Part III : Further Tales from

Adam's World

by Lee G.

The four of us - Ted and Todd and Will and me, Walt- form a rather unique "family unit" in Adam's World. Ted and Todd are brothers. Will and I are brothers also.

And it was the fact that both Todd and I had quad brothers which brought us together in the freshman year of college. What a help we were to each other in that difficult year. Who else but the other could understand what we were both going through? We were trying to sleep for the first time in a room without a brother who might need us at any moment and whose breathing we unconsciously monitored for any sign of wakefulness or trouble. We were missing our brothers desperately, wondering how they were doing without us to cart them around and help them with the all the trivial tasks that make up life. We felt guilty about leaving them to go off to college and have an opportunity it was hard to see how they could ever have. We felt guilty about feeling glad to have a chance to come out as gay men in a new and freer atmosphere. We felt guilty that our sexual experimentation with our brothers had somehow been wrong. We were a mess. But after we found each other, we could at least be a mess together.

Since both of us were missing our brother's dick in our hands, Todd and I started putting our dicks in each other's hands. Mutual masturbation relieved one kind of tension. Sharing our stories with each other relieved us in psychological ways. We experimented with thinking of ourselves as lovers, but the fact of the matter is that we were friends and jo buddies. We did not turn each other on sexually. We got much hotter talking about our brothers than we did by looking at each other. And before long we found ourselves turning to stare at the same kind of guy - handicapped guys. We would be in a store, for example, and see a guy in a wheelchair. Both our heads would turn and then our eyes would meet. Amputees in particular would attract our attention. There was a kid in our college town with legs off well above the knee. We saw him reasonably often. Once we saw him in a restroom where we had gone to pee. We both got so hot we went into a stall and jerked each other off knowing that he was just outside the stall.

Every one talked about how devoted we were to our brothers. And we were. We were also devotees, although we didn't know the word then. We have also come to realize that we are wannabes in a sense. Is it a result of envy of our brothers? Who knows.

Todd says that during his and Ted's adolescence he would "lift" picture magazines from the house of a gay uncle. Then Ted and Todd would look at pictures while Todd masturbated them. The only problem was over which picture to look at. Ted wanted ones that showed full length bodies - with legs and arms. Todd just wanted the torso visible. Sometimes they could find a good one of each kind on facing pages.

My brother Will was one of the last of the thalidomide kids. At each corner of his torso is an appendage bent something like a chicken wing. The right "arm" is the largest and strongest and most useful of these appendages. At rest it hangs with a bend backward and upward. It ends with something that looks more like a litte three toed foot than a hand. Will can bring it out and forward and turn the bend upward to reach his mouth or hold objects the size of a coffee mug or bigger. On the left side the appendage is smaller and weaker and rests most of the time on his chest. The leg appendages are folded like wings over his dick. Outside of a wheelchair he can move by flipping his body over from front to back in a rolling motion or by creeping on his limbs, nose to the ground, a few inches at a time. Our private word for his limbs is flippers. The leg limbs do look something like the flippers on a seal and the twisting movement of his body as he creeps is also rather like a seal's.

Ted's congenital condition gives him four stumps. His left arm stump and his right leg stump are both nearly 8 inches long. And they both look pretty much alike, slender flesh ending in a rounded tip. His other two stumps barely poke out from shoulder and hip. He can maneuver out of a chair by twisting his torso in a sitting position - "butt walking" he calls it, prying his weight up in the air with the leverage of his right leg stump.

During that first year in college, Todd and I got to know each other's brother by our constant talk about them. On weekends we would go home and tell our brothers about each other. On week nights we would talk to each other about them. And in both places we usually wound up in a session of masturbation.

In the summer after that first year we decided we would take our brothers on a drive across the country in my family's van. It would be our high school graduation present to our brothers. We would take a chair for each of them for some sight seeing but as much as possible we wanted them to be free just to be. We would go to beaches and sleep out under the stars and carry them for hikes in the woods and do all the things they had never had a chance to do. And we would see how they got along because we had a plan to live together as a foursome so that we could take care of them and they could go to college, too.

We wondered if perhaps they might become lovers. Wouldn't that be great? Onnce again we were acting as protective big brothers planning their lives for them. We thought that if they had each other we could get out of our awkward, slightly guilty feelings about sexual contact with our own brothers. In the first days Todd and I would get them settled on a blanket by the camp fire and go off for a walk or a run together. We would stop to rest and wonder what they might be doing, picturing them climbing all over each other. That very idea got us so hot we had to take care of each other. Once coming back to the fire we did catch them in a 69 position tickling each others balls with flipper or stump. And talking, talking about us and what we might be doing with intertwined legs and arms! Their imagination of our intertwining was much more exciting that what we actually did. It was beginning to dawn on Todd and me that our plan was not going to work. They were devotees of full limbs. We were devotees of missing or miss-shapen limbs.

The turning point came one beautiful evening by a lake shore. Will and Todd were at the campfire, but Ted and I wanted to swimming. "Go ahead, guys", they said. So I carried Ted down to the shore. It was like carrying Will, but yet not. The feel of stumps resting on my arms was delightful to me. In the movement of walking his left arm would move on my arm, kind of tickling as it bent the hair on my arm backward. His right leg would bounce against my crotch. I kept thinking about sticking it between my legs and wondering what that would feel like. At the beach I undressed him first and discovered that he had a hard on, too. I turned away as I undressed embarassed at my own raging erection. But as I turned back around it practically hit him in the face. "Let's not go swimming just yet," he said. "Lie down beside me and let me help you with that thing."

Thus began the first real lovemaking experience of my life. Will and I and Todd and I had relieved each other, this was different. The next hour or so was the most vivid memory of my life. Starting at my feet, Ted crept and twisted himself up my body, examining and loving with kisses every inch of flesh and every hair. As his mouth reached my cock and found it, his arm stump stroked my balls. I was getting ready to come and grabbed his head, when he pulled off me. "Not so fast, big boy," he said, "I'm not through with you yet." And then he started up my trunk, not letting me move a finger or toe. "Just lie there like the great big hunk you are. I'll do the work."

But when his mouth reached mine and his little leg stump hit my balls and his cock hit mine I could not hold back anymore. My body had been loved into orgasm - wave after wave of it pumping out onto him, thrusting up to him and bouncing him on my belly as he thrust his tongue down my throat. Then I turned him over under me and tried to return the favor. There was much less of him to examine but I wanted to memorize each precious bit from head to...cock. I ended up there pulling it into my mouth with one hand and feeling for the leg stump with the other. And he poured himself into me.

After washing off in the lake we went back to the campfire. Something similar must have happened with Will and Todd because they were snuggling and giggling like embarassed lovers as we returned.

So the four of us have lived together ever since. We did make it possible for them to go to college. We have founded a business that invents and manufactures and promotes and distributes adaptive aids for the handicapped. Thanks to some of our products, Ted and Will are more self-sufficient than they used to be. After we get them set up in their chairs for the day with all their equipment handy, we really don't have to worry about them. The relationship between the four of us is based on affection all the way around. We nuzzle and nudge in any combination.

