Forging Manhood

At 44 years of age, Pauline Lindsey should have been enjoying the best years of her life. Having just celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary with the only man she had ever loved, finding herself in good health and at the top of her chosen career as a social worker, Paula should have been basking in the light of all she had worked for.

And to a point she was. Her and her husband Randy had been able to save enough money over the first 15 years of their marriage to afford a nice house in one of Topeka's finer neighborhoods. They had enough money in the bank to feel safe when they closed their eyes at night and they had found some connection within each other that made it clear they were comfortable spending the rest of their lives together.

Still, Paula often found herself wondering what might have been. Six years into the marriage it was discovered, after several attempts to conceive a child, that she would be unable to bear children. Paula knew the depression over that fact would never completly go away and the reality that many of her close friends were frequently off attending thier own kids' high school or college graduations made for a very difficult pill, for the otherwise fulfilled woman, to swallow as she navigated her way through her mid forties.

That hurt was only heightened by the silent way Randy Lindsey went about dealing with the fact that he'd never be a Father.

"It's no big deal," He would often say to Paula when the topic came up, only to follow it up with an extended period of awkward and sometimes painful silence.

It was such a divisive topic, Paula and Randy never even seemed to be comfortable discussing the other alternatives such as adoption, fertility drugs, or a surrogacy that were open to the couple. Instead, they quietly decided to simply grow old together.

To keep some sense of vitality, The Lindseys buried themselves in their work. Being a social worker who helped get children out of turmultuous family situations and trying to help them get a foothold into adolescense, Paula had found a career that in a lot of ways helped illeviate and substitute for the inability to have children of her own.

Randy, on the other hand, was the general manager of one of Topeka's largest grociery store chains and over the years had successfully diverted his emotions into the nonstop flow of profit margins, schedule making and inventory control.

By the time both Randy and Paula were safely in their mid 40's however, it had become clear that each was nearing some level of professional burnout. Inevitably, the stress they were feeling at work transferred easily to the home, and eventhough they each could see it blossoming like a slowly emerging mushroom cloud on the horizon, they were both usually too exhausted by the end of the day to acknowledge it.

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One of Randy Lindsey's most important, if not most frustrating tasks as general manager of his grociery store was the hiring of new help. With a stable array of full time help already in place, the biggest hurdle when it came to hiring was finding enough quality kids from the wealth of teenagers in the area to help out with bagging, clean up and stocking the shelves.

Looking down at the store's sales floor from his upstairs office's large bay window, Randy lazily watched one of his hires that was actually working out.

The curly black haired 6 foot 2 inch frame of 19 year old Dylan Hyatt strode quickly from register 5 to register 7 to help every checker he could get their grocieries bagged so they could move onto the next customer.

"There's one I didn't think would work out..but I'll be damned," Randy contemplated out loud.

The day three months earlier when he interviewed Dylan, Randy was pretty certain he wasn't going to hire the kid. Dylan had put on his application that he had dropped out of high school two years earlier and was trying to find a job so he could work to save some money before he got his GED. After that, he told Lindsey, Dylan was planning on enlisting in either the Marines or the Army.

Randy had been hesitant to hire Dylan, fearing the same person who would quit school wouldn't have any qualms about quitting a job on the spot if things got rough. Still, Randy was impressed by the young man's candor and taking a look at his stocky and well defined 6 foot 2 inch frame, he knew Dylan's presense could come in very handy considering all the heavy lifting that needed to be done around the store. So on a lark, Randy hired the young man and three months later, he managed a small but satisfied smile over how well it had turned out.

In fact, Randy had decided to build a fence around his backyard at home to keep the neighbors' children from trampling across the grass and his wife's flowers. Knowing his back wasn't as dependable as it use to be, and that his wife wouldn't be crazy about him having several of his beer drinking buddies over for an entire day to mess up the house, Randy decided out of the blue to ask Dylan if he would mind giving up a Saturday, for $50 tax free, to help.

The young man hesitantly agreed when he thought about the money, and perhaps a chance to get on the good side of the boss by coming over to help with the fence.

