Uncle Joe's Story

This story is being told by a narrator and Uncle Joe. The narrator is in standard type, and he is reading Uncle Joe's Diary, written in Italic type. I hope it isn't too confusing, as always, your thoughts and comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy...

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Uncle Joe’s Story

Chapter 1

I pulled onto my folk’s place to pick up my 6- and 4-year-old boys, they had stayed the night. My wife and I went to a wedding last night and my boys loved to stay with grandma and grandpa. Not to mention, kids that age aren’t the best wedding guests. Dad was talking on the phone as I walked in the door and was greeted with a round of hugs. My boys immediately started to tell me about all the fun things Grams and Papa let them do over the last 24 hours.

My dad had a worried look on his face as he ended the call.

I asked, “what’s up Dad?”

He took a deep breath, “that was your Uncle Joe, he said he had a doctor’s appointment last Friday. He has cancer, stage 4.”

My mind raced, “ok, so when is he starting treatments? Is there surgery or anything else to treat it?”

Dad shook his head, “he says he’s not taking any treatments, the doc said that they would only delay the inevitable it a few months. Joe said the treatments would make him sicker, so he wants to finish up things and go out on his terms.”

I was stunned, “you mean he isn’t even going to try?”

Dad shrugged, “he said quality over quantity.”

I chuckled to myself, that is so Uncle Joe, he has always done what he wanted, and he never cared what anyone else thought. Joe is my dad’s younger brother and the middle son, Uncle Mark is the youngest. There are six years between dad and Joe, two years between Joe and Mark. All three are very close, even though Mark lives in another state, they get together at least twice a year, either Mark comes here, or the others go see him. They became even more close when Grandpa died 8 years ago and grandma 2 years ago. While dad and Mark are both married, and each has two kids, Uncle Joe never married or had kids. He was a senior in high school when I was born and he spent a lot of time at our farm, helping my dad. My brother and I always liked it when he came out, we used to play and wrestle with him all the time. As we got older and started to play sports, he was always at all our games cheering us on.

The news hit us all hard, but we knew it wouldn’t do us any good to try to talk him into taking treatments. Dad always said, stubbornness ran in our family, and Joe got it all. While dad lived on the farm, Uncle Joe lived in town and worked construction. He had recently semi-retired, instead of building houses and other buildings, he was now doing smaller handy-man type jobs. He also loved to work in his shop doing woodworking projects. We all had lots of toys, games, and shelves that he had made us over the years, my boys still play with the wood trucks he made them for Christmas last year.

I loaded my boys in my car and headed home, I took a detour through town and drove past some of the houses that he worked on over the years. In our little town of about 2000 people, Uncle Joe was a well-respected carpenter and probably had done some sort of work on about 70% of the houses. I remember riding with him in his truck, he would say, I built that house, remodeled the kitchen in that one, built a deck over there. He was very proud of his work.

Over the next months, dad and I visited him often and helped him get things in order. He wrapped up any projects he was working on, quit doing his handy-man jobs. He said he didn’t want to leave anyone with anything unfinished. I was just amazed with how at peace he seemed to be. Shit, if it was me, I would have been a nervous wreck. He and dad took one more trip to see Mark, and Mark made an extra trip back as well.

It had been 18 months since we got the news, a month after his 60th birthday, Uncle Joe was gone. Per his wishes, we didn’t have a funeral. He said, “I don’t want a bunch of people looking at me laying in a damn box saying how good I look. I’m fucking dead, how good could I look? Just throw me in a hole and have a party.”

We had him cremated and with just the immediate family buried him in the cemetery next to Grandma and Grandpa. We went back to dad’s farm and had a bon fire with a cooler full Miller High Life, his favorite beer. All his friends came out and we laughed and shared stories until the fire went out. He would have been pleased with his send-off.

Over the next few weeks, I helped my dad clean out Uncle Joe’s house and shop. We sold or gave away anything that the family didn’t want. He was a simple man, so there wasn’t a lot to get rid of. We cleaned out his shop first, he had a lot of tools. The house was much easier, a one-day yard sale, a trip to the local Goodwill with the rest and we had the house empty and ready to sell. As we were loading things up, I picked up a laptop that was sitting on his desk.

“Hey dad, what do you want to do with this?”

He looked at me, “start it up, does it work?”

I hit the power button, “yep, it fired right up. It’s not that old dad.”

He walked over to me, “is there anything on it?”

I scrolled over the icons, “just your basic stuff, Word, Excel and a couple solitaire games.”

Dad shrugged, “do you need a laptop?”

I said, “it looks newer than mine, I’ll take it home and if it’s better, I’ll let the boys have my old one.”

Dad picked up the half dozen flash drives that were laying on the desk and handed them to me, “you just as well take these too.”

We finished cleaning up the house and two weeks later, the realtor we hired had an offer on the house, dad was glad to have that task behind him.

We all got back to our lives and adjusted to the new normal without Uncle Joe.