But lovemaking is Ted and me, Todd and Will. And it has never lost its magic. If Ted nudges his shoulder and head under my arm so that I wind up with an arm around his shoulder. And if then he looks up at me with that smile of his, my heart melts and my dick stands up and my mouth heads for his. A kiss from Ted is bliss. It is as if all that he is is expressed in that kiss - all his desire to embrace me and his frustration and his love and his happiness. The intimacy of the morning as I shave him and brush his teeth and wash him is my special moment of love. With equipment he could do some of those things, but I cannot do without the intimacy. Each act leads me to tell him how beautiful he is to me. Each act can turn into a tease that might lead me to carry him back to bed. "Nudge up under my arm again, Ted. Turn your face up to me so I can look into your smiling eyes. Stick your stump between my legs right up under my balls. Kiss me into coming again."

*********************************

I never, ever, thought I would have a no-hands lover. And much of my life I thought I would never have a lover at all.

Growing up as I did with a congenital lack of arms, I was fascinated by what I myself lacked. I knew how I did things, mostly with my feet, and how that felt. But what was it like to lift an arm, bend an elbow, grasp with a finger? And, particularly in my adolescence, what was it like to do that to a dick? I collected pictures of guys flexing their biceps and fantasized about them. If I could never know what they felt doing that, could I at least know what it felt like to have one of those guys take me in his hand?

Fortunately, the kid next door, Terry, answered that question for me. He was my best, and just about my only friend. He would take time out from his sports to spend some time with me, and he let me tag along with his teams and cheer them on. He grew into a very athletic kid. His biceps were developing nicely by age 15. I also noticed something else growing between his legs.

One day we took a hike in the woods. He often invited me to do that when he wanted to talk to me in private. He had lots of trouble with his folks, constant arguments. Talking to me was about his only relief. But this day's talk was different. He was worried about his penis! Was it growing like it was supposed to? And did I know how sex worked? He couldn't ask his father, and he was embarassed to ask his sports buddies. What did I know? Well, I didn't know much, but I suggested we compare our dicks to see if they looked the same. He agreed and took down his pants. I was still struggling to get my elastic waist band down. Pants are the worst part of armlessness, I think. "Want me to help?", Terry asked. "Sure," I sighed in ecstasy. Out flopped my dick into his hand. I never wear underwear; it just makes things worse.

We measured pretty much the same after a few seconds because we both got bigger in his hand. "God, that feels good, Terry," I said. "Up to now having a cock has just been a bother to me, something to worry about getting out when I have to pee. But maybe growing up is going to change all that."

"But what do they do with it - adults, I mean. How do they do it?", he asked.

"Well, I think there is a hole somewhere on a girl. Let's say your hand is that opening. Then the man pushes his dick in and out - like this." I surprised us both with the effectiveness of my lesson and spurted cum all over us both. "I guess that juice is what makes babies," I told him in my most grown up way, as soon as I had come back down to earth. For surely it was heaven where I had been for a few minutes. "Gee, I wish I had a hand to show you how much fun it is. You could try your own hand. Or wait, I've got an idea." And I kneeled down in front of him. "Put your dick in my mouth. It must be something like a girl's thing." As he did, he took my head in his hands and sighed, "Oooh that feels good. It's warm and wet." And so I taught him the joys of orgasm, too. We weren't sure, afterwards, whether to feel guilty or not. "It's just practicing," I said. "Surely that's all right."

We practiced quite a lot until Terry went to college. Before his first date he asked if we could practice something else - kissing. Neither of us had tried that either. So I said, "Ok, I'll be the girl. We're sitting in the movie. You put your arm around me. Like that." (My heart melted with the fire that strong grasp around my shoulder kindled in me. I wanted that moment to last forever.) "Now I lean my head on your shoulder. Like this. You kind of nuzzle me with your face. Yeah, like that. Then I turn my face up to you. And you lower your lips on mine." Although I loved the lesson, he didn't need it. He was a natural at kissing.

I suppose Terry must look back on this as just a phase. But I remember it as the great passion of my life. I loved him. I played out that scene of the kiss every night for years. I could still feel his arm around me and see how gorgeous he looked as I turned my head up and saw his smile just as he lowered his lips to mine. My stumps remember, too. The little one pressed into his arm pit. The longer one experiencing his caress as his fingers wandered down to its tip and then held it cupped in his hand as we kissed. My stumps are not much use to me. Usually they just sort of hang there. But when I think of Terry, they kind of throb with excitement just like my cock does.

After Terry went to college, it seemed like I would never know either sex or love again. I was on my own. Since I have always used feet for hands for most daily tasks, I am really quite agile. Could I get my dick between my toes or between the soles of my feet or between a heel and the mattress? The answer is yes, with effort. It was not very satisfactory and it took lots of fantasizing first about biceps and arms and hands and being embraced and looking up to kiss Terry. But it would have to do.

Then I met Daniel and found myself in the position of being someone else's dream man. I was dumbfounded. It happened like this:

I was looking for a new place to live and chose Adam's World because all sorts of adaptations were possible. Faucets I could push on and off. Locks with combinations I could enter (with my nose if necessary) instead of keys. Instead of knobs, door latches I could push with a stump or a foot. No small dials on anything. Daniel was also looking for a place to live, too, and needed some of the same adaptations. Would we want to live together? Why not, we both thought.

Daniel lost his arms in an explosion during adolescence. His shorter one is about like my longer one, some 6 or 7 inches long. His longer one has an elbow plus 3 or 4 inches. So he copes in quite different ways. He uses tools in elastic straps around his stumps. He often uses a hook on the longer one and pushes things into it with his shorter one. His stumps seem always in motion. When he talks, the shorter one waves to emphasize his points, and so does the longer one when not restrained by the weight of the hook.

On the other hand, I automatically slip off a loafer and work with foot and mouth to do whatever needs to be done. (Except for getting my pants down. I have never found a good way to manage that.) When I talk it's my bare feet that wave in the air.

And that's what turned Daniel on. For whatever unknown reasons, he grew up fantasizing about feet. No biceps on his bulletin board - just feet. Before his accident he had done some experimenting with other boys but mostly had looked at their feet in shower rooms and then gone home to give himself a hand job. After his accident he could still look but had to invent hand substitutes. He could, for a brief period of time, get his dick between his stumps. He also tried using his feet. The idea was a huge turn on for him - but growing up with arms just had not allowed him to develop the kind of agility I had.

So when he saw my talking with my feet, he pointed at them with his stumps and said, "I'll bet you can jerk yourself off with your feet can't you?" "Well, only sort of," I said. "If I'm really horny."

"What can I do to get you really horny?", he asked, fumbling his velcro fly open with his elbow stump to reveal his own horniness. "That's a start," I admitted. "Help me get these damn pants off and we'll see." He was better than I am at pulling them off and ended the operation at my cock. He took it in his mouth and pulled me in with his elbow around my butt. He had a bicep. I could feel its bulge pressed into my butt cheek. After a good work out, he released me. "It seems to me you're plenty horny," he said. "Let me see you in action."