Over dinner later that night, Randy and Paula had been making small talk when the topic of what each had planned for the weekend came up. Randy told his wife that he had finally decided to put up the backyard fence, hoping she would be happy about having a line of defense against the children from next door.

"You gonna do that all by yourself," Paula sarcastically asked, knowing full well the limits of her husband's physical as well as mechanical expertise.

"What..you don't think I can," Randy replied between chews of his pot roast.

"Uh...Huh," Paula's brow silently furrowed.

"Actually.....I got a guy from work to volunteer to help me with the heavy stuff for a few hours Saturday," Randy sheepishly admitted.

"Good," Paula dryly replied, happy her husband wasn't attempting such a demanding endeavor alone. "Anyone from the store I know?"

"Probably not..just a stock boy I hired a few months back..I don't think you've met him yet....Dylan..Dylan Hyatt's his name."

"What's his name?" Paula asked with increased interest.

"Hyatt...Dylan Hyatt...what...do you know his folks or something?" Randy grunted back.

"How old is he?" Paula asked.

"19 I think...he told me during his interview he dropped out of high school a few years back..he's thinking about joining the Army...why?"

"Name just rings a bell..that's all," Paula replied as she briskly excused herself from the dinner table.

"Where are you going?" Randy huffed incrediously.

"I'll be right back..I just wanted to check on something," Paula's voice trailed off as she disappeared through the house.

A few moments later she returned with the large, dusty, leather bound ledger she used to keep her personal work history in. Dust was flying through the air of the dining room as Paula quickly flipped through the pages.

"Yep..I thought so," Paula said without looking up.

"What?" Randy rolled his eyes.

"The kid's name..I thought it rang a bell ..back in '94...almost 8 years ago..he was one of the cases the agency had to deal with..we had to take Dylan and his little brother away from their Mom..she had just been arrested for possession of a controlled substance for the third time," Paula stoicly mouthed.

"Father wasn't around?" Randy asked.

"Yeah right..they ended up sending the kids out live with their grandparents in Lawrence..I don't have anything else as follow up...well I'll be..how does he look like he's been?" Paula quizzed her husband.

"Fine I guess..I'm sure you'd never recognize him now..he's grown up quite a bit since he was 11..I guess you'll get a chance to meet him again when he comes over saturday..I hope ..you know..it wont be too awkward for him." Randy offered.

"Damn..I wish I was gonna be here..before we got sidetracked I was about to tell you me and my sister are headed up to see Grandma at the Nursing home..we're probably going to be gone all day..Bernice insists on doing some shopping while we're up there," Paula dejectedly replied, knowing there was no way out of her planned family trip. "You guys just don't tear the house..or the yard up too much..OK"

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Dylan arrived at the Lindsey home a little after 10 am that saturday morning, about a half an hour after Paula left to pick up her sister. Randy was already in the backyard spreading out his tools and trying to visually picture how the fence would go up.

"You know anything about this stuff?" Randy asked the 19 year old boy as he approached.

"Not really," Dylan smiled back.

"Then I guess we're in for a long day," Randy cracked a laugh.

Over the course of the next few hours, Randy and Dylan made small talk as they trudged through the task of getting the postholes dug. Randy was hesitant to bring up his wife's connection to Dylan, fearing in some way that it would make the young man rather uncomfortable having his past drudged up, just like the dirt from the ground, while he was standing in his boss' back yard. As the afternoon wore on however and the two found fewer topics to discuss, Randy Lindesy eventually let it slip out about Paula's connection to him, and to Randy's surprise, Dylan immediatly remembered her.

"Oh..yeah...Wow," Dylan stuttered back, coming to a momentary stop from his digging to harken back to that very difficult era of his childhood and the time his path crossed with a social worker named Pauline Lindsey.

"I didn't want to bring up anything that happened then Dylan..its none of my business," Randy offered sheepishly. "I just didn't..you know..want you to run into Paula one day at the store and not know she was married to me.

"No problem," Dylan reflectivly replied.

It seemed a heavy, awkward weight had been lifted off of each's shoulders as they bent down and put their backs to work again, in the process making more progress than they had in the next hour or so then they had all morning.

