[Rock Me, Baby (Summer 1988-February 1989) tells of a pivotal time with my husman, Geo, and the son of my wish, Kirk. As are all the stories in the series, this part is fiction, imagined from life incidents but not actual in the details and persons.]
Ben and I had split, and not too amicably, but because we had realigned - me with Geo, Ben with Glenn - our worlds still overlapped. Furthermore and chiefly, Geo was not going to part with any past friends or lovers, and Ben and Glenn continued to be welcome in his home, not matter which place he was occupied at the time. Besides, Geo was as fond of and concerned for Kirk as ever was I, and you couldn't have the boy visiting on a regular basis without his father.
Because Geo and I had more undisturbed time with one another than ever before, our conversations grew in depth, and I learned more of Geo's origins and background beyond the randomness of previous comments, and now his story made wonderfully consistent sense. He, as most Armenians, was intensely influenced by and proud of his ancestry. Armenians as a people are ancient; after all, Noah's Ark settled on Mount Ararat, the peak of their territory. Armenia at its height spread throughout Asia Minor from the Caspian Sea across Anatolia and from there into the Caucasus and reached the Mediterranean. At the dawn of the fourth century, they were the first nation to adopt Christianity and though fiercely independent in religion for centuries, numbers of them later aligned with Roman Catholicism. Their classical language and its later descendants are highly fricative, that is frictional, with dramatically concussive consonant sounds. Its alphabet requires 36 letters to represent such an explosive language that also produced a prodigious and long-lived literature.
Due to their Middle East location, Armenia found itself amidst every invasion, migration, expansion and East-West conflict. I think it was only their mountains and rugged determination that saved Armenians from total extermination, though tens and even hundreds of thousands of them fell to repeated wars and organized massacres. Eventually, they lost their own kings and succumbed to the Ottoman Empire, the Turks. In the 1880s one such calamity forced the families of Geo's parents to flee from Persia into Russia. And that is how Geo, a generation later came to be born in Tbilisi.
'That is why they named me Georgias, after the old kingdom of Georgia, where the parents found themselves'. Tbilisi was another ancient and cosmopolitan city, filled with expatriates from throughout the Euro-Asian crossroads. Even his own Armenian parents were diverse, his father, Erivan Noressian, a highly educated poet and typesetter from the Greco-Persian west of Armenia, and his completely domestic mother from the Syriac side. Geo was an only child, born to them after several miscarriages and stillbirths, and they doted on him. So did their landlord, Zachmed Sladek, a bachelor, Jewish spice merchant who befriended the family.
'I was about eight years old, the first time he put his hands on my privates,' Geo told. It was not his fault. Since I was of a tender age, he had taught me languages - Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Ladino - and read me stories as I sat on his lap. I had seen my father's penis, quite by accident, that seemed enormous and beautiful to me and I wondered about other men of Father's age. Because I was with Zachmed Sladek as no other and in the right position, seated on him, one day I felt between his legs. He said nothing, but shifted to accommodate my curiosity and I explored further. I found his sizeable manhood and stroked it, full of appreciation for its handsome beauty and potential power.
'Because Zachmed Sladek obviously liked my attention, I repeated it - frequently. Months later, he began touching me. And that is all he ever did. It only lasted a couple years. Once off his lap, he continued to tend to my mind, and we conversed about history, literature, and philosophy. But I could soon tell from the dance in his eyes and the flush of his face, that he yearned for me. When I reached twelve, he paid tutors to school me further, and when I reached sixteen years provided the scholarship that allowed me the University.'
At University, Geo busied himself with studies, but one day a Georgian student, about eighteen, someone Geo had seen before looking at him, became directly friendly to him. He invited Geo to his room a few days later when his parents were at work. 'I knew what was going to happen, and I calmly went along and let him seduce me,' Geo said. They undressed without words and spent about two ours touching and exploring one another. Then the sucking. Then the fucking. 'He was "versatile," as we say, and a good teacher. We both did one another.
'Josef, he was named, my first man. But he never approached me again. Georgian men are driven to exalt their manliness, and to continue with me would be too queer. All right for him; he had prepared me for others, and I was glad of that.' Geo was nothing if studious for those three years in pursuit of his first degree. Yet whenever opportunity presented itself to him in the right combination of time and interest, he had sex with other students, the burly proletariat, and handsome men met on the streets and in parks who were also looking for some form of man to man abandon. Geo laughed every time, he told another story, 'I capped off that part of my career with an especially handsome professor in the physical sciences. I was nineteen and worked my wiles on him; not too difficult, he was willing, eager I'd say. He talked abstract theoretical physics all the way through my fucking him as though I were to convert to his discipline.'
The Soviet control over everyday life was increasing, and opportunely when Geo completed university in philosophy and comparative literature, Zachmed Sladek's death and legacy to his family allowed them to leave what had just become Georgia S.S.R. They went to Athens where Zachmed Sladek had cleverly sequestered most of his assets. 'While Papa converted various properties to more liquid investments, I took another degree, this time in classics.
'Otherwise in my Athens period, 1937-1938, I pursued sailors and dock workers, going down to Piraeus - in more ways than one - on the weekends. My parents knew of my proclivities by then, and were distressed about it, but after one shouting match resigned to my fixation as temporary. "You will become a man and find your true self," Papa said.' While Geo fucked with the seamen of the world, the parents prepared to immigrate to Brazil. It was because of this family tension over sexuality, especially with his mother, who had trouble looking her beloved son in the face, that the parents parted from him.
Geo, with his share of inherited funding, went on to Paris and the Sorbonne.
He lived in a single room, ate in cafés, and studied harder than ever before. Still men, were everywhere, and they seemed to come on to him. 'Maybe I exuded sex, now mature - twenty when I arrived - and as handsome and hirsute in the Armenian way as I ever would be. Lecherous men were everywhere; they came up to me not just in bars, but libraries, bookstores and museums. Even churches.'
Geo completed his doctorate at the Sorbonne, reveling in the intense intellectual life of the university and the Rive Gauche. 'Yes, I knew Camus and Sartre, Genet too when he was not in prison, and Cocteau. Many others, celebrities and those not so celebrity.' Simultaneously, I prepared for the priesthood, a decision that brought my parents more joy than the exploits of my body.
