rack, and hatchets, knives and pots, pans, plates, cups, and a wide selection of canned and frozen foods. Suddenly I felt tired.
" Marcus," I said, "this is all wrong."
" What?" he said, his cursor poised over the Confirm Purchase button.
" I'm sorry. I got carried away," I said as I lifted his hand off the mouse.
" What's to be sorry?" he said. "This is great. We'll get all this stuff sent by express and should be able to take off tomorrow. I'll get Jason to put a trailer on the back of an ATV to carry it all."
" Marcus, camping is not about sitting outdoors surrounded by all this stuff. It's about getting away from all this stuff. So don't buy any of that. Cancel it all, and we'll just get what we absolutely need, what we can carry. No trailer. No ATV."
" No ATV? How are we gonna get there?"
" We'll walk."
" Walk?"
" Yeah!" I jumped on him and pushed him over onto his bed. "We'll get up on our hind legs and walk. We'll carry what we need on our backs. You'll hate it. It'll be good for you." While I spoke I dug my fingers into his ribs until he screamed and begged.
" Okay, okay, okay, Mr. Back-to-Nature, but we do need something; we can't just walk off into the bush with our kotekas on and nothing else. We at least need a knife and a pot or something."
Anna and Jason were in the kitchen, having just finished their lunch. We sat down at the table with them.
" We need your help," I said.
Both of them raised their eyebrows.
" Good!" said Anna.
" What?" said Jason.
So we told them we wanted to go camping down along the river for maybe a week, and we wanted to take just the bare essentials that we could carry in two packs. Jason was enthusiastic and said he could help us order the minimum equipment we needed, on the kitchen computer. Anna said she had often been backpacking when she was a girl and knew what food we should take. I spent the afternoon with her, putting together packages of dry soup and bean stew mixes. Online, we ordered camp cutlery and pots. We stopped for a snack in mid-afternoon.
Our packs and the online stuff Jason and Marcus had ordered would not arrive til the following day, but everything else was ready. Marcus and I decided to run down to the workshop for a swim to finish the day.
We had been thinking and talking all afternoon, and it was a relief to simply run along the forest trail playing tag with each other. I'd slap his bum and race ahead of him, until he caught up and slapped my bum. Then he accelerated away as I lunged after him. There was no thought for the morrow or for the past, and my mind was empty but for Marcus's slim form darting through the dappled shade beneath the trees. At the swimmin' hole, we paused only long enough to doff our kotekas and then threw ourselves into the river.
From underwater, I could see Marcus treading water and swam up to him. He wrapped his arms around me, and we each put our heads on the other's shoulder while our hearts slowed.
" You've changed my life, Bumper," said Marcus in a subdued voice. "I don't know who I am anymore."
" Me too," I said. "I used to know a lot of stuff. Now I only know one thing for sure. I love you Marcus. I absolutely, totally love you, everything about you, from your beautiful little toes up to those hairs that always stick up at the back of your head."
" Are you gonna be strict with me when we go camping?" he said.
" Yep. I'm gonna tell you what to do and order you around. I can hardly wait."
" Me too," he said.
We hugged and kissed until it was time to get out of the water and lie in the afternoon sun.
I drifted into a drowse. When I woke, I put my hands behind my head and looked down my belly. The view was obstructed by my boner reaching for the sky, straining upwards in the sunlight like it was possessed. I knew if I reached down and gave it a single fondle, I would be lost, so I pushed my head back and gazed up into the blue. As if my penis knew I was not going to stroke it, it slowly went limp. I closed my eyes again and bit by bit, I became aware of a subtle pleasure in all my body that I had not felt before. It was like the intense longing for an orgasm had melted down into a milder but more widespread pleasure that lingered, so that merely moving felt good. I sat up, stretched luxuriously, and felt happy.
" Marcus?" I said, as I leaned over and kissed his shoulder.
" Mmmhhhmmm?"
" Let's just walk back to the house, not take any vehicles. It'll be good training for our trek tomorrow."
So we walked through the woods, arm in arm, and talked about important things, like what we wanted to do when we grew up, and whether there was a God or not, and about UFOs and ESP, and how we felt about babies and maybe having kids. We had to stop and kiss from time to time so it was nearly supper time when we got back to the house. Anna met us at the door and said she wanted to inform us of a new rule.
" I think it's okay if you boys want to run around all day naked except for those gourd things, but I don't want you to get too wild, so I would like to see you wearing at least shirts and shorts for supper, just so you don't get too forgetful about what the outside world expects. Okay?"
We went to Marcus's room, laid our kotekas aside, and put on some shorts and T-shirts. We were rewarded with a big smile from Anna and a fabulous meal that left us nearly immobile, once we had cleaned our plates. After supper, I checked in by phone with my parents. Then, since we would soon be spending the night out under the stars, we decided to watch something in the home theater. We agreed that Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect preparation for our upcoming expedition.