As the afternoon Midwestern sun started beating down relentlessly however, Randy decided it was about time for the two to take a break for lunch.

"Go on inside Dyaln and get a drink of something..make yourself a sandwich too...Paula made a ham last night," Randy kindly offered. "I'm just gonna stay out here another 15 minutes and get these last postholes dug so all we'll have to worry about is getting the metal in the ground the rest of the afternoon...just go inside and make yourself at home."

With that, Dylan grabbed the sweaty teeshirt he had long ago discarded and wiped his face with it before disappearing inside his boss' house.

"So..did you make yourself anything for lun....," Randy started to ask Dylan as he entered the kitchen before realizing the young man was nowhere to be seen.

Randy almost hollered Dylan's name out to see what part of the house he was a before stopping himself as the most logical explanation registered in his head.

"He's probably in the bathroom," Randy said to himself. "Now that I think about it..I gotta take a piss myself."

After grabbing a cold beer from the fridge, Randy peeked down the hall to see if Dylan was still in the bathroom. When he saw the door was open and no light was shining out, Randy instantly started to feel the gnawing instincts that he felt towards the children of Dylan's generation.

"Goddamn boy is somewhere in the house trying to steal something," the paranoid part of Randy's pysche screamed until his more rational mind took over.

"Calm down..just calm down...he aint got nothing other than a pair of shorts on..where is he going to hide anything..and besides...You and Paula don't keep any money laying around," Randy reassured himself.

Starting his journey down the hallway, Randy couldn't quite figure out why he was holding his breath, trying to keep as quiet as possible as he put on foot in front of the other. A few steps down the hall, Randy stopped when he thought he could hear the faint sound of russling coming from the den on the left side of the hall.

"Why the Hell would anyone want to go in there?" Randy shook his head, wondering why any kid would be interested in a room where Paula kept an old piano, her Mother's antique sofa and a collection of family photos.

Feeling his hand become slippery around the beer can's condensation, Randy sat it down on the floor before straining his neck forward to see if Dylan was, in fact, in the den.

"OHH...OHH.....DEAR..GOD....It's gotta be the Sun messing with my head..I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing," Randy dazedly muttered as he felt his knees begin to shake.

What he was somehow watching was the 19 year old kid, who he had hired to work at his store, standing in the family den, assuming he had all the privacy in the world as he towered above a row of Lindsey family portraits.

Randy could see Dylan rubbing his dick through the front of his cut-off shorts, the back of his kneading hand less than 6 inches away from an older picture of Paula Lindsey's face as her image unwittingly smiled back with a 'say cheese' expression.

The look on Randy Lindsey's face however was much more genuine. His lazy eyes darted crazily back and forth in their sockets as he watched the way Dylan's arm muscles twitched and bulged in orchestral unison. Randy could also see the pipelike ridge growing along in the inside of Dylan's pants puff out the front of his shorts like an awakened snake as the boy continued to leeringly peer down at Paula's picture.

"He's jacking off looking at my wife," Randy succienctly told himself, despite the fact he had no way of processing that reality.

"...No....My....God..," he mouthed weakly as he watched the 19 year old's carnal self manipulations intensify.

"Maybe you should..should..just walk back and leave it be," a weakened, almost sheepish voice inside Randy's head whispered.

"But that's your wife he's standing there masturbating in front of," a tougher but still confused voice retorted.

The surrealness of the situation combined with Randy's stunned reluctance to act, causing him to stand in place several feet from the entrance to the den, left to watch with sick fascination as the teenager palmed his cock through his pants in front of the photograph of Paula Lindsey's smiling face.

The sound of Randy Lindsey's head pounding had been the only vibrations breaking the vaccum of silence in the hallway until he tried listening closer. When he did, he was sure he could hear the sound of Dylan's young powerful hand scrubbing his mighty prick through the rough fabric of his denim pants.

"Do something you stupid sonofabitch," a desperate internal voice inside of Randy begged eventhough he was too numb to move.

"UURRGGHHHH..YEEAAHH...AAHHHH..AARGGHH..YYEAHHH," Dylan suddenly began to become more vocal as he ground his crotch in front of Paula's photogenic face.