I put my boys to bed one night and my wife was visiting her sister. I walked past my desk and noticed the laptop sitting there, I had forgotten that I brought it home with me. I plugged it in to charge it and hit the power button. I searched through the programs, there wasn’t much on it, and it had a newer version of Windows than I was running so I decided to transfer things from my old laptop. I saw the flash drives laying there and thought he must have saved all his files to them instead of saving them on the machine. I inserted the first one into the laptop, it had a bunch of excel spreadsheets on it, mostly estimates for his construction jobs. The next one was a backup for his financial records, I’ll save that one and give it to dad. The next two were new with no files on them. The next one had a bunch of drawings and plans for his woodworking projects.

I loaded the last one, it was full of Word documents. I scanned the titles, “Jr. High” “High School” “Basic Training” “College” and some date ranges, places, and some with just names, “Jason” “Josh”. What the hell was this?

I double clicked on the “Jr. High” file and started to read.

***

I went to stay with my friend Brett, it was his birthday and we had been spending the night with each other on our birthdays since we were in the 3rd grade. Now that we were in Jr. High, this was probably going to be the last time we did this. Once we were in high school, we would have to do more grown up things.

We helped his dad feed the livestock and all the other chores that needed to be done on the farm. It was no different than when I was home. Brett always helped when we stayed at my place on my birthday too. Once we were done with chores, Brett’s mom cooked home-made pizza for supper, that was the best part of staying with Brett, his mom made the best pizza. Once we were done eating, she told us we needed to get our homework done, then take a shower before we went to bed. We finished our homework and watched TV for a bit. She reminded us that we needed to shower so we headed upstairs.

Brett said, “the towels are in the cabinet, you can shower first.”

I took my shower and pulled on my tighty whitey underwear, standard sleeping attire for farm kids my age in the Midwest in the early 1980s. Brett took his turn in the shower and came back to his bedroom wearing the same thing. We sat on the queen-sized bed that we would be sharing that night and talked and joked until his mom yelled up to tell us it was time for lights out. We crawled under the covers and Brett leaned over to turn out the light. Just as we were getting settled in, Brett yelled, “ouch”. He flipped the light back on and before I could ask what happened, he pulled his underwear down and his dick flopped out. I was stunned and sat there staring at that dick, Brett was about six months older than I was and evidently was developed more than I was. He had more pubic hair and his cock was longer and thicker than mine, his nuts were bigger too. I continued to stare as Brett looked at me, my trance was broken when he said, “there is something poking my nuts, get it off, hurry.” He was holding the waistband of his underwear with one hand, and he pulled his nuts up with the other. I was looking up at him and then back to his package and then I saw what was poking him. There was a small piece of straw that he must have gotten when we were doing chores earlier. I don’t know how it was still there, even after he had showered. He once again said, “get it off.” My mind was racing, I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch another guy there, I slowly reached up and pulled the straw away, my fingers grazing his nuts when I did. He let out a deep breath and said, “thanks”, pulling his underwear back up.

He pulled the covers back up and turned out the light again and said, “good night.”

I rolled away from him and replied, “night.”

I tried to get to sleep, but the only thing I could see when I closed my eyes was that dick, and why was my own dick now stiff? Shit, was Brett going to tell everyone at school that I touched him? How was that straw still there? Did he plan that just to get me to touch him? Then I was suddenly worried about how big he was compared to me. We showered together after gym class every day, but I had never really noticed before, now I was going to be self-conscience about that.

We ate breakfast the next morning and headed to school, I was relieved that Brett didn’t mention the incident to me or anyone else at school. It was time for gym class and for the first time, I checked out the rest of my classmates. Again, I was a bit relieved, I was average, it was Brett that was way above average. He had the biggest dick in our class, I was even more relieved when there were several others that were smaller than I was.

I was back home that night, and I was lying in my bed trying to fall to sleep, the events from the previous night replaying in my head. Why was I thinking about this? His nuts were so soft, I was wishing that I could have touched Brett more than I did, if only I could have felt his cock. Shit, I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I shifted in my bed and noticed that my dick was rock-hard, oh God, this can’t be happening. I couldn’t resist, I reached down into my underwear and stroked my cock. I shouldn’t be doing this, I stroked again, then again. It felt so good, I couldn’t stop, the next stoke and I felt a tingle and my cock spasmed. What the hell is that? My hand was wet and sticky. I panicked, I got out of bed and found a flashlight, I didn’t want to risk turning on my light. I saw the white liquid in my hand and in my underwear, I quickly took them off and stuffed them in the bottom of the hamper. I pulled a fresh pair from my drawer and crawled back into bed, worried that my mom was going to have a lot of questions when she did laundry.

 ***

 Just as I was going to the next paragraph, I heard, “daddy, I need a drink of water.” I quickly closed the laptop and said, “just a second buddy, I’ll be right there.” I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water and headed to my son’s room. Once I got him back to sleep and sat back down at my desk and opened the laptop.

What the hell did I just read? Did Uncle Joe just describe his first sexual experience? He was in Jr, High, so he was, what, 12 or 13?” Did he say he was turned on by seeing his friend’s dick? Shit, he just described the first time he jacked off.

I knew I never saw him date any women, but he worked construction, he wasn’t an interior decorator or a hairdresser. Hell, I know better than that, not every gay guy is a hairdresser, but he never gave any of us any clue.

Damn, was Uncle Joe gay?

 

To be continued…