'Why did I become a priest? My parents raised me in a religious atmosphere, and I adored the majesty and mystery of worship. More telling, I loved the magnetic intricacies of Biblical literature regardless of the language I in which I read it. This book of disparate books spoke to me as one principle, driven and coherent by a single purpose - the creative love of God. Mostly, I had developed a social conscience from all those philosophy and literature classes. My family had fled the Turks, and I had fled the Communists, and now the Nazis were upon us. I saw that I needed to do something for God and for humanity. And Father Justus had become my mentor.
'Brother Juste Fabien, he was then, a Cistercian. I found him in the confessional at Saint Gregor the Illuminator where I went periodically to unburden myself of my whoredom and other wicked ways. We met later over coffee, and he convinced me of the Church's need for my talents. Juste outlined the life of service I might lead in a way that appealed to me when I considered my possibilities. I had made no career choice except that I would continue to learn from life and study; because I had no fortune, nor prospect of one, basically I wanted to pursue truth.
'And I was a person without a country. At my ordination, I swore myself to celibacy at least in practice if not in thought. I remained chaste in the body over the next twenty years while fucking dozens of men in my mind, over and over again in nightly fantasies of masturbation. God forgive me. But my motivation for keeping my penis to myself was that I did not want to do anything to jeopardize my chosen vocation and its benefits. I fancied that I had the will to do so. My reward was that I was given a Vatican passport and important and sensitive assignments where, perhaps, I could do some good in the world.'
Dok got out of France just in advance of the German invasion. Basically the Vatican used him in various hotspots where his knack for learning languages, virtually overnight suited him for exotic destinations. Once he had to learn Swahili in a day when he learned he had to conduct a parley among various native groups the next morning. Ostensibly, he was a special missionary, delegate from the Congregation on the Propagation of the Faith to tend to the Catholics among Armenians in exile. His first mission was to Ethiopia, 1940-1945, just as resistance was mounting to the Italian stronghold there; then followed Egypt, 1945-1950, as the British were losing their foothold, and finally Lebanon, 1950-1955, where the French were on the way out. In each he served as translator and secretary to whatever diplomat the Vatican Secretariat sent into the area.
Upon occasion, he did priestly things - confession, mass, catechization, counseling, marriages, baptisms, and funerals - although he never had a specific parish. Being a rover from place to place suited him. Geo had the entrepreneurial character of his ethnicity. 'As for me and my interests, I used every opportunity to discover, read and translate whatever ancient texts I could find. In search of them, monasteries, churches, and other sequestered libraries and archives of these lands were my favored haunts and homes.' His passion for all this antiquity equipped him to be one of the world's premier authorities on primitive Christianity, that is its origins and development before it became the accepted and state religion of Rome.
Because he had been a good and faithful servant of the Church, in 1955 Geo asked to be sent to Sao Paulo, Brazil so that he could be near his aging parents, and the Vatican agreed. His mother was in her late sixties and his father ten years older than she was. From the base of a small church, his one and only actual parish, he tended to the parents, both of whom died within the three years he served there. 'I had become used to the poverty of three continents, but nothing prepared me for the miserable slums of Sao Paulo. There children are brought into the world only to be thrown away. I had to face down my own depression over it.'
Father Justus rescued him, offering a seminary teaching position in mid-Minnesota. And so Geo came to the United States in 1958. He remained within holy orders for two more years, but continued to teach after that as he was when I first knew him. At forty-two, after 20 years as a priest, Geo went back to the secular life as the proper fit to his persistent lust. He used his inheritance to buy Hidden Lake and began to lead the life of exercising his perversion. He became a citizen of the U.S.
'I never cruised my own students. Instead, I made the grand tour of Minnesota's sexual underbelly. I got my palang after spending some days with a WWII veteran who had brought the device back from Borneo, thrust as it was through his own glans. He used the excitement of it to spread the idea to others of our raunchy persuasion. I took on the palang because of its constant sensation of eroticism between my legs and as a constant declaration of the homo I was, by act of God, and my own flaming desires.
'In the course of my prowls, in August 1962, Glenn Markus and I met in a men's sauna in Duluth. "Would you like to come to my hotel room," we both said at the same time. It has been a blessed friendship and a generous sharing. And so I have come to you, Dear Lance.'
As I came to know Geo all the more completely, I marveled how he had experienced the gamut of life - the wild side and the most orderly of sides - and now chose me above all others. I could hardly believe it.
Two weeks after the breakup that had thrown Geo and me so firmly together, Ben and Kirk were back at Hidden Lake. Glenn, having left his school career for real estate selling, was most occupied on weekends, especially in the summer and could not make the same schedule with them. How I wish it could have been otherwise.
Ben and I were edgy with one another at first, but that mellowed with a few beers, and while Geo and Ben read Ars Amatoria to one another, Ben suggested we take a walk. We'd hardly gone out of sight of the cottage when Ben pulled down his faded cutoffs and without underwear exposed his stiffening cock. 'Sorry, Lance; I have to piss,' and he watered the bushes. Looking at me dead on, he flexed his lengthy cock and shook the droplets off the pecker-slit and from the Prince Albert that circled through it.
'You were a great fuck, buddy. I have to say I miss your front, miss your back.'
I shrugged. 'Well, Ben, now we're on to other things.'
'Lance-baby, it doesn't have to be that way. I was always hot for you; I still am.'
'Jeez, Ben, we've made choices. Just let me be with Geo now for the few years we've got together. He's 70 after all.'
'And I'm 45, not getting any younger either.'
'Well, then, make sure you take care of yourself.'
By this time he'd stroked himself up to his contest-winning ten inches and moved to press against me. His hardon ground against my basket through the thin cotton shorts and jock sock I wore. He breathed into my mouth, holding my head, his tongue beginning to part my lips. I felt I was soon to be a goner.
I stepped back from him breathing heavily. 'Wait a minute please. For God's sake, pull your pants up and give me a cigarette.' Ben fished one out, lit it, and passed it to me. I took a puff and passed it back to him; he inhaled and passed it back to me. Yikes! Even smoking a cigarette with him was a turn-on.
'Ben, what in the hell am I going to do with you?'
He grinned. 'Suck me, fuck me; I don't care. I haven't had sex in four days, and I'm about going crazy.' Apparently Glenn couldn't put out for him as regularly as I had.
I shook my head. 'Then it's time to wander into the bushes and beat off.' He made a sour face.
'Okay. But instead will you jack me? That's not really having sex with one another.'