So I gave a demonstration - getting myself in lotus position and fondling myself with big toe, almost getting my dick between the toes, and all my other tricks to make contact and friction between foot and cock. It didn't seem like I was going to come any time soon, but I became very aware that Daniel was hugely turned on. He was moaning and leaking and waving his stumps frantically. "Could you give me a toe job?", he whispered. "It's what I've always wanted." Why not. I reached out for him and took him between the toes of my right foot and began to stroke. It felt kind of wierd, but ok. No great turn on, except to see the effect on Daniel. He thrust himself into my foot. "Push. Push.", he cried as my foot moved against his balls. And then he came in a frenzy.

Later he asked, "What can I do for you?" I had already told him of my turn on by arms and biceps. "I know I'm not your dream man and these things (waving his stumps) are piss poor substitutes, but there must be some thing I can do?"

"Come over here," I whispered. I nudged under his elbow arm and nestled in his armpit. He automatically reached around to nestle my head in his elbow. I looked up into his beautiful eyes. "Kiss me," I pleaded. He was as good as Terry. Maybe better. And his stump felt delightful as it moved on and around my shoulder. And there was the same comfort of strength I had remembered from Terry in the forearm holding my head securely. When we came up for air he traveled with his kisses down to my dick. Took me in his mouth again and grabbed my butt in his strong elbow. Who needs a dream man, who needs hands when you have a Daniel who thinks you are a dream man. I gave myself into his mouth and meant it to be for life. "Daniel, baby, one bicep is enough in this house."

**********************************

I am happy about this chance to tell you my experiences as a gay devotee and wannabe and (sort of) amputee. If I can explain it for you, maybe I can help Ben understand, too. He rejoices that I am gay, and he has gotten past the devotee part of me because my mangled hand gave me some credibility when we were first getting together. But he still has lots of trouble understanding why I want to be like he is - a double above knee amputee.

As long as I can remember I have been fascinated by amputees. I kept my eyes open for the few who lived in my home town and looked forward to trips to the city because I might see more. In my town, there was a double above knee man who walked awkwardly on artificial legs and crutches sometimes and sat in a wheelchair at other times. He had a store downtown so I could count on seeing him. There was a guy whose stump ended at the wrist, forming an interesting valley between two little hills. And there was my older cousin. He was a farmer with huge muscular fingers - 9 of them plus an index finger amputated between the knuckle and first joint.

I sometimes wonder if some subconscious wannabe desire was working on me when I got my hand caught in the lawnmower at age 6. Surely by that age I knew the dangers of sharp blades. But I have no recollection of that time except pain.

As the pain cleared, however, I found myself a focus of interest for the first time among other kids. They wanted to examine my hand. The various reconstructive surgeries and the changes that resulted as bandages came off kept interest alive for years. That has probably helped in my "adjustment". I am not in the least ashamed of the way it looks. And I have no real trouble with the way it functions. I sometimes notice people staring at it - particularly as I offer it to them to shake. That doesn't particularly bother me. I only find it mildly amusing.

How does it look? Something more like a paw than a hand. The thumb is reasonably intact, missing only a nail and the tip. Less than an inch remains of the index finger and less than that of the others. Even the knuckle is gone of the little finger. The surgeons opened up the area between thumb and index finger so that I have more surface to grasp things. I write with it, eat with it, and, when I was a teenager, learned how to masturbate with it. For less important things, like throwing balls in sports, I had a left hand to use. So I never thought of myself as "handicapped".

And my paw certainly turned out to be an advantage with Ben. Since he had lost his legs just about the time his adolescent hormones kicked in, he had to come to terms with gayness and leglessness simultaneously. And, to hear him tell it, both were extremely difficult. The first "step" was learning to walk on prostheses with first two crutches and then one. With jeans on he felt more like one of the guys - even if his legs came off with the jeans. Then he learned to drive with hand controls and discovered sex in a car. Seated sex. It took years for him to allow a partner or anybody else, for that matter, to see him without jeans or legs.

And I was that partner. I had noticed him in our freshman year at college. Despite all his practice you can't help noticing the way he walks. So it was his walk which first made me notice him. But as I have tried to help him understand since, what I then noticed was, not what was in or not in the legs of his jeans, but my ideal slender man with intense gray eyes on top of the jeans. And, if truth be told, what was in the crotch of his jeans interested me, too.

He might not have ever let me get close enough to tell him that, however, if he hadn't noticed my paw. Automatically he knew that I, too, had been stared at and started every new acquaintance with answering or avoiding the question: "So what happened to you?"

We could start our friendship on a different basis. We could talk about classes and football games and normal things. Until I got up the courage to ask him to go to a bar with me - and chose a gay bar. My hunch had been right. He was thrilled to find out that I would be a gay friend. That night we did tell each other "what had happened to us." I tried to hint that I found him very attractive. But his lack of self-esteem kept him from hearing the hints.

After a few more evenings together without any sign of his getting the hint, I finally asked him for a "date". "Yes," I said, "a date - you know with dinner and a movie and maybe a kiss. With legs or without, I don't care." He chose with legs. I'm glad. That put our mouths at kissing level as we said goodnight. And I got a brief brush of his crotch with my paw. And we agreed to go out again the next weekend. It was romantic and wonderful. Time went haywire during that week. There seemed not to be enough time to figure out what to wear and, on the other hand, the week seemed to last a year.

At the door after the kiss and another brush of the crotch, he invited me in for coffee. Just like in the movies. We never got to the coffee. But we did get to his sofa. I surprised even myself with the agility of my hand in getting at his belt and fly. He sighed with pleasure and giggled out a joke about getting pawed all over. But when I started to pull down his jeans, he stopped me. "You don't want to do that, do you, Abe?"

But I did want to do that. I didn't want a quick grope like we had both had in parked cars, I wanted a romantic first time with Ben. It took some convincing by word and feel of one hand and one paw, but he finally agreed to undress. And to remove his legs - with my help.

"My God, you are perfect, Ben. Absolutely perfect. Slender, not an ounce of fat. Hairy chest, long arms. You know, with legs I bet you would have been a lot taller than me. And the way you sit there with your stumps out in a "V" for balance frames your cock just perfectly. I've always dreamed of a man like you."

"Not like me, Abe. Surely not someone with stumps like these."

"But they're beautiful, Ben. Look, they are the same length. They are slender and smooth. Yet each is different at the end because of the way the scar works. It's like they have dimples." And I started to feel them, lightly, gently, lovingly. He moaned.

"I don't think I could ever let any one else do that. But it's different with you. What you do with your left hand's fingers feels so much different than with the right. But both are wonderful. Don't stop. Please."

Eventually, but fortunately very eventually and only after a long session of mutual exploration, we discovered that both our dicks would fit in the hollow between between my thumb stump and what was left of my hand. And then I showed him just how much grasp and power I have as we pumped our bodies into each other. And he taught me the delights of the tickling of his stumps against my thighs. It was incredible. And afterward there was the pleasure of exploration all over again.