In bed once again, the night was one long cuddle, with our tangled arms and legs finding ever fresh ways of embracing, while our stainless steel chastity devices prevented too much knobular stimulation.
We woke up early, excited that we were soon to set off on our camping trip. While we breakfasted, our camping supplies were delivered by an express courier. When we had eaten, Jason helped us to fit everything into the packs. In mid-morning we waved goodbye and set off toward the back forty.
We had decided to trek without shoes. We had been running around barefoot for a couple of days, and the grassland wasn't rocky or prickly. Had we been in a hurry, shoes would have been wise, but we were in no rush and were only going to trek as far on this first day as was comfortable.
We were soon out of sight of the house and stopped briefly to remove our kotekas. We had agreed that since we didn't expect to see anybody, we would leave the kotekas off and be naked as long as we were camping. Since we had no intention of leaving the property, we had no fear of meeting strangers. It was well-posted and fenced to discourage trespassers and, though I had yet to see them, there were security cameras and staff who regularly patrolled the perimeter of the property.
Two hours trekking brought us to the woods that lined the riverbank, and we took a break there. It was a relief to set the packs on the ground.
" Wow," I said. I felt light enough to float. "This is what it must be like to walk on the moon."
" Yeah," agreed Marcus. "Let's break out the grub."
We sat cross-legged in the grass, munched sandwiches, and emptied a canteen. I looked over at Marcus and smiled. I was full of happiness, and I wanted to say something, but I had nothing to say. He looked at me, and we started to laugh, just for joy. We wrapped our arms around each other and rolled over and over in the grass, then lay still.
Marcus estimated we might be as much as three hours' walk from the swimmin' hole campsite we had visited the previous morning. We both felt capable of doing it, so we shouldered our packs and set off again.
I was glad we were hiking to our campsite. Walking across the grassland made me feel like we were performing an ancient ritual, something our minds and bodies recognized from thousands of years ago. Aside from the whisper of a breeze, it was quiet except for the occasional bird song — a lark's cascading trill or a killdeer's plaintive call. The cloudless sky seemed immense, a vast blue vault. With every step, we seemed to move further away from the problems of the world, all the wars, pandemics, and looming environmental crises.
It was late afternoon when we finally broke through the trees to our campsite on the river and took the packs off again.
" We don't have to cook tonight," I said. "Let's just eat those veggie dogs and buns. You find us some dry firewood and make a campfire, and I'll try to set the tent up. Okay?"
Our tent was a two-person pup tent, one of those that was supported by flexible, telescoping metal rods. I was thankful that the instructions were clear and accurate. As soon as the tent was up, I inflated the air mattress. We had only brought one sleeping bag, but it was a generous size. The two of us together were about as big as a single, large grown-up, so it was perfect.
Meanwhile, Marcus had hacked branches from a dead tree and built a campfire. He had also cut and sharpened two sticks to use to roast the vegan wieners. Anna had packed eight buns already cut and spread with mustard and relish. Those hot dogs slid down like food from heaven. We moaned and snuffled while we wolfed them down, then topped them off with some nuts and raisins. Though twilight was advancing, we took a quick swim before bed to wash away the dust and sweat of the day's hike. The evening was cool, but we soon dried, standing naked in front of the campfire's glowing embers.
After digging through his pack for a few minutes, Marcus came back to the fire and said, "I don't know where those chastity things are. I put them with the rest of the stuff to bring, but now I can't find them."
" I'm sorry, Marcus," I said. "They just seemed to be wrong things to bring out here, so I took them out of your pack and left them in your room, in your desk. I hope you don't mind too much. I was gonna talk to you about it but you were busy with Jason, and then I forgot."
Marcus didn't say anything, so I continued, "I was a little doubtful at first when you talked about not having sex, but now I know you were right. It's better like we've been doing it, and I'm sure if we're both determined to be together without doing sex right away, we can do it. I want us to be like you said. Every day I'm together with you, I love you more, even though it never seems like it's possible."
" That's beautiful, Bumper." said Marcus. "You're right. We shouldn't have to depend on some steel cock-traps. Let's go to bed. I'm so tired I could fall asleep standing up. All I want now is to put my arms around you and go to sleep."
Though our bodies wrapped themselves in each other in ever-new combinations through the night, fatigue from our fifteen mile trek kept us chaste. At one point I had to get up to urinate. As I stood in the moonlight, peeing under the brilliant stars, a surge of joy swept over me and I felt like I wanted to sing, to let the world know how wonderful everything was, and how happy I felt. When I folded myself back into Marcus's warm embrace in our little tent, I slept immediately.
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