He still had his cutoffs down and stepped out of them, grabbed my right and put it on his cock. He turned around with his ass up against my midsection and taking my left hand moved it up under his loose tank to his bar-pierced nipples. 'Make me come, buddy, for old time's sake. Then I'll be good for a couple days till I get back home.'
Witless, stupid idiot that I am, I was already moving on him. He leaned back against me, grinding his bulbous ass at me and reaching my head to pull it down, pressing my lips on his neck. Holy moley, sex maniac that I am, I was kissing and biting his neck, his ears, pinching his nipples and flinging his dong. I panted, getting hard and twisting at his curvaceous buttocks. I pulled down my shorts and placed my erection at his asshole. I bucked against him; he bent forward, and I was in. Against all my best intentions I was fucking my ex.
Possessed, I bucked in him, holding Ben from under his armpits back against me by the shoulders and giving him the royal fucking sendoff from my boiling balls. 'Oh, Lance, no one fucks me like you do. Mess me up; fuck me hard, give me all your jazz. Shoot me right up the ass.' Either his voice was hoarse and raspy from too many cigarettes or I was stimulating his prostate to produce that sex-crazed bedroom voice. And that, the sound, not the words, excited me all the more.
I said, 'Shut up, you conniving bastard. You're breaking my concentration.'
He put his hands back on my ass cheeks, pulling and spreading them, his fingers feeling for my crack and hole. Suddenly, uncontrollably I was in orgasm, pumping myself into him for all I was worth, then gasping to restore air to my spent body, leaning over him. Ben pulled himself forward. I fell on my knees, and he stuck his glistening, wet cock in my mouth. I grabbed it and gobbled at it sucking with hungry abandon until he came in a rush, which didn't take long.
He raised me to my feet and kissed, lapping up some of his own spunk as he washed my face with his hot tongue. 'What a buddy! I knew you could do it.' He paused, grinned and as flatly as discussing the weather said, 'After Geo has fallen asleep tonight, come to my room, and I'll do you.'
'What?' I said. You bastard, I thought. 'Forget it,' I said.
I pulled myself back together, walked directly back to Geo, who could tell at a glance from my heightened color and the heavy smell of fornication on me what had happened. 'We can't have Ben here again without some fetching prospect to keep him occupied.'
'I understand,' said Geo, the man I loved.
Geo had spent much of the season planning for Glenn's 50th birthday bash and seeing that all the extraordinary preparations got done in time. That would follow in two weeks. Because Geo's friendship with Glenn reached back 25 years, he went to an expense that mystified me in its proportions. The concrete slab behind the cottage that provided a shaded patio area was first extended and secondly covered with cypress flooring to cushion standing on it. At the edge of the deck towards the garage-bunkhouse, he had a 12-person hot tub installed.
And to complete the ensemble, Geo purchased a sound system with well placed outdoor speakers playing off tapes and disks. Finally, he bought a cabin, delivered as a kit on a flat bed truck; this in itself was a $1,000 item. Ben had been offered to contract on all this work but he thought it too small an item for Clarke Construction. Nevertheless, when Ben and Kirk arrived the weekend before the party, they were expected to join me and Gregor Masalkis in putting up what was to be Kirk's cabin. 'Kirk is 16,' Geo said; 'he needs a space of his own.'
Gregor Masalkis was a carpenter, handyman type, resident in Minneapolis, whom, Geo had located through his network of contacts. He was possibly in his thirties, swarthy with thick curly black hair, a drooping Zapata mustache but otherwise clean shaven, very hairy on his chest, arms, back, legs, and whatever else could be seen in his skimpy tank, shorts and work boots. He was built like the veritable brick shit house and sported a considerable basket. I thought Geo had gone overboard to my request for some way to keep Ben diverted and off of me, but Gregor was perfect for that job. We'd have to see what turned out.
Gregor arrived Friday evening with a couple who had hired him in the past and made the recommendation to Geo. We had a quiet evening, just getting acquainted. Ben and Kirk came Saturday morning. Ben had a newly styled fresh haircut, his sandy-colored main considerably cut back to midway down his neck and falling away from his face, tapered so that it had body instead of the pulled-back ponytail. His new do made his face appear wider and more handsome, noble looking really, and set off his broad white smile.
He wore cutoff denim carpenter overalls and work boots. Shirtless, his shoulders looked trapezoid, broader than ever. And he was in the height of his golden summer tan. He and Gregor shook hands in one of those hard handshakes that burly guys do, eyed one another deeply, and set to work. They had different styles of how a building is put together, but strangely, Ben let Gregor lead the way.
Floor, walls, windows, door, sleep loft and tin roof on top were all in place by 2 p.m. We hadn't stopped for lunch. Other guests were beginning to arrive, finding their stations for overnight and joining in the sandwiches and beer. Geo furnished Kirk's sleeping loft with a new box spring, mattress and lots of pillows besides the sedate, masculine tan and black-striped linens. Ben and Gregor decided Kirk should really have a rail on the loft and decided to drive into Baxter in Ben's pickup to get one. They were gone about an hour and had the rail together in another. By then, a number of guests had arrived, about 25 of the 40 expected.
Among the arrivals late that afternoon came Dr. Jamison Jones, political consultant, resident in St. Paul, and his nephew, Aeson Jones, who was in from New York City. I remembered Dr. Jones and his Cadillac Seville at these doings the previous two years, but young Jones, about 20, was a new face. In the gaggle of guests, clearly Aeson, or A-J, and Kirk were the youngest, and being so they naturally gravitated toward one another, first in conversation then in activities. They shed their summer shorts and sandals and swam in the lake nude. Afterwards, as people congregated to picnic on the new deck, Kirk brought A-J to introduce him to me.
Aeson had come to NYC in a second wave immigration from Haiti after his father's older brother was established in the states. Aeson as his uncle looked more Mediterranean than Haitian but spoke in the richly French-flavored accent of his homeland. He was tall, thin-waisted and muscularly built with the most bodacious buttocks and short curly hair around his boyish-masculine sultry face. When I learned that he was a professional chorus dancer, his whole appearance made absolute sense.
Ben had become so preoccupied with Gregor - Kirk and A-J were not the only ones swimming and cavorting in the water nude - that he was unconscious of how Kirk spent his time. Geo played mellow and dreamy romantic music over the virgin sound system, and the evening went by quietly. I only kept track that when Geo and I called it an early night that Ben and Gregor were in the front bedroom, the Joneses left for a motel in Brainerd, and Kirk went alone to his new cabin and spacious bed. Six other guys occupied the back bedroom according to their own arrangements.