"I can't keep my paws off you," I said. "If there were any more to you, I think I'd never get finished exploring you."

"You don't have to kid me, Abe. I know you'd rather be looking at someone with legs." How would I ever get him to believe that he was wrong, dead wrong?

I love to look at him. Now that we live together in Adam's World. I can look at him daily, and it still is not enough. Nothing I have said has convinced him that he is beautiful, but perhaps the joy he reads in my face when I do see him is beginning to do the trick. At any rate, he is now comfortable about letting himself be seen by me and the world without legs. I have even gotten him to go to the beach with me, the nude beach! His pleasure in sitting in the wet sand with breakers rolling up his back was something to behold. And then for the first time, he sunned himself, opening himself to the warmth pouring down on him. That first day at the beach is one I certainly will never forget. After a time he lost self-consciousness and scampered around on his butt like a mischievious child. And he let me carry him - in public - when the sand and the rocks got so hot they were burning his dick.

The part that he doesn't yet understand is why my eyes tear up sometimes when I look at him. The tears are a response to his perfection and a response to my desperate desire to be down there on the ground with him in the shape he is in.

I love to look at him. But I hate the looking down on him. I want us to be equals, and my legs do keep us apart. When I try to tell him this, he says, "But, Abe, I love your legs. And sometimes, let's face it, I need them. Like when I have to go to the john in the middle of the night. And you know how I like to snuggle my back up to your belly and you hold me in place by lifting up your knees and my hands wander down your calves and feel the hair and find the feet...and how I tickle them until you distract me with your paw on my dick."

In addition to the fact that the simple act of looking at him is so complicated for me, there is also the complication of watching him do things which are difficult. It would be so much simpler for me to pick him up than to see him crawl to the chair, climb into it, wheel to the bathroom, transfer to the toilet, and all to do all over again on the way back. But he wants to be as independent as possible, at least during the day. I have to respect that. Yet I long to reach out to him, lift him into my arms, perch him on my hips. It would be an excuse for a kiss. It would be an excuse for more touch of him. Instead I watch him struggle and wait for a sign that my help would be welcome. The one thing he will let me do is help him get his legs off and on. He obviously can do that himself, but he likes the attention I can give his crotch in the process.

And so we live in a constant state of desire. There is the sexual desire. And there is my desire to be like him. And his to be like me - with legs. The satisfaction of the sexual desire certainly helps the other. I will be sitting on the sofa. He will crawl to me and lift himself up to snuggle his butt between my legs. He lifts my legs and places them over his stumps so that I can feel them under my thighs and he can see legs in front of him. Then he guides my mutilated hand to his dick for a warm up. Meanwhile my dick is trying to insert itself up his ass as he fondles my legs. This is our mutual sign that it is ok for me to carry him, carry him to bed, where we can pour out our desire on each other's legs or stumps, into each other's hands or paw.

But still I dream of being on his level, of snuggling up to him with stumps of my own so short that they fit into the "V" of his as I face him. Then as we sit facing each other, I put us both in the hollow place of my hand - until the pumping of our bodies into it knocks us over as we come to each other.

************************

"Look, Ma, no hands" was the bitter, all-purpose joke of my youth as I amazed someone with what I could do with hooks. I, on the other hand ("Ha, ha," he laughed bitterly at his own poor joke), am still amazed at how fascinated people are by hooks. No matter how simple the action I am performing, I am the object of stares. So I sometimes do outrageous things - like pick my nose or, in the right crowd, rub my crotch with my hooks.

In my youth, I also did some staring at myself...as I rubbed my crotch. Hooks have become so much a part of me that I now I feel wrong without them on. My stumps don't feel right unless they are inside the sheaths of the prostheses. My shoulders feel worse than naked without harness. The pressure of cables is necessary to my well being. So it was with hooks that I learned to masturbate - and to watch closely so that I didn't hurt myself in my most tender area.

I would watch myself in the mirror. Beginning with a gentle lift of my cock in the right hook and a gentle lift of the balls in left. If the metal was too cold I would sit with hooks between my legs to warm them up first, but still the touch was cool and welcome to my body burning with adolescent fire. I would watch the gentle lifting and fondling as long as possible until I couldn't stand the need for a firmer grasp. Then I would work a while with the right closed hook facing up and the left facing down to encircle my cock as I pumped with my pelvis into the circle of metal - keeping the circle open wide enough so as not to hurt myself. But stopping every once in a while to close the circle firmly around myself and feel the pressure. Then I would need to open the right hook and stroke myself between the prongs, keeping the left under my balls or under my cock for support. But only for so long before it started to hurt and then it would be necessary to start all over. It ain't easy to love yourself with hooks. But when it's all you've got, you do it. Sometimes improvising with cloth (jockey shorts work) between flesh and metal or inflatable objects (a kind of whoopee cushion for the cock). You do what you have to do and then congratulate yourself, "Look, man, no hands."

Unfortunately there was never another man to look at this demonstration. I almost literally devoured every gay porn magazine I could find - and never saw a single picture of anyone with hooks. So I figured no gay man would ever want to look at me. I contented myself with staring back at hunky guys who stared at me cutting meat or signing my name. And with staring at myself at night after I had undressed down to harness and parked myself in front of the mirror and tried to think of a new improvisation (what would my brother's leather glove feel like between cock and hook or could I get a couple of fingers of it over the hook?).

I did find a gay man who wanted to look at me, though. It wasn't until I was 45 years old, but it sure has been worth it. Armand is his name. What a name for a guy totally lacking in arms, but his family never did see the irony in that. As a matter of fact, he is so totally lacking in arms that there is nothing to hang a prosthesis from. So people stare at him for what he does with his feet. That means they do a double stare at us whenever we go out. I suppose we do make quite a sight in a restaurant, for example. Armand, with his chair back far enough to get his feet to the table. Me, using hooks instead of silverware. Both of us, sometimes feeding each other. And laughing and enjoying ourselves and not giving a rip about the stares. We have been asked to leave some places. That's their tough luck. We'll take our hard earned money elsewhere.

It was in the process of computer training to make us more marketable that we met each other. With a phone and a keyboard and a pencil between the hooks or the toes we can take orders, write reports, problem solve, or anything else the modern world of business demands.

On the first day of the training we found ourselves staring at each other. Neither of us had ever met another armless guy before. And it was interesting to watch how the other coped. Foot manipulation was so different from hook manipulation. I went home and tried it, but without Armand's years of practice I knew I would never develop that agility which gets a foot to the mouth or gets toes to pick up objects and move them. Later Armand told me how much he envied me the agility of hooks and hated his lack of shoulders and stumps. He would have given anything to have something to use for arms. Seeing me brought back his frustration at never being able to hug - even his mother on her deathbed.

But we did not know these things about each other then. We were both too shy to talk about them. Shyness had brought us both to middle age without anything more than anonymous sexual contact through a glory hole - the only invention of mankind surely devised by and for the armless. We were not about to overcome shyness with each other overnight.

