Excavating Gustem Hall 3
This is a story for adult men. It depicts gay sex. If this offends or bothers you, DO NOT READ IT. It is a fantasy and is not a sex manual, or a discussion of safe sex. If you have, comments send them to bldhrymn@yahoo.com or bldhrymn@aol.com
The second season of excavations at Gustem Hall began on the first day of May. Normally this would start after the Spring semester of college finished, but the winter had been unusually wet even for England, and the site was suffering from erosion. My crew had done as much repair and salvage work as we could, but we needed more staff.
We were lucky that Mark was a workaholic and kept up with the steady stream of finds. Bunny had become his special friend and his was happy data entering. Bunny wasn't brain surgeon material, but he excelled at mindless repetitive work. When he was near Mark and Mark was fucking him regularly, Bunny was happy.
Roddy and I were turning into a team. I knew where he was coming from and he understood me. It was a good professional relationship. Personally, we got along well too, but sexually we were perfectly matched. His cock and my ass were a good fit. I noticed that early. I did not realize until later that my ass was a near perfect replica of his late partner's ass.
I didn't have the look or personality of his former partner, but I had his genitals. For Roddy, one out of three characteristics was enough. I was shallow enough to settle for great sex, with some affection. Our working relationship was fine.
There was one oddity about the excavations. We had discovered spectacular finds, the temple, statue, and coin hoards. We lacked a settlement. I would have expected the finds would have been part of a thriving community[BW1] or settlement. We hadn't found it yet, or it never existed. It might be an isolated cult center built in the middle of nowhere.
It wasn't exactly nowhere. We had found a sacred spring dedicated to male fertility. Was it impossible that only males were permitted at the cult site? Were their rites for men only, excluding women. A settlement without women was not likely to thrive. That was especially true since the cult focused on allowing men to father children.
All the little inscriptions on the tiles focused on male fertility. The illustrations scratched on tiles had the same focus. They were graphic and mostly obscene. Ancient obscenity is not the same as modern obscenity. While a Victorian gentleman might wish for a loving woman who might produce heathy heirs, a Roman man would look for a woman who would fuck like a rabbit, and give him a heirs who could provide labor to help him in the family business. The Romans admitted there was intercourse. Victorians admitted that reluctantly.
From the subsoil radar, we knew there were no major stone buildings or foundations. The settlement could have consisted of wooden buildings which produced little if any radar blips. That sort of building was meat and potatoes for the English archeologists. Wood framed buildings were typical of pre and post Roman construction. Roddy went hunting for those.
I went looking for traces of the fertility cult. We knew men made offerings to the spring but had no indications of ceremonies. The coin hoards indicated that something was going on. I went looking for potential ritual elements.
We had two new groups joining the excavation. Our analysis indicated that the marble used for the temple came from Italy. Three men came from Italy to study the temple. Their leader was Gustavo Sabbini, and he had two field men with him, Marco and Julio.
The second group was German. They were interested in Celtic religion and rites. Professor Helmut Andersen lead the group. His father was a Danish professor. Wotan Mueller and Siegfried Marks were his associates. I asked if we were assembling the cast for a Wagnerian opera. That comment caused considerable merriment.
Gustavo was exceptionally up tight. He just had been on an earlier expedition that cost a great deal and found nothing. Helmut was a relaxed and casual Dane. He had recently completed a best-selling book on fertility rituals. Someone asked him what was the secret to his success? He said it was full frontal illustrations. I later got a copy of the book. He was a gifted and preceptive author, but the illustrations were superb.
We acquired in a new, high resolution radar-imager and it discovered what looked like a narrow road or path leading from the temple in the direction of the spring. There was an upper level of debris that obscured the path beneath. We had to clear the debris. Wotan and Siegfried were big men. Wotan was a muscleman and Siegfried was fat. They were in an informal contest between them and my English ditch diggers, Hank and Georgy as to who could uncover the most.
I thought my guys would win easily, but Siegfried had muscles under the blubber. The were well matched. Helmut and I looked over the debris for possible finds. It was slim pickings at first.
I had a reputation for being lucky. Lucky isn't the same thing as brilliant, but it sure looks that way. The path did not exist. It was an overturned wall made of a local stone. The underside of the wall was a continuous sculpted bas-relief of religious rites and festivals.
The reliefs were not fine Greek or Roman works. They were done by local craftsmen. While they were simple depictions of fertility rites to the Celtic-Roman participants they were bawdy, obscene and arousing to us. Had the Victorians discovered them, they never would have seen the light of day.
"There must be every sexual position known to man shown here!" Helmut said.
"I know a few others," Roddy remarked. Helmut looked at Roddy strangely. Somehow, I thought it was more than curiosity.
The wall was 10 meters long and had been pushed over so most of the stones were in order. If we hadn't been in England, I would have thought it had been toppled by an earthquake. It was clearly important to excavate them in order so the reliefs would be easily reconstructed.