After the usual straggling to breakfast Sunday morning, and the eventual parade to Mass, and return to a modest lunch, the remainder of the guests began to come in. Glenn, who was busy selling real estate, didn't arrive for his own party until 5 p.m. But at that point the low-key tempo at which people had been saving themselves abruptly changed. The crowd at full strength cheered and applauded his arrival. Shorts, bikinis, thongs, and jockstraps, though minimal, were the order of the day and at this point everyone wore some kind of tank or shirt, though some were ripped and all those that could be buttoned were open.
Only Glenn was allowed his customary nudity, undressed by a committee of the younger hunks whom Geo named. They robed him in a silky new wrap, topped him with a gilded olive circlet, and adorned the birthday boy with a Ryker-like extension that lengthened his cock to a magnificent 12 to 14 inches. Glenn had moved away from high school guys some time after me. Instead he cruised the outback territory from St. Cloud to Bemidji hunting up those adventurous and voluptuous studs who appreciated his attention and bent to his penetration. Glenn, regaled in his hunger for bringing out young men, was joyous and good at it. His boys appreciated his mastery in their lives and treated him as their rightful king, the king of homosex and they his sexual vassals.
As the Carmina Burana and then Carmina Catulli played on low volume, Glenn with his robe open mingled with the crowd out on the deck, being kissed, squeezed and fondled by nearly everyone present. Some were more formal, chiefly Kirk, who kissed and hugged him, and A-J who merely shook his hand. Liquor flowed more freely, but in deference to Glenn's reform, having substituted becoming a workaholic for THC addiction, no one smoked any dope.
Supposedly I had the host duties out on the deck; Ben was otherwise somewhere off with Gregor. Geo drafted a few to help set the tables, Kirk and A-J eagerly assisting among them.
At 7, we were called to dinner. A tent canopy on the front lawn replaced the badminton net. A run of tables was set in a U-shape so that the buffet-laden tables could be within them, and everyone could sit on the outside and look across at one another. A committee of the hunkiest led Glenn to his enthronement on a little dais at the open end of the U, and while all the hosts and guests lined up for the buffet, everyone took turns waiting on Glenn. Wine and beer flowed and though Kirk was underage, he too was sipping wine at this extended family occasion, as was A-J next to him.
Glenn had moved on from lambrusco to manhattans and looked quite intoxicated by the time everyone had had enough to eat and the center spread was cleared away. The table that the enthroned Glenn had been eating from was also taken away. Geo stood to announce. 'Dear friends and disciples of our studly lord, now is the time for each of us to pledge our fealty to Chief Glendon our suzerain. You will all follow my example.' Geo went from the far end of the table along the outside edge to kneel before Glenn.
Stretching out his right hand, Geo placed in on Glenn's genitals and shouted. 'I, Georgias Noressian, swear eternal love and friendship, support and devotion to my esteemed lover and comrade, the lordly Glendon Markus, upon his first half century of spreading the joy of man on man sexual congress as widely as he possibly can. We are all in his debt. So help me, Creator of the Universe.'
Each of us followed in turn with much the same words, and even those who could not have known Glenn well, as Gregor and Aeson joined, in the comic fun of this strangely mock-solemn event. It took about an hour and darkness had fallen with the torches about the tent and the few suspended electrics casting a soft light. Then rose the shout of 'First time, first time. Tell us your first time.'
Glenn held up his hands to bring silence. 'My lovelies. To answer your call and tell what you ask, I must intrude on the privacy of one of you here, and if that person will give me a sign that it is all right, I will proceed.' Glenn looked around the assembly, seeming to peer into each person's face, and then declared, 'Well, all right.'
'It was 1956, and I was a freshman at St. Cloud State, expecting to major in political science and eventually become an attorney. Therefore I thought that I ought to be politically active, and that meant joining the Young Democrats on campus, Democratic-Farmer-Labor if your prefer. Well, I really didn't know the hubbub I was getting into. President Eisenhower had carried Minnesota in 1952 by a wide margin, and the DFL in Minnesota had fought over whether to support Stevenson against him again or Kefauver, who left me cold when he campaigned and couldn't pronounce the names of Minnesota cities, Wha-bash-ah instead of Wa-ba-shaw.
'While the DFL leadership, otherwise known as 'the bosses,' Senator Humphrey and Governor Freeman at the head, had wanted Stevenson, Kefauver had won the primary. In the District that I was from, the 9th, Coya Knutson, the only woman ever elected to Congress from Minnesota and very popular, was a Kefauver backer. After Stevenson got the nomination, the problem was to get as many Democrats elected or re-elected as possible: Knutson, Freeman, Stevenson.
'So one thing Young Democrats could do is campaign for this slate of candidates on the weekends, usually filling the car of whomever had one with four to six of us. The weekend in question when it was Homecoming at SCS, only two of us met up to go, me the freshman and Jay the senior. Jay was not the president of our club, but he was the leader in the activist sense. I have to say that my teenage hormones were stirring, and the reason I gave up a football game and party weekend to go campaigning for dull old Stevenson, for God's sake, was Jay.
'I felt myself to be gawky, small town and not too sure of peculiarity. Jay was sophisticated, exotic, handsome, and exuded confidence and experience. Just being with him made you feel better. Jay was friendly and outgoing, always smiling with a few welcoming and cheerful words for everyone, but I didn't really know him. If he even knew my name I'd be surprised.
'Jay had borrowed a car and we drove early Saturday morning to Fergus Falls and went door knocking up and down the streets. Driving up and back, Jay and I got acquainted and I found he was interested in me. His subtle way of learning about me helped me to converse in such a way that I learned about him, too. By the time we were on the way back, I felt relaxed and easy with him.
''You know,' Jay said, 'it's going to be wild and noisy on campus when we get back. The dorms will be bleary mad houses.' We looked at one another, and I understood what he meant beneath what he was saying. 'Let's find a quiet place to say the night before we go back. Okay, Glenn?'
'Okay, Jay.' We got a small cabin somewhere between the little burg of Lincoln and Lake Alexander. Jay went out for burgers and beer - remember I was eighteen then -and came back with two young reservists from Camp Ripley.
They were hanging outside the liquor store and asked him to buy for them, too, but Jay determined what they really wanted was a place to get it on, so he invited them along.