The instructor put us together as a team for our project. (How typical - put the freaks together where they won't upset the normals.) But we didn't mind. We had our chance to shine when our project was done more quickly and efficiently than that of any other team. You should have seen us demonstrating it to the class with his bare feet and my hooks gesturing wildly to emphasize our points. I was elected to do the diagrams for the blackboard, however. It was too high for him to reach with his feet. Our project was received with enthusiastic applause, which unfortunately we found it hard to reciprocate for our classmates. (Clapping hands and shaking hands are the two social courtesies most embarassing to both of us. Or at least they used to be embarassing. We have now encouraged each other to offer a hook or a foot and to clap metal or foot flesh, as the case may be.)

We decided to celebrate the success of our project by going out for a beer. "Where shall it be?" "How about that place down the street?" "Isn't that a gay bar." "Yeah, I think it is. Would that bother you?" "Hell, no, if you want to know the truth, I think it's kind of a turn on."

Talk about stares. If we hadn't had the other beside us for courage, neither one of us could have handled our reception in that bar. But the presence of the other forced us into outstaring them. Armand slipped his mocassins off and settled into a chair. I whipped a big bill out of my wallet and flashed it with a shiny hook in the waiter's face as we ordered beers in our best imitation of butch. We knew the starers were waiting to watch us drink. The waiter poured some beer into our glasses. We lowered our lips and teeth to it; then raised our heads into drinking position. Having proved that point we went back to using feet and hooks.

Whether it was the beer or whether it was the "us against them" aspect of the experience, we were soon sharing life stories. By the third beer we had come out to each other. By the fourth we were losing manipulative agility. I sloshed my beer on my lap first. He got to laughing so hard, he lost control and stained his crotch, too.

"How about you come home with me and get dried off?", I suggested.

To get dried off meant getting pants off. I correctly figured that was going to be easier for me than for him. As I later learned, even with velcro closures he had to use a gadget on a stick held in his teeth to pull pants up or down. It was terribly time consuming and not always reliable. And when not at home he wore adult diapers since he couldn't toilet himself. That's why he still lived at home. So I helped him off with his clothes and diaper. When his beautiful cock finally flopped out, I automatically reached out to cradle it in my hook as I would my own.

"Oooh, that's cold," he said. "Sorry, I sometimes forget," I answered. "Oh, don't take it away. It feels good actually. You do that so gently. Very few things have ever touched it except my own tongue." "Do you mean you can suck yourself off?" "Well, not exactly, but I can curl my body up and get my lips down on it. Here I'll get on the bed and show you."

It was quite a demonstration. By the time he brought himself off, I was moaning and leaking and churning my hips. And shining my hooks on my jeans crotch. "How do you do yourself?", he asked as he reached out his feet and started to undo my jeans. He might have trouble getting his own clothes off but he had me down to harness and hooks in no time at all. Instead of a mirror, I watched his eyes whenever I could take my eyes off my cock. And I gave him the best demonstration of my life. By the time I was finished, he was hot again.

That was my cue to let him learn the pleasure of firm but gentle pressure of metal on flesh. And then later I gave him the cue to teach me the skill of his lips on cock flesh. That took us pretty much through the night. Just before daybreak I dressed him and walked him home. At the door, I suddenly remembered, "Armand, the class is almost over. Can we ...well, go out... you know ... together again?" "Only if we do some more demonstrating," he snickered.

The next Friday night there weren't so many stares in the bar. I guess they had gotten used to us. We didn't stay until the spilling beer stage was reached. Long before that it was obvious that we both were having trouble sitting still with an erection reaching the painful stage. Back at my house, we helped each other with that problem. Then we looked at each other in some embarassment. This was the moment that lovers in the movies kissed. Did I dare? I had never done it before. How do you do it when you are armless? I laid a hook on the curve of a missing shoulder. He didn't seem to object. "Would you mind if I put my hooks around you?" I asked, kind of embarassed. "I was hoping you would. I've been imagining all week what that would feel like.....Ah, oh that's nice. I feel safe inside your hug," he sighed. Then it was his turn for an embarassed question. "Could I kiss you? I can't do anything else, but I'd like to try that." Then it seemed that all the frustration of our armless, handless lives worked themselves out in the magic our mouths were making against each other.

After a year of "dating" in the most romantic fashion, we joined our lives together. No more do I have to send him home to his family to take care of his needs after we have taken care of each other. We manage quite well all by ourselves, thank you. "Look, Ma, no hands needed."

********************************

I am writing this on the night before they take my knee. It seems an appropriate time to sum up the 70 years of my life. There is always danger in surgery, and this could be the end of me. If not, I will be who I have always wanted to be - a double above knee amputee. And I will wake up to see Bill, perhaps locked in a brace, standing over me, smiling with relief and maybe holding my hand in a hook. And, knowing Bill, probably with an erection in anticipation of seeing what is under the covers and trying to guess what the stump under the bandages will look like. I will be happy for him even though erections are becoming a real rare event for me.

Well, that was quite a bit for an introduction, wasn't it? I'd better go back to the diabetes which took first circulation and feeling from the legs and then the legs themselves (and the erections). My loneliness and self-loathing were so great for most of my life that I let the diabetes get out of control - way out of control. I was overweight, didn't exercise, didn't do anything except work and daydream and collect and pretend. Before adolescence I knew that what other people talked about as attraction was what I felt in the presence of a crippled man. In those days, it seemed like there were lots of such men. Handsome guys coming back from World War II missing limbs. Kids returning to school on braces and crutches after bouts with polio. There were lots of human interest stories in the papers and magazines about them. I cut out the pictures and hid them in my closet to look at later and get erect and stroke myself off. I went to see "The Best Years of our Life" about 100 times and memorized the details of how Harold Russell manipulated his hooks.

And I went to visit my own Uncle Harold - actually he was a more distant relative than that, but I always called him uncle. Harold lived with the results of polio all his adult life. He was a bookkeeper and so sat most of the day. He would haul himself home on wooden crutches through our neighborhood. The metal of his braces would flash in the sun when his pants legs rode up to reveal the lumps and deformities of his high top brown shoes. Harold never married. Everyone thought it was because of the polio. I knew it was also because Harold liked boys. I knew because he was the only person I ever felt safe with and the feeling was evidently mutual. I know that word "safe" sounds funny because later we did have a sexual relationship. But he never forced himself on me. And he never touched me until I was 21 years old.

When I was a kid I could talk to him. I could ask him to show me his braces. He could ask me to help him do things - lift and carry for his errands. We were both lonely. He would let me hug him when I left him - a carry over from my little kid days. In adolescence I hinted that I didn't like girls much. "I like to be with them to talk, but, you know... that's all. Is there something wrong with me."

"I understand," he answered. "There is nothing wrong with you, Hal. Nothing at all." I believed him. At least when I was with him, I believed him. I never told him the other part, the part about being turned on by stumps and braces. But I did tell him, "I wish more people were like you, Uncle Harold. I think you are about the neatest guy in the whole world." When I would say things like that, his eyes would tear up.