The stones were between 20 and thirty pounds each. We rearranged the crews, do the bigger men were working on the tumbled wall. I had no problem lifting a 20-pound stone but lifting stones for three or four hours straight was not realistic.
Hank and Georgy had no problem with heavy labor. Wotan and Marco joined them. We moved a few stones as a test. The stones were in good condition and didn't break. We then discovered that many stones were inscribed in Latin, apparently describing the rituals.
I realized that the wall had fallen over before and had been re-erected. It became clear that the men who set it up the second time couldn't read. The stones were in the wrong order.
While several men in the group could translate Latin, I had also worked with Anglo-Saxon writers and had translated directly from manuscripts. Anglo-Saxon script is dissimilar to formal Latin inscriptions. I thought the script was precursor for the later Anglo Saxon script. There were misspellings in the inscription. I had a feeling the scribe who wrote or copied the inscription wrote correctly, but the men who carved the work were illiterate and were simply copying the designs of the letters. This reminded me of the graffiti of semi-literate men.
While the press covered the discovery of the carvings as ancient porn, I thought it was a manual of techniques to deal with impotence. It was a how-too book in stone. The only ancient equivalent were Indian temple sculptures.
I was interviewed by the BBC and managed to sound intelligent. I admit I think of myself as being intelligent, but that doesn't always come through on the television. While the reporter called it an ancient sex manual, I suggested it was a more likely a medical manual. For a man infertility was a huge threat to his family and their future. It seemed to me that it was much more than a dirty joke in stone. It was an effort to aid the afflicted.
That seeme to have some impact on the coverage. It turned the excavation from bring a dirty joke into a serious enterprise. I am no fool. A serious enterprise with multiple erect cocks is much more interesting that a serious enterprise without cocks.
We were a heavily male expedition largely because of the heavy labor involved. Some of the heavy lifting was difficult for Hank and Georgy, and they were used to moving dirt and stone on a daily basis.
The detailed cleaning of the stonework was done in a restoration-preservation lab, with mostly women doing the work. It was tedious and difficult work, and the results were impressive and well covered by the media.
Our male clubhouse at Gustem Hall was busy. Some of our men recognized members of the fraternity in the German and Italian contingent. Wotan and Marco got along very well with my ditch diggers.
Gustavo was a prissy, obsessed with detail man, but he was not afraid to get into the mud. A BBC photo of him dragging a sculpture out of a flooded ditch made him look like a he-man. He came home with me to shower before he could get into the 4x4's to go to his headquarters. He was that dirty.
Gustavo was not shy about his body. He wasn't a body builder, but he was in good shape. He had a hairy body as is typical of many Italian men and a plump, uncut cock resting on good sized balls. Once the first layers of dirt went down the drain, Gustavo looked at me.
He asked if I were Jewish. I told him no, that circumcision was typical for most American men. "Your cock head is large," he remarked. "In Italy you see the head only when a man is excited.
"It's usually exposed in the showers at home. I admit talking about cocks tends to excite it," I said.
Gustavo laughed, "Cocks are usually ready to play at any excuse or pretext," he said. "I think that is men's nature."
"We have been excavating images of excited cocks for a week. There must be a hundred of them so far," I said.
"There are 147 images of cocks so far," he observed. I must have looked surprised he knew the number. "But who is counting," he added. We laughed.
"Do you think all of these images are for ritual purposes?" I asked. "I can tell you from personal experience, they have a non-ritual effect on my cock."
"They have the same effect on my tool," Gustavo said. "We pretend cocks are for purely reproductive purposes. One would be an incredibly simple man not to discover the cock's recreational uses. What did you do on long dark nights without televisions?" We laughed.
"It is so handy too," I added. "It is always nearby and no more than an arm's length away. The Romans' were shy about it, but the Greeks seem to have celebrated it."
"Is your approach to cocks Roman, Greek or Medieval?" Gustavo asked.
"I would guess it's more Greek than Roman, although I bet my cock would get a workout at the Saturnalia," I said. The mud and dirt were gone from Gustavo's body. I leaned over and sucked his semi-erect cock.
"Is it private here?" he asked.
"Yes, everyone here shares the same interests," I said. "You are with likeminded men."
"I have a wife and children back in Rome," he said. "I do enjoy some sexual variety. Do you promise not to have my baby?" We laughed again. I returned to sucking him.
I peeled back the skin hood that sheathed his cock head and licked and then took the knob into my mouth, licking the tender underside. A single glob of Italian man seed spurted from his cock. I understood that Gustavo's interest in man sex wasn't casual.
I pulled off. "Do I need to hold back, or do you want to shoot now?" I asked.
"Would you milk me now?" he asked. I returned to my sucking duties. He had a few more squirts over the next ten minutes, before he fully drained his balls. He seemed calm as he unloaded but the ejaculations were impressive.
"Should I suck you?" he asked. "Is that expected here?"
"I enjoyed it and you enjoyed it. I think we are even," I said.