'We got acquainted over our supper and then shed our suits and their uniforms to go for an evening dip in our skivvies that when wet clung form fitting to buttocks and cockups. Chill water has a shrinking effect, but four hunks, 18 to 21, when splashing around can get you plenty roused. Back at the cabin, no one was shy as the four of us got naked and crawled into the creaky bed to warm up. We cranked the springs that night.
'Yes this was my first time, and maybe the same, too, for Jim and John, but Jay was a pro. He sucked us each in turn, and in no time we caught on to what a good thing going that was and started to blow one another, then the three of us turned on Jay's dusky tool - Jim and John licking shaft and balls and me the business end. Inevitably, we met in the middle and kissed one another all round in one wet and wild four-way. We were already hot and proceeded to the volcanic. While Jim and John 69ed, slavering Jay started to prepare my ass. The way he was going at it I thought I must really be luscious. I knew Jay of the slamming hammer was about to jam into me, and although I was tight virgin territory, he had me squirming and man did I want him to bust my cherry.
'Jay hoisted me up placing the wells behind my knees over his shoulders and positioning himself above, he slid into my shit chute as I exhaled in ecstatic relief. Jay fucked me in majestic self-control for fifteen to twenty minutes. I caught sight of Jim and John turned from their mutual cock gorging to ogle the master and his slave. As Jay started to groan in pre-orgasmic frenzy, they joined him with Jim stuffing his dong down my throat to mouth-fuck me and Jim eagerly swallowing my cock while jacking himself. That was my first time and the first triple wing-wang committed on my body. We all exploded at once, rocking, bolting and shooting buckets of hot, pent-up 50s all-American-boy gizz. We were pretty sloppy when it was all over, and the bed was a mess.
'The four of us took a hot shower, crowding into the stall together like it was a telephone booth and we were out to set a Guinness record. The water could hardly get around us. Afterwards, we didn't towel off; we licked one another dry. Try it some time. We were pretty well spent and flopped into bed, the four of us cozy together. During the night, sleeping and waking, as Morpheus moved us or the jouncing squeaky springs woke us, we traded off.
Everyone got to fuck everyone else at one time or another.
The next morning, back in our suits and uniforms, we went for breakfast together, powerfully hungry. Everyone ordered two breakfasts. I hated to say good-bye, but I thought 'This is only October, and I have four years of college left. Oh, boy!'
'So that was my first time, not really to be equaled until I got out on my own. Many of you know what I mean; I love every one of you in my lusty, perverted way. But I owe it all to Jay, Dr. Jamison Jones. Thanks a lot Jay; you may want to take a bow. If I'm the father of this fucking bunch, you're the godfather.'
The gang burst into applause, some startled that they had not figured who Jay was and that he was in their midst. Dr. Jones, a beaming cross between Harry Belafonte and Rosano Brazzi, stood and waved. In his floral shirt and hot pink French thong, his basket bulging, he was still a turn-on, and I wondered then at the offers he would have that night.
'Let the party continue!' Geo called, and the Committee of Studs rose as a body grabbed Glenn and bore him to the end of the dock. They stripped his robe and wreath, threw him in the lake, and shucking whatever little they wore, dove in after. At least half an hour of cavorting followed, the guys nipping at Glenn's erogenous zones from underwater like a school of inflamed guppies.
Meanwhile others mobbed the new deck become a dance floor or the hot tub. I'd never been in a gay bathhouse or at a designated gay beach, but I assumed the birthday party scene was as close to that as possible. About half the gang wore little, the other half nothing. I don't know where Geo got the tunes but they ran from 'Bad to the Bone,' 'Born to be Wild,' and Blondie's 'One Way or Another,' to Aretha's 'Think,' 'Higher Ground,' and 'Funkytown.' Those who wanted to bump and grind one another sure had the soundtrack for it. I never before or since in my life saw so much bouncing anatomy.
Geo didn't dance, but I did straddle his lap for a while and made out publicly with him something he definitely enjoyed. Being a dance freak myself, I had to eventually get up and give a go. What started as a solo, turned into a hot pas de deux when Jamison of all people danced opposite me.
He had such moves that for a while I thought I was going to cream in my jock, which was all I was wearing at the time. I looked for Geo's reaction, and he was jiving to the music and to the loosed libidos discoing in front of him, and that included me. He nodded, winked and gave me the okay sign with his closed fingers.
For a while I was so self-absorbed fixed on Dr. J, who could have gone pro as a class stripper, that I didn't connect the group had come in from the lake until the floor was a lot more crowded with extra naked bodies. I looked for Kirk and he and A.J. were pogoing together. All this went on for some time with people on an off the floor, stuffing the hot tub, cooling in the lake, heading for the bushes or finding something with more cushion elsewhere. Ben and Gregor were not to be seen, doubtless somewhere screwing one another blind. After midnight, Geo called, 'You know what this means,' and the sound system played Donna Summer's 'Last Dance.' People protested with groans, but everyone joined in, those that couldn't get on the floor, boogied in the grass.
Nakedness now prevailed. Jamison motioned an offer to slide down his bit of modesty and that I do the same, but I shook my head no. I did want to rip off my jock; both our dong covers were soaked with pre-cum sap, but I didn't want to give Jamison the wrong idea in deference to Geo. Geo stood and slipped out of his jock, the red and gold tie-dyed one Kirk had given him at Xmas two years before, now become his preferred tattered style that every day use and a hundred washings necessarily produced. With his thick dark lusciously thick cock and thatched balls jingling, he bounced in place. I left Jamison and went to join him, getting nekid on the way. I noticed even Kirk and A.J. were down to their skin.
A.J. showed an elegantly slender cock arching between his thighs, the foreskin pulling back from the head, topped with the slightest black bush, the balls fully rounded and smooth. I was astounded what a big boy Kirk had become, only sixteen, but equal to his father in Ben's cock size, a red brush spreading up the sternum pathway and starting to field on his chest. It must be all those vitamins.
Everyone held close and clinging at the end, despite the tempo of the music, swaying together, hugging and hot to frott, trying to get closer than physically possible. As far as I could tell everyone had a partner, or two or three. At least four guys determined to have their way with Glenn. If someone wasn't paired up it was their own damn fault. I caught sight of three 3-ways already going at in the hot tub. That would be a cleanup job.