At my 21st birthday, I had a real talk with him about sex. I didn't know anyone else to turn to. I had never had a sexual experience with anyone. And was afraid I never would. So I got up my courage and prepared a little speech that went something like this:

"Uncle Harold, I really need to talk to you. I guess you know I like guys, but I don't really know what guys can, well, you know, do with each other. I've heard about fucking - but, gosh, that sounds painful and I just don't think I could do it. And I'm not sure about what they call sucking either. Does it really work? I couldn't possibly ask my dad about this."

"All I know, Hal, is what I did a couple of times years ago when I went to bookkeeping school and stayed at the YMCA. If you want, if you're sure, really sure, I'll show you."

So I helped off with his pants and his underwear to reveal his scrawny legs in their shiny metal frames. This activity had raised his dick up in a salute. "If it bothers you to look, don't," he said as he pointed to his legs. "Or we can take the braces and shoes off, maybe that would be better."

"No," I said, "no problem. Look I'm getting hard, too. Help me get my pants off. I'm so nervous."

Then he taught me what he knew. It wasn't much. And it was wonderful. Lying with me on top, he held my body against his with one powerful arm. (Have I told you how crutch walking had formed a powerful chest and arms?) My legs rested on the cool metal of his braces. He held our cocks together in his other hand. He whispered in my ear, "Now move your hips...That's it...More...As fast...or as slow...as you.. want...See...it gets me....going...too...When....you rock....it moves...me, too.. OOOh...Oooooh... Ah...Yeah....ff....fast....faster...Ah...Hal... Hal.....Hal..." By the time he came he was yelling in my ear. As I felt him spurt, I came, too. And then collapsed on top of him. It was my turn to whisper in an ear: "Oh, thank you, thank you, Uncle Harold. Thank you."

I wasn't afraid any more. If being with a man meant pleasure like this, I wasn't afraid to be with a man.

As time went on we learned a few other things together. Like sucking. I wasn't very good at it. My mouth didn't seem to open wide enough, and I was afraid of biting him. So I mostly just licked and sucked on the tip before jerking him off. But he was a marvel. He would take out his false teeth for me and pull me into the warm cavern of his mouth. It was so soft and yet firm. It was bliss, particularly if I could grab his cock with one hand and a brace with the other to hold on to during my trip to bliss. One of his few jokes about our lovemaking was, "Hal, now you know why God made old age. He takes away your teeth so can you suck better."

As he did get older it was not sex which kept me making daily visits. It really was love. I cared for him in every sense of the word. I took braces off and bathed him. I put them on for him until it became clear he would have to switch to a chair. I carried him. I tried to comfort him.

And when he died, I was the executor of his estate. I kept for myself only the crutches, the braces, the shoes, and the wheelchair. Everything else was sold and given to the March of Dimes.

And then I really learned about loneliness. The next years, my 40's and 50's were awful, absolutely awful. I ate and I cried. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep I would put Uncle Harold's braces and shoes in bed with me. I would get out my picture collection. I would remember. I would jerk off. I would cry. And then eat some more. Then it occured to me to put my feet and legs in the braces and shoes. They were too small for me. Uncle Harold's bottom half had never grown to match the proportions of his top half. But I forced my toes into the shoes. The heels wouldn't go in but rested against the high tops. The brace tops which went to Uncle Harold's groin went only a few inches above my knees. The discomfort and the look of confinement for my bottom half were equal turn-ons. And my knees were locked in place. I extended his crutches and got myself up on them to look in the mirror. Except for the fat, I liked what I saw. I bent over with one leg in a position where I could feel my cock flopping against leather and metal - until it got so stiff it wouldn't flop. Even when I beat at it with my hands. It felt good to hang my weight on the crutches in my armpits. It felt right to be insecure on those crutches as I got going in the action of masturbation. Afterwards I whispered, "Thank you, Uncle Harold, for this, too." That is the way I became a regular pretender.

One thing leads to another. In my loneliness, my fantasies got more and more elaborate. Eventually it became clear to me that the body inside my fat one not only wanted to be slim, but to end well above the knees. The braces were only a substitute for the prostheses I dreamed about. I would try to imagine life as an amputee. I read all the books and articles I could find in the local library. I pictured myself in a chair for all the routines of life, and I practiced in Uncle Harold's clutzy, old fashioned chair. I pictured myself out of a chair, scooting on the floor, and tried to practice that, too. I tried transfering in and out of chair, up and down between floor and chair.("Damn, this fat and these legs - they're both in the way.") I tried to picture walking on artificial legs. How much like braces would it be?

That was my life until I did become an amputee. The first surgery removed my left leg below knee. It was a wake up call to diet and to take care of myself. The stark reality is that amputation is not all fun and games. Pretending was one thing. The real thing is another. There is no more option to end a session and just get up and walk. Yes, eventually I was back up and using a leg and doing pretty well. Then came the removal of the right leg below knee.

By this time I had noticed some ads in gay magazines for a group interested in connecting disabled and abled guys. I was too shy to advertise for myself, but it was comforting to know that somewhere out there were at least one or two others like me. After the second amputation, I advertised in the group - not for an introduction - but to offer Uncle Harold's braces for sale. Living on disability was a financial hardship and obviously I wasn't going to be able to use braces anymore for my own pleasure. Maybe there was someone else out there who could.

Bill answered my ad. Then I called him on the phone to arrange details. It turned out that he lived about three hours away. On the phone we learned that we were both about the same age. When I told him that I was giving up the braces because I was now an amputee, I could hear the catch in his breathing and the excitement in his voice as he tried to continue the chit chat. As we tried to plan the transfer of the braces, I told him I would be unable to drive to his place. I was still waiting for hand controls on the car. He would have to come to me.

As I wheeled to the door and got my first look at him, I practically swooned. For this meeting, he had put on hooks that he had scraped together out of various parts. (Had I told him on the phone about my infatuation with Harold Russell as a kid?) He was quite short. Like Uncle Harold but in a different way - small all over rather than big above and little below. (Why would that bother me? I was shorter than he was now, wasn't I?) He was in good shape for a middle aged guy. And I thought he was gorgeous. Still do.

And he took a very appreciative look at me, one stump still bandaged, one conspicuously bare since I was wearing shorts. His eye didn't seem to notice what was left of my pot belly, but did seem to take in every other detail. Including my crotch. Just the way he looked at me was making me warm down there for the first time in a long time. You see, one of the great ironies of my life is that just as I became an amputee and just as I met Bill, diabetes was already taking away the circulation and sensation and functioning in that area.

But, I hadn't been robbed quite yet. We tried the braces on, of course. They fit pretty well. Even the shoes, because Bill's feet were so tiny he had trouble buying regular shoes. Of course, in the trying on, his dick was revealed. It was a lot smaller than mine. I was surprised. I had never seen anyone's except Uncle Harold's, and his had not been all that much smaller than mine. And the pictures in the magazines all looked about my size. "Disappointing, isn't it?", Bill said as he pointed at it.