Randy could see Dylan was on the verge of pulling down his shorts to free his erection but could sense the boy was so close to cumming, he didn't want to take a chance and lose the moment.

"He's worried you might stumble in on him," the last vestige of Randy's self respect rambled eventhough deep down he knew even if he did make his presense felt in the den, it would probably do little to stop Dylan from getting what he had gone in there for.

So on and on it went with Randy standing there watching helplessly from the hallway as his 19 year old employee lewdly masturbated himself closer to completion.

Focused so intently with his burning, nearly teary eyes, Randy swore he could see every vieny ridge of Dylan's cock as his large hand blazed across the crotch of his bulging jeans. Randy could also see the fistlike head of Dylan's prick grow larger and larger each time his hand squeezed down harder on its virile girth.

The older man had no clue what he would do when Dylan finally released his lust eventhough, like a paralysed man left to fend for himself on a vibrating set of railroad tracks, he knew it was coming.

Randy's field of vision had been condensed down to a narrow tunnel of sight, focused so intensly on Dylan's hand ripping across his crotch that he nearly fell to the floor in shock when he saw the teenager's entire body clench.

"He's ...about to.....Oh God..he's about to..cum," Randy winced in gutteral pain, his entire state of being ceasing operation for a brief moment as the teenager's body started to involuntarily tremble and quiver.

Randy's legs turned to jelly as he watched Dylan go through his orgasmic gyrations. Kneeling down as if he were forced to pray in front of some sort of invisible alter, Randy stared on helplessly as the young man spewed his lust.

Randy's gawking eyes had taken on a telescopic clarity as he fixated on the tentlike bulge straining out the front of Dylan's pants. Watching as the boy's hot, youthful gaze stayed locked intently on Paula Lindsey's framed face, Randy also swore he could see every propelled jet of Dylan's cum cause the front of his pants to expand out even further as he savagly grinded his pelvis back in forth in front of the woman's one diminsional image.

The voyeuristic experience was so excruciatingly vivid for Randy that he was almost sure he could feel the wet swampy sensation Dylan was feeling at that same moment, inside of his own pants. It wasn't until Randy had quietly slumped back up the hallway and into the kitchen so Dylan wouldn't catch him that he realized the moist feeling inside of his pants wasn't imagined.

"Did you just cum all over yourself?" a sickened voice asked from deep within his bowels.

"Either that..or you just peed your pants," another horrified voice added as Randy sucked in deep breath after deep breath in an attempt to collect himself before Dylan emerged from the hall.

If Randy though making small talk with the youngster had been difficult before, he simply had no clue how he was going to work side by side with him for the rest of the afternoon, with the potent image of the boy masturbating himself to completion in front of a picture of his very own wife running like a nonstop videoloop inside his head.

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Over the course of the next few days and weeks, Randy Lindsey found himself walking around in a strange, sexually charged fog as the memory of what happened that Saturday with Dylan nipped continually at his pysche.

Randy had even become reluctant to schedule Dylan at the store during the same times he knew he would be there for fear of the perpetual distraction.

At home, Randy and Paula had drifted so far apart intimatly that it had become a momentus occassion if they had sex more than once a week. For reasons Randy was too uncomfortable to confront, he suddenly felt the urge to have sex with his wife every night. Rationally, he told himself that it simply took another man's attention to remind him of just how much he had once been attracted to her. But as Randy went about fucking Paula more than he had in years, he had become haunted by the constant visions of Dylan being there in the bedroom with them as the couple shared in their most personal of activities.

If Randy was fucking Paula in the missionary position, he would invariably imagine Dylan kneeling beside her head, feeding the same his cock directly into her widely splayed mouth. If Randy was laying flat on his back allowing Paula to straddle his crotch, Randy couldn't resist imagining Dylan standing above the couple on the mattress, his legs arched widely out to each side as he forced his cock down Paula's throat, while all Randy could do was look up in dazed amazement.

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The increased sexual pace went on between the two for the better part of the following month. Eventhough Paula Lindsey had asked herself on several occassions 'why' this change had come over her husband, she was old enough to know you didn't look a gift horse in the mouth if you wanted it to continue.