'Good night, all,' Geo called. 'Stay for breakfast.' So we drifted our various ways, hand in hand. Geo was insatiable that night. I had to fuck him three times before the sun came up; he got up to cook, but let me sleep to noon.
When I came to lunch, the crowd had cleared. Glenn, already asleep in the passenger seat of Ben's pickup when they left for home, was long departed. Kirk was staying for the time being, and would drive Glenn's car back later.
Geo handed me coffee with a little brandy in it. 'Kirk has to talk,' he whispered. I looked at Kirk, who seemed his old teenage self, as he came to the table from outside cleanup work. Geo produced a small hamper. 'I've packed a picnic for you two. You go out and sit on the edge of the dock.' That's where we parked and had our lunch.
'I slept with A.J. last night,' Kirk said, launching right into it. 'I think I knew what I was doing, but I'm not gay.'
'Okay,' I said, already kicking myself that I should have been more attentive to him. I wondered if consenting sex between a 16 and 20 year old was legal. Lost for words, I said, 'You want to talk about it, I'll listen.'
'A.J. and I just drifted together, you know. I liked him right away; it just all seemed natural.'
He paused, and I asked, 'Something bothering you?'
'Well, Lance, if it had been the day before, I would have said, 'no way.' But when we danced, and kept getting closer, and he took my hand, I couldn't say no. He'd become my friend, and I didn't want to disappoint him. And I kind of wanted to know what it was like. I trusted him already, and I liked his looks; I even liked his cock.'
Lance heaved a sigh. 'I thought I knew where this was going.'
'So what are you wondering?' I tried to sound helpful, not investigative.
'When I say, I'm not gay, I suppose I mean I'm not gay like you and Dad. I don't want to fuck every good looking guy I see the way Dad does; I don't want a steady fuck-buddy the way you do.'
'I'm following you. So, what is next?' Do not prod, I said to myself.
'So, can I like the things I did with A.J., all those gay-things, and not be gay?'
'It's not bad being gay,' I protested, suddenly defensive.
'Good-bad is horse hockey; I'm not saying that. I'm saying being gay is not what I want.'
'Okay,' I recovered. 'Let's go back to square one. You fooled around with boys before you ever came to live with Ben and me. You said that; that wasn't just bravado?'
Kirk grinned. 'Well jerking a couple times with Timsey at the movies or with Paulley in the woods hardly constitutes being queer. Those guys came on to me; we only did it reaching inside one another's pants for God's sake.
I already knew guys did this, just for fun. It was okay, just fooling around.'
I nodded as affirmatively as I could. 'Then let's use the word intimate instead of sex. You had intimate contact with these other boys, and it felt good; you thought it was fun. Now, you're a few years older and you share other intimacies with another guy; you like him, you appreciate one another's bodies, you feel stimulated, and you want to join your flesh for mutual pleasure. That happens, too. It happens in some cultures more than others. Just because you fucked once with A.J. doesn't mean your gay; doesn't mean he's gay.'
'Lance, understand me, we didn't fuck. Okay?'
I coughed, wishing I had a cigarette, and wondered what this was all about, so I said, 'Then, what did you do?'
'Jesus, Lance.' And for the first time I saw him blush.
'Come on, Kirk, nothing you did is going to shock me. I'm not into all the kink in the world, but I'm sure accepting of anything you've done.'
'Holy Mother of God, Lance; you can yawn all you want, but it's new to me.'
'I'm not yawning; in fact I'm all ears, and I won't judge you.' Striking a communication balance was hard stuff.
'Okay,' Kirk said. 'At the end of last evening, I had the definite hots for A.J. Why not? He got a rise out of me, and I got a rise out of him. When we nestled together during 'Last Dance,' I knew we were going to spend the night together. He took my hand, and we meandered towards my cabin. Dr. Jamison and some guy met up with us, and when A.J. said he was staying the night with me, Jamison said, 'Good, I'll come back for you in the morning,' and headed for his Caddy.
'Then the only problem I had was kicking Dad and Gregor out of my bed; they were entwined but asleep. That was a mood breaker: A.J. and I just looked at one another, feeling foolish till they parted. Dad must have been in a fog because he didn't even seem to notice A.J.; we'd put our shorts back on by that time. They left. I locked the world out, and we mounted to my bed.
A.J. lit a candle, and in its flicker we undressed, kissed, and caressed one another.
'I'd never frenched a guy before. "Have you...," I asked A.J.'
'They don't call where I come from the Big Apple for nothing,' he said.
'Sprawled in bed, our bodies sort of crossed over one another. The air had cooled, but our skin was warm. I felt really mellow, peaceful and relaxed. We talked softly, and stroked one another's shoulders, arms, chest and thighs from time to time. We seemed to be getting acquainted more than anything else - our life as kids, our families, our schools, our friends, our ambitions. When A.J. felt around my ass and I moved so that he could stick his cock inside me, I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.
'I don't think he went in very far, and he didn't hump me except to swivel his hips from time to time to keep himself hard and in me. We talked and deep kissed, our fingers intertwined. And so we fell asleep. We slept until his uncle came to get him, banging on the cabin door.'
'Beautiful,' I said. 'What a great experience! I trust you enjoyed it.' Kirk grimaced.
'Everything but the parting. Dr. J was anxious to go, and A.J. and I never had a decent farewell. Suddenly he was gone, and I realized I'd never see him again. So this is the gay life, I thought. Hit and run; here today, gone tomorrow.'
I frowned. 'Hit and run, you say; well I suppose there is a lot of that. But you and Aeson seemed more bonded that run over. You don't know right now how the contact will continue.'
'For crying out loud; it was my raging hormones. What in the world chance does a high school punk like me in Middleburg U.S.A. have with a twenty-year-old New Yorker. We can't date, for Chris'sake. How would I introduce him? 'Hey, everyone, this is my boyfriend, Aeson; he's a dancer.''
I took a deep breath. Where was that cigarette? 'Kirk, what is bothering you? Is it that you were physically and psychologically intimate with another guy? Or is it that you want to be romantic about it and you doubt that you can be? Was it the same-sex aspect or was it the attraction?'
Kirk squirmed and pursed his lips. 'Lance, I'd say fuck you, Lance, but you might take it the wrong way. But fuck you anyway! I thought you'd make me feel better, that you'd get me over this funk I'm in.'