"Not in the least," I said truthfully. I thought it was beautiful. Perfectly shaped. Perfectly proportioned for his bottom. And small enough to stick up perfectly straight. Mine, even before diabetes, only got up to half mast and had a bend to the left. And, I thought to myself, "He is not so intimidating to suck."

I wanted to do that in the worst way by this time. In one motion I transferred to the bed beside him, took out my teeth, and started in on him. I hadn't been with a man in 20 years. And I was hungry. And this was the first I had really taken a man inside me. Fully inside me.

"Wait, wait," he said, "Let me undress you. Let me see if I can do it with hooks." It was wonderfully awkward, but eventually we were naked beside each other in bed. There I was, ending in stumps, one still bandaged. My ball sack hanging down between them and my dick having trouble maintaining position. Bill, in the braces and shoes associated with all my best memories and still cool to the touch of my bare stump, and in makeshift harness and hooks which were now busy supporting my dick. A couple of strokes with the hooks and my 20 years of waiting were over. I could now concentrate on Bill with full attention. I scootched myself down to take him in my mouth, head buried in the familiar smell of braces and his hooks running up and down my stumps.

After that we talked. Shared memories. Shared fantasies. Shared

pictures (because he had brought part of his collection, too). I was the first amputee he had ever been with. His fantasy man was a double above knee amputee. He had lots of other appliances. In his loneliness, he had devoted himself to collecting them and inventing scenarios to use them in pretending. He was interested in Uncle Harold's because they were so old, just like what he remembered from his childhood, too. Most used braces were way too big for him. And, yes, he was beyond pretending. He was frustrated constantly that his body was not what it should be. "Can you imagine wanting to be shorter than I am?", he asked. "Sure can," I said.

"Does it make it worse, then, that I've gotten what I wanted - well, almost gotten, since I still have knees?" I continued with a bit of fear in my voice. I wanted this to be a real friendship. I wanted us to see each other again. Lots. I wanted his dick in my mouth again.

"No, of course not. Don't be silly. You can help me know what amptutation is really like so that at least my fantasies are accurate."

So we started seeing each other on weekends. And then traveling together. After I was healed from losing the left knee ("trimming you down to proper size" is what Bill called it), we made a dream trip to Europe together. Where a chair wouldn't go, he would help me walk on the new legs. It felt just right to support my weight on his arm as I rolled a leg around into position. Particularly if this was a day he was wearing a hook. We had taken a suitcase full of equipment for his pretending. Who knows what the customs folks thought of that! We didn't care. My obviously real lack of legs gave a kind of legitimacy to him. With his hooks or his braces on he pushed me, or held me up like a human crutch, or sometimes even carried me - we were two "poor crippled guys". "Aren't they brave?" "Isn't it sweet the way they help each other", we would hear the tourist ladies whispering. And I could help, too, particularly if this was a hook day for Bill. And then back in the hotel I would help some more. Sitting on the floor between his braced legs. Liking the scratch of the carpet which I could just barely feel in my stumps and bare balls and cock tip. Hooks guided my head as I took him home into my mouth. My hands ran up and down the braces and shoes. Pulling his life juice into me. Pulling his frustration out of him. Not caring about anything except him and his need. Holding his thrusting body up with the strength of my torso. And, yes, picturing myself without the remaining knee and sitting in the characteristic V of stumps of a DAK.

That was getting easier to imagine. It was on this trip that I noticed the loss of feeling and the beginnings of the sore that led to tomorrow's amputation. I have asked for that short stump I've dreamed about. One obviously shorter than the other. Just what I want and what Bill wants. "Trim me up properly this time, so I don't have to come back again."

There shouldn't have to be a next time. I won't be using legs much and will spare the stumps. But I want to walk sometimes. It will be hard for a guy as old as I am to learn this new walk. I won't try it without Bill around for support. I probably won't even be able to get up out of a chair without his support. But I want to lean on his arm again. And this time I'll be his height. Shorter legs will be easier to manage. That's the official excuse. The real one is that I want to see the world from his point of view. And the rest of the time, I'll be looking up to him. From a chair. From the floor. From the bed. And that seems right, too.

When I look up anymore he is almost always there above me. We have moved together into Adam's World. What better place for two guys like us facing old age and probably increased need for care and for friends who understand? He is close to the brace and limb shop to spend his retirement cash on new pretend toys. I am close to the gym. I work out now. I like the shape I'm in. I look good. Tomorrow I'll look just right - for both Bill and for me.

I picture myself after the bandages are off. I will raise my body up into a headstand position and then show Bill the way of "walking" I have been practicing. My longer stump pointing to the ceiling. The shorter ... well, so short it doesn't point. My balls and cock flopping down against my belly almost to belly button. As I walk on my hands over to Bill. He looks down into my crotch. Feasts his eyes. Reaches out to feel my new outline and trace the new scar. Am I maybe getting an erection?

"Let me see how I look sitting," I say to get me out of such a strenuous position and check out my crotch. Within the V, my cock is growing. It is now longer than the stump on one side. "Which one of these do you want to work on?", I ask pointing out this phenomen. "Both," he says, as he lifts me up to carry me to bed.

***********************

I am sometimes asked if I am bitter. No, I am not bitter about the stroke which left me a hemiplegic, with a useless flopping left arm and a leg which will only hold me up when braced. No, I am not bitter about the accident which also left that left hand mangled into something like a curled upchicken's foot. No, I am not bitter about a family which turned on me when they found out about my devotee/wanabee interests in the process of these other events. But I am damn bitter that just when I am outed to my family as a pretender and don't have to worry any more about being found out, and just when I become disabled, Jonathan is not here to share this time with me. His sense of humor was developed enough for irony like this. Not mine. Here I am. A little over 30 years old. Cute, in a gay clone kind of way, if I do say so myself. And a crippled -gay- wannabe/devotee -pretending- widow. Yes, I am bitter.

Jonathan was The Doctor at Box X-128 in the ad I answered: "Anyone out there want to meet for show and tell in braces. Contact The Doctor at Box X-128." It was with a great deal of fear and trembling that I answered. I had know for years that I was turned on by amputee men and men in braces. It was hard not to know that, given my physical reaction whenever I saw such a guy. But never had I had the courage to get beyond the hello stage with an object of my desire. So I collected pictures - mental memory pictures and pictures cut out of magazines and papers. By the time I reached my 20's my fantasies with these pictures involved my being with the guy in the picture as a guy also limited in mobility by amputation or braces. So obviously I was a candidate for the doctor. But what was I getting into if I responded?

The answer to my question was - the love of my life. And he was a real doctor, too. In working with folks in rehabilitation he had collected, inherited and prescribed for himself a whole closet full of gear. His daily routine was to come home from his practice and immediately get into braces and chair. He was looking, he told me on the phone as we made voice contact, for someone to share this experience with as often as possible. We arranged for me to visit the next weekend.

Every minute of that weekend was unforgetable. From his welcome of me at the door, strapped in full braces from the arm pits supported on his crutches to the built up shoes on his feet. Every moment I remember - even the awful moment when I had to take off the hip, knee, ankle foot braces I had worn for 60 hours. On the drive all the way back home, my body almost ached from missing the braces and missing the attentions of Jonathan.