"I could have Marco suck you. He loves it," Gustavo said. I told him I picked my own playmates. We got dressed and he went to his headquarters. It was a quiet night for me. I was translating some of the inscriptions and admiring the inventive sculptures.
The next day's field work was cut short by rain. I was standing under a tent when Marco came over to me. "The professor told me you are a good man. It is crowded in our Headquarters, there is no privacy," he said. I knew what he wanted, and I knew I what I should say.
"My bedroom is private," I said. That was not the firm rejection I intended.
A little later I was back at Gustem Hall in my shower with Marco. Loring joined us and Marco didn't bat an eye. Apparently, Marco had met Loring earlier. Loring was more friendly than usual with Marco in attendance. I assumed a warm bedroom and large shower was better than behind some bushes near the excavation. It also simplified things. Loring and Marco when straight to sex and included me. There was none of tentative testing the waters before we got down to sex.
None of us were exactly amateurs. I suspected Marco wanted to fuck. Loring sat on the bed and I bent over to suck him, and Marco took the opportunity to fuck me. Marco liked long deep strokes, followed by almost frantic pounding. That was good for me.
If increased precum flow is any indicator, it was even better for Loring. I later found out that Marco and Loring were close, and Loring was excited to watch his partner in action. When Loring took over the fucking duties, Marco sucked me, and he took my load with obvious enthusiasm. After Marco took my load, he then returned to fuck me until he added his load to Loring's.
The next day, we were moving at a good pace on the sculptures and we all got along well. Marco was doing the preliminary cleanup on one of the sculped slabs. He was hosing off the mud adhered to the back of a slab. He called to me. He had found letters scraped on the back.
The letters were more graffiti than an inscription. After we got rid of most of the mud, the letters spelled Hu Hoc Fecit, Hu Made This. It was the artist or the carver's signature. Rare doesn't come close to describing the inscription. Except for on Greek vases, ancient artists never signed their works.
I thought Hu was probably Hugh. A native Briton's name might not have a Latin equivalent. Hu could be the phonetic equivalent. If that was true, we had discovered the first signature of a British artist
I had hoped we could have cleaned up the slab and done a more detailed examination, but work leaked out. The BBC camera crews were back in hours. Of course, it was a sensation. Since an American and Italian discovered the inscription, it was big news in the United States and in the European Union.
I was interviewed and tried to emphasize the scholarly significance of the discovery. Marco was interviewed and his Italian approach to English was much enjoyed. I noticed that while he was enthusiastic, every fact was correct, and he minimized his role working for the brilliant American Doctor. I mentioned Marco's hawk eye for spotting the inscription and gave credit to the exceptional crew.
One of the BBC men, Townson Price was particularly interested. The top tier of cultural and scientific men at the BBC were getting old and Townson was trying to be their replacement. He was educated and had a beautiful deep voice. Townsend was in his late thirties, bald and bearded. I suspected the beard was to give him an older, more professorial look.
I was surprised when Kenneth asked him to stay for dinner. Townson was with a cameraman, Nigel, who was part of the reportorial team. Townson was trying to develop a more informal approach to science. This included unscripted interviews with stunning photographs and video clips.
Kenneth did not invite Townson by accident. Townson was a friend of a friend of Kenneth and the friend thought they shared sexual interests. Townson was a noted man about town, often seen with society beauties. A secluded country estate was an ideal place for Townson to enjoy alternative pleasures.
Townson interviewed the senor leadership and the excavators who did the digging. That was recorded by BBC senior cameraman. Nigel was a specialist in photographing inanimate objects. He selected a panel of the relief and got Hank and Georgy to position it, so it faced the original direction, to the south-east.
Nigel didn't use artificial light. He photographed it at dawn, nine, noon and so forth. As the sun moved minor elements caught the light and became prominent. At dawn, the genitalia were in shadow, by nine they were well illuminated with shadows picking out details. At noon, the light tended to bleach out details, but by early afternoon, the cocks were in shadow again, but the asses were illuminated. It was possible the sun dictated the progress of the ceremonies and rituals. The photographs were beautiful and after a while, you hardly noticed the genitals.
Kenneth immediately liked Townson, and they hit it off. I think they were compatible personally, professionally, and sexually. He planned a formal dinner with some friends and the local elite. He wasn't popular with the locals, but the success of the excavation and the massive media coverage changed their minds. The inns, taverns and pubs in the area were overflowing with the excavators, and the potential for tourists was even greater. A BBC celebrity was icing on the cake.
Lowly staff members were not included. That wasn't pure snobbery. Kenneth was in the closet. That had to do with old friends of his parents. He had finally made good and being gay would tarnish him. That was good for me. I'm not a good small talk man. the party was in a swank hotel ten miles away. That way no one got to see the house and see how he was living.
Townson's wife was coming so there was to be no hint that Nigel existed. Nigel bunked with me. Hank told me Nigel's virgin days were well in the past.