'Okay, fuck you, too. You can stew about this till you starve, or you can decide what you're going to do about it. You can let go, or you can pursue it. Either way, some kind of decision is the path to feeling better. You need time. That's what it boils down to. Time and choices about how you see and accept yourself.'
Kirk was silent for a long time. Then he said, 'Two years of high school left. I guess I'm getting myself a girlfriend.'
So much for trying to be helpful. I sure didn't handle that very well. This business of being a father figure was no easy or automatic thing. No wonder Ben rebelled from it.
From time to time, Geo talked up going to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. He'd gone a few times in the late 60s and early 70s when he was only in his fifties. Now he was into his seventies, and he didn't ride anymore. I had his last Harley since the one Ben gave to me, he took back for Glenn, though Glenn didn't ride either and Kirk had appropriated it. Fine with me. But Geo, talked fondly of the wild times back then and was strangely nostalgic for them, however hetero and dangerous they must have been.
Glenn, Ben, and I patronizingly went along with him. Maybe we would all go to the 50th anniversary rally in 1990. Kirk would be graduated from high school then, and it could be a coming of age celebration for him. We'd all be macho macho men together.
In September 1988, Kirk entered his junior year in high school. His year at the Dominican prep school in the Baja put him in good stead for all his academic subjects just as Geo predicted it would. Kirk tested out of second year Spanish, went right into third year, and signed up for a heavy pre-college load. He was back in band on percussion, made jazz band, and went out for soccer, cross-country and relay, wrestling in the winter besides storytelling and one-act play. Also he worked weekdays for a couple hours after school at the public library, mostly shelving books, and Saturdays at a video rental. In his spare time, he repaired bicycles.
The great Zeus knows how he got it all done. None of this stopped him from making a lot of friends and on top of it, he got very good grades. It was amazing that scholastically he'd advanced seven years in two. There is no substitute for proper foundations, making up your mind to a challenge and trying as hard as you could.
Also, he seemed to be over his first time in the sack with Aeson and unbothered about his sexuality, whatever it was. True to his word, he pursued getting a girl friend. First he dated Melissa, called Lisa, the cousin of his regular friend, Nick. They were a couple for a few months. Then he doubled with Nick and Nick's steady's friend, Alison, known as Ali. Ali was the youngest of three daughters of a prominent physician and very social and sure of herself.
Kirk did his homework with such earnest routine that he was always on top of things and managed a lot of time for reading what interested him. Geo kept him supplied with classic Latin authors throughout the fall and winter, given in small pieces-mostly Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Juvenal. At Christmas, Geo gave him the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses for his birthday in February.
After Geo and I went to San Felipe in early November, Kirk wrote us weekly. He talked about a lot of older stuff-Stranger in a Strange Land, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossed-or really old stuff like The Enchiridion of Epictetus, Locke On Human Understanding, or The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Then he fell under the spell of Thus Spake Zararthustra, and like most bright teenagers who discover that old crazy radical, Nietzsche, was a goner for him.
Kirk seemed suspicious of current books that hadn't proven themselves by lasting over time, but he did read Lukas' Common Ground, Terkel's The Good War, Kidder's House, Lopez's Arctic Dreams, Dinesen's Out of Africa, thanks to the movie, reissued with Shadows in the Grass, Woodward's Veil, Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Shilts' And the Band Played On. He didn't seem much interested in current fiction except science fiction, but he did read Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Jhabvala, Out of India; and Stegner, Crossing to Safety. I credited all this to what Kirk was finding while handling hundreds of books a week in the library and picking from them the crème de la crème.
I tied to read some of the things that Kirk was reading, but could not keep up. Geo said, impressed, 'Perhaps there is hope for the world,' and had me take him to San Diego so he could hunt up what the old Dok called 'decent translations' of Nietzsche. Mostly, though, that winter I was busy on my second lite porn, gay novel, The Youth Finder, a case of professor bear and post-pubescent cub meet time travel.
Ben came down for his usual winter layover, Thanksgiving to Valentines Day; and this time he brought that hunk of all hunks, Gregor Masalkis, with him. Geo and I didn't know that Gregor was along for the ride till they showed up. But it was all right; thanks to his buddy being along, Ben would be off my backside. At least that had been our experience; you never knew when Ben would take a turn, that horny toad bastard. Gregor, though I'd had an head-to-toe eye full of in the summer, I never really got to know before; he and Ben were off most of the time making the beast with two backs. Now in our slower-paced world, Gregor showed his inner self.
Gregor was the dominant one in the relationship with Ben, younger and more energetic than him, and very thoughtful and polite. I admired how courteous he was to Geo, and how he took on odd jobs. He wired the place for electric lights off of Geo's generator, something Geo hadn't done in the forty or so years he'd occupied the place. He inspected the tiled roof, replaced the cracked and broken ones, cleared the gutters and washed the windows. He tightened up the plumbing and even had the septic tank pumped out and rejuvenated. He needed to be busy, and I suppose he could fuck with Ben all the time except that with Gregor's staying power, even Ben needed a breather now and then. When he ran out of everything else to do, he helped Iago and me in the garden. We really got to know one another.
Ben had towed down his and Glenn's (Kirk's) Harleys, and the three of us went for rides a few times. We went one long weekend down the Sur Baja, staying one night in Rosarito on the way down and one in La Paz, and another in Rosarito on the way back. I'd finished my novel, and Geo suggested the trip as my reward for work well done. He approved the manuscript and sent it off. Geo said he needed to stay at home and finish some articles where the deadline loomed.
La Paz for all its remoteness was quite the largest place I'd ever been outside of my other travels abroad. I was astounded at the number of retired geezers living there on what I suppose was once the cheap. There was a lot to look at, but I preferred the small places. I stayed in a room separate from Ben and Gregor; that had always been part of the deal. But on the way back, after lights out, a knock on my door called me out of bed. It was midnight, I slept nude, and opened the door a crack. And there was Gregor in his boxers and flip-flops. 'Ben has the flu, and I'm bunking with you,' he announced. 'I won't get any sleep otherwise.'
'I'm not sure this is a good idea,' I said. He laughed and smiled, a really gorgeous smile.
'Look, Lance, I'm not going to rape you.'
'That's not what I'm afraid of, Gregor. My experience is that gay proximity leads to gay proclivity.'