After he had helped me into the braces (with an initial introduction to my cock in the process) he had me practice walking around the house. "Let's take a walk before show and tell," he said. We actually left his apartment and crutched around the neighborhood. "Don't worry," he said, "No one knows you here. No one cares. At most you'll get some curious stares. Just don't do anything stupid to make things worse for anyone who must use this kind of equipment." It was exciting. I had no trouble with the equipment. I certainly did have trouble with my erection.

As soon as we were back inside the door of his apartment, both of us reached out over crutches, groping for the cock buried in the other's braces. "Ok, let's get ourselves to bed. This is going to be too strenuous for crutches." Then came the process of undressing. So much more interesting when what is revealed is wrapped in metal and leather.

Eventually, Jonathan steered us into lying side by side facing each other so that our hands could wander over each other and our eyes could take in the vision in front of us. With so much of us immobilized, only hands and mouth were available for communication. He talked me through the experience. "Look at our twisted legs, completely covered with metal and leather. Roll your chest around a little and watch them follow the movement. Hear them clank against mine. Now I'll turn you back like you were so I can hold your cock against mine. Look at both of us sticking out of our braces. Isn't that the sexiest thing you've ever seen, David?" Then he stopped talking for a while but put his mouth to good use in kissing, while I groped and fondled and grabbed. Whatever I found was sexy - skin or brace. It was obvious to both of us that I was soon going to come. Whenever he took a breath away from the kiss I moaned like a bull elk in rut. Somehow he got me on top, holding myself over him with my arms, both our cocks still in his hand. "Now grab something," he ordered, "the headboard or something .. and pull yourself up and down over me. Our hips are locked. Nothing can move except your cock. ..That's right... www..work it...pp ppull it ....into...into me... aaa..against me.... get... get us... going....that's ...that's..that's it...Got...got me ... moving ... dd ... don't .... stop .. n.. nn... never...ahh...ooff...oh...God.. I... III'm ... cc ...uuu ...mmmmmmm .. ing..." I fell on him. Our braces clanked. Our cocks jerked out of his control. Our cum went all over our braces. Our mouths fell back into a kiss.

That was the first three hours of the weekend. Then we cleaned each other off. "That's the first course of dinner ... cum a la brace. Try it." Dinner itself was prepared with both of us still in braces but now seated in wheelchairs. Then it was time for show and tell of our picture collections, picking our favorites and describing their most attractive features. I learned then that he was something of an arm man, too. That led to showing me his hooks - in action. First with our chairs parked side by side and facing each other so he could get his hooks in my lap. Then sitting up in bed so that he could see what he was doing to me and I could get a full view of what was happening to me. I can't describe the feel of metal on my most tender flesh. It was wierd and full of pleasure, but what really got me going was what his attentions to me were doing to him. This time he was the bull elk. I put one hand on a hook and guided it to his own cock. I put the other on the hook going up and down on me, just as he came. The sight of his spurt was all I needed to come on the hook.

That was Friday night. We had until Sunday night before I was stripped of braces and tucked into my car with a kiss and tears in both our eyes that this time together was over.

We arranged other times, of course. Soon I was spending every week end with them. Then I moved in with him - and enrolled in medical school. Our dream was to be partners in practice - and in practicing our own version of show and tell.

The next Thanksgiving I took him home to meet the folks. This was my coming out as gay. It was not great but we got through it. I was not up to coming out as a pretender, but he went through the whole trip in full cripple drag. As far as my folks knew, he was the real thing. Actually that probably helped. Their mouths dropped so much in watching him operate in their non-accessible house that they didn't have time to think about their son being gay. And I had an excuse to carry him up and down stairs and lots of other intimate moments. And, after all, he was a doctor. Mom had always wanted a doctor in the family. Now there was a chance of getting two.

Now she'll have to be content with one. I finished medical school and got my certificate for the office wall. We had just set up our joint practice and were going to celebrate it the night of the accident. I was driving, but I do not know what happened. All I remember is pain and a haze. Through the haze I kept asking about Jonathan and then hearing something which made no sense. How long was it before his death sank into me? How long was it until I realized my hand was all messed up? How long was it before I realized that the few times my parents visited me they looked me at very strangely? How long was it until I put the puzzle together and realized that the accident my mind had blocked out had killed Jonathan, maimed me, and revealed our "fetishism" to my folks when they had gone to the apartment and found our stuff?

All I know is that there was not much time between putting it together and the stroke which followed a surgery. The newly minted rehabilitation doc needed rehabilitation himself in a big, big way. And he would have to do it alone. Alone.

Alone with no Jonathan to lean on in learning to walk by pivoting a braced leg around in an arc that flopped the useless arm and its bent back claw in the process. Alone in putting a brace on, one handed, in order to move at all. Alone in learning that the world is designed for two handed folks and that nothing for the rest of my life would be easy. Alone in facing a reality which was entirely different from recreational disability. How was I to dress? To feed myself? To cook? To take a blood pressure? How would patients react to my ridiculous and painfully slow walk? I looked at myself in the mirror. Picture perfect on the right side. Already atrophying on the right.

Rehabilitation answered some of my hows but didn't help with why or how long. It was depression. Big time depression/grief/anger. That's not over yet, but I do have less of a sense of being alone. Somehow Jonathan is still with me. I can hear him, "Come on, Davey, surely you've got to see the ridiculousness of this. You got what you wanted, didn't you? Look in the mirror. Walk toward it. Swing that paralyzed leg around like I taught you. And laugh. Start with a bitter laugh, if you want. But laugh, damn it."

And then came a day when I could hear him, as clear as anything, give me a plan: "Here is what the doctor orders. Get them to cut off that arm. It's doing no good. I'm not sure a prosthesis would help - but who knows, maybe cables could be rigged to at least open a hook for grasping. You sure as hell have nothing to lose."

I'm working on getting that plan put into action. It's going to take some talking, but I think it can be done. And as that progresses, I hear him adding a step two: "And while they are at it, get rid of the leg. A prosthesis locked at the hip will provide the same mobility as the brace. And without it you will be a whole lot freer. Transfers in and out of the chair will be easier. You can hop. You can even rig up a kind of crutch/brace/prosthesis. It could fit under your armpit and be held in place by the arm stump in a cuff. On the way down to the ground, there could be a kind of shelf to hold your butt/stump up. Unusual but I don't see why it wouldn't work."

And in answer to my question about whether or not I will ever again know the kind of happiness I knew with Jonathan, his presence tells me: "Of course, stupid, advertise your new charms. How about 'Real hemiplegic wannabe amputee seeks cure for loneliness. Contact The Doctor at Box X-128'."

When I argue back that no one will ever replace him, he says: "I hope not. But what did you know with me? Wasn't it trust that you could let yourself be known in all your weaknesss and vulnerability? Well, you've got even more weakness to trust someone with now, Davey boy. Try it."

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