He moved in towards me, pushing the door more open. 'Let me in, Lance, I don't want to stand out in the hall in my underwear arguing with a guy in his what? B-d suit?' He pushed more. 'Let me in for the ever loving sake!' And he was in, or standing in the open door way looking me up and down. 'My, oh, mighty.' He whistled. 'Are you needing to piss, or are you just glad to see me?'
'Don't tell me you've never seen a nocturnal erection before?' But the sight of him pushed me, witlessly, over the edge. 'Oh, what the fuck! I give up. Come in before a crowd gathers.' And I pulled him the rest of the way into the room.
No doubt I found Gregor attractive, always had. Whatever my commitments, burly, hairy and smiling, bright-eyed guys always proved to be just my type.
Seldom did I every hook up with any of them, but I gazed as long as I could. Only, Gregor was younger than my usual chap, considering I went for older guys, and he was around 30. I was going to be 39 in another couple months. Well, by my hardening cock , he knew the game, score, and likely outcome.
He dropped his drawers, kicked himself barefoot and advanced to me, holding out his hand. 'Excuse me, your name is...'
'Just call me Lance,' I said.
Man could he kiss! No sooner was he parting my lips, but his whole body engulfed me, one hand massaging the back of my head, his arm pressed against my back, holding me to his chest, his other hand rounding my butt and feeling along the inside of the ass crack, one leg behind me holding my whang against his, and his tongue roving in my mouth, his firm lips puckering around mine. I could hardly breath; I didn't want to breathe. I wanted him to eat me or I'd eat him. But, courtesy his forte, he did allow me to breathe when he reversed positions and in that moment when I'd had a saving exhalation, he started over with the mirror of his first hold on me.
'How about a cigarette? Turn out the lights, and we'll step out on the terrace.' He'd brought a pack and lighter, and I followed along, taking a Marlboro from him. There was little moon; it was warm but with a wavering breeze. Public, even partial, nudity is much frowned upon in Mexico, but our area was quite private, it was dark, and there were no signs of life, except the two of us with our too tumescent tools. We smoked, standing side by side, randomly stroking one another here and there and kissing between puffs.
It had been a long time since I'd smoked, and the nicotine was making me a little dizzy. Or Gregor was. He dropped the butt and having regained his footwear, ground it out. I dropped mine and he stomped that too. Then, still outside, he gave me that one of a kind kiss all over again.
'Shall we do what we need to do out here?' Gregor asked.
'Not tonight,' I said. 'My bed awaits. That's why you came here isn't it? You want a bed to sleep in.'
He fished for another cigarette, but didn't light it. 'To tell the truth, I've had you on my mind for a long time. Ben says you're a great lay.'
'And we know how choosey Ben is,' I said. We laughed, and he kissed me again. If, I'd gone flaccid, I was back up.
We cuddled in the bed. Gregor's hands seemed to be everywhere at once; his whole body was tactile, hard muscled and soothingly warm. Even his bushy mustache worked for him, the bristles as stimulating as his lips, tongue and teeth. He kissed, sucked and pulled at my nipples and the rings through them. I writhed as he worked his way down, wetting my navel, his tongue sliding the length of my hardon.
'Umm,' he mumbled, starting to suck off the oozing lubricant on my slit and pushing the foreskin back from the glans with his tongue. 'Man honey,' he said and began to suck, slowly taking back into his throat my whole shaft to the pubes and then stuffing my enraged nuts in with it. He swung his head around my package, rotating around the genitals and now I had his cockhead in my face.
I turned to swallow him as he moved to his side and reaching round plied my ass. His hand found the spot and he soon had a finger or two inside, starting to fuck me with his hands as he welcomed my fuck of his mouth. He turned on the floodgates of his mouth, and wow did old Tommy Toolhead feel good. Gregor sat up and pulled me to him, holding me up as he continued to finger fuck my ass. I swung into his mouth, his head bobbing, sucking and bathing my plunger. No one had ever given me head like this before, and however much I wanted more, I felt in a minute or two what was going to happen. 'I'm going to come,' I gasped.
Gregor nodded his head in eager agreement and, despite his mouth full of my equipment, managed to get out, 'Uh huh.'
I shot, and he took my hot jizz till it drooled from the corners of his mouth. Then he sat me down, and without first noticing the change, I realized I was riding him cowboy style. He scooted down a little in the bed and I with him beginning to do my part, pulsing on his shaft up my ass and hitting my hot spot. I bent and licked my cum from his face, neck and chest, continuing to ride the wave that was cresting in both of us. Amazingly, I was going to come again. I began to gallop, and Gregor twisted and bucked, hefting his hips and mighty tube of a schlong up and into me. He was groaning, his head jerking from side to side, going mad. He let out a cry of intense, agonized relief and bucked his mightiest, bucked and bucked until he could do no more. He sighed as though in deep relief, pleasure and exhaustion.
I got off and we lay side by side, panting for a long time before either of us could speak or wanted to. 'I didn't know what I'd been missing,' Gregor said.
'Neither did I,' I had to confess.
'Were you this good with Ben?' he asked.
I shrugged. 'It takes two to tango, you know,' was my complimentary answer.
'How true,' he agreed. We held hands for a long while until Gregor said, 'Shower?'
'You go first,' I said, 'I'll check the damages.' He headed for the bathroom and I pulled the bottom sheet, flipped the mattress pad over and covered it with the top sheet and blanket. Then I joined him in the shower while the hot water lasted.
We pulled on a couple of my oversize t-shirts so they almost covered to meet the modesty code, and went out to the terrace for a couple cigarettes and a warm beer. Again inside, we pulled of the shirts and nestled into bed, kissing goodnight with light sweet kisses. 'What do we say to Ben in the morning?' I asked.
'We say I needed a bed, and you took me in. It really doesn't make any difference. You know Ben; whatever we say, he'll be suspicious. Good night, Lance.'
'Goodnight, Gregor.'
As far as I could tell, Ben was never sick, and Gregor had come to my room after Ben had fallen asleep. Presumably, he'd done him before he came in to do me. What a fucker! Ben was still asleep when Gregor went back to get dressed, and we all resumed normal behavior. Except that afterwards I told Geo what had happened.
'Did you think I wouldn't know?' Geo smiled. 'Who do you think suggested you needed a little diversion?' I was mildly surprised. Then he said with his usual philosophical joy, 'We must learn to appreciate all gifts, especially when we need them.'
'Geo,' I said, 'your are incorrigible; utterly and delightfully incorrigible.'
'You're not so bad yourself.'