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And Let There Be No Moaning at the Bar (M/M, rom) Copyright (c) 1998 musing@geocities.com
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WARNING
This story involves consensual sex between men. If this type of story is illegal where you live, not your cup of tea, or you are not legally old enough, under the laws of your place of residence, to read it, stop right here!
This story is fiction ... mostly.
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Chapter Five Pick a Little, Talk a Little
"So how was he?"
"Jumping to conclusions, aren't we, Di? Oh, and good morning to you, too," I replied.
"Good morning, Troy," she said, rather petulantly, I thought. "Now give: I want to know every little detail."
"'Gentlemen don't kiss and tell,' I seem to recall you saying on more than one occasion. Besides, there's the small matter of sweating down today's column. Seems that hag Clare only left me a 15-inch hole, and I've got 22 inches to fit into it. I can't wait until Frank gets back from vacation!"
"I hear you on that," she said, rolling her eyes heavenward in agreement. "After deadline, then? We could go get coffee or something."
"We'll see. I'm supposed to meet with the mayor at 11 to talk about the referendum next month. If there's time before then, I'll give you a chance to pry some details out of me. Otherwise, it'll have to be over lunch."
"At least tell me you're going to see him again."
"Got a dinner date tonight before he goes on duty."
"Dinner? Is that all?"
"There's more to a relationship than just sex, Di." Spotting the lifestyles editor (and, as senior member of the staff, the de facto managing editor whenever the real one was absent) coming into the editorial department, I pitched my voice to carry a little further and quickly added, "Even when the relationship is between two men."
"Do you have to parade your sex life around the office, Andrews?" Clare asked, waspish as always, first thing in the morning (and usually throughout the rest of the day, too, at least where I was concerned).
"I rarely parade, Bigelow," I retorted in my best butch bitch tone. "Besides, didn't your mother teach you it was impolite to listen in on other people's conversations? But since you brought the matter up, don't you still have a picture of your kids on your desk?"
"What if I do?"
"Last time I checked," I told her, in the voice I'd use to explain something to a two-year-old, "the most common method of producing offspring involved having sex. So I'll make you a deal: I'll stop talking about my boyfriend around here on the same day you stop wearing your wedding band and plastering your kids' pictures all over the place. OK?"
"At least I'm not out spreading AIDS!" she snapped as she strode away in the direction of the break room. She was in there for several minutes, no doubt depositing her daily ration of healthful foods and water in the tiny refrigerator which management deemed amply sufficient for the needs of 20-odd employees in our department, and making it impossible for anyone else to use it. It had quickly become apparent to me that bringing anything perishable to the office was not a good idea: even if you got it into the refrigerator first, she'd move it if it got in the way of her carrot sticks, fruit cocktail, and half-gallon bottles of spring water.
I waited until she reappeared to retort, "Not that it's any of your business, Bigelow, but I'll have you know I've tested HIV-negative for five years running -- and at last count, more than 75% of AIDS cases worldwide could be directly traced to heterosexual intercourse." All the answer I got from her was a frigid glare and a slam of the door to the ladies' lounge.
Di giggled behind me, where she'd been riffling through several items on her desk. "Somebody got up on the bitchy side of the bed this morning!"
"And every other morning since I've known her, at least from the way she acts around me," I replied. "But compared to some of the stuff she's pulled, that was pretty mild. Last year it was tracts full of graphic descriptions of all the tortures I and my fellow faggots could expect to encounter amid the hellfires to which we're all inescapably doomed. She left 'em by the gross on my desk for a solid week, until I caught her at it one night and bitched to Frank the next day."
"What an asshole!" Di said.
"More like a certifiable fanatic," I said, "but fortunately, she's passive-aggressive and not too difficult to deal with most of the time. Helps a lot that I finally got a cubicle of my own after last year's Press Awards banquet. It was hell having to have her right next to my desk in the main newsroom, lemme tell you. But enough bitching -- I've got work to do."
"So do I, it seems," Di said with a rueful sigh, looking up from a note she'd been reading. "The damn wire service machine is on the fritz again. My part-timer says it just froze up on him at around 11:30 last night and he couldn't get it back online for love or money. So forget about coffee this morning, unless I get incredibly lucky. Lunch at the Tap after your meeting with the mayor?"
"Sounds good to me. Say 12:30, unless I call and tell you otherwise."
"Deal," she said, heading off to the offending machine as I sank into my chair and started editing my column. I'd gotten about two column-inches trimmed when my phone rang. It was the composing editor to tell me they were waiting on my piece before putting the editorial page to bed.
"Geez, Jim," I groused, "It's barely 7:00, and deadline isn't until 9 -- what's the rush?"
"You know how Clare is, man," he replied. "Gotta have everything yesterday."
"Yeah, I know," I commiserated, "but ask me if I care. She's the one who left me a 15-inch hole for a 22-inch piece. It's gonna take me a while to sweat it down that far."
"Shit, is that what she told you? Everything else on the page is in, and I've got at least 19 inches of space showing on my screen back here. I could probably make it an even 20 if I cheated a little on some of the house art."
"Jim, you're a lifesaver! Next time we get out to Cohan's, I owe you a pint, OK?"
"Sounds like a fair trade to me," he replied. "How long before you're ready?"
"Sending it now," I said, pushing the appropriate buttons on the console. "What will you tell the dragon lady when she proofs it?"
"That I had a 20-inch hole left after I put in everything else she'd marked for the page, and that she might want to get a new bifocal prescription if she can't measure copy any better than that. OK, Troy, I've got it and it fits fine. I'll lock the page in, and that's all I need from you today."
"Thanks, Jim," I said, and hung up the phone. Then came the tasks of going through my mail (voice, traditional, and electronic) and leafing through the major morning dailies to which we had subscriptions. That took two hours, after which I sifted through the information on the AP and Reuters wires, looking for tidbits and background information I might one day be able to use in my column, killing another hour. I just barely had time to review my notes and some position papers on the referendum before signing out to drive over to city hall for my 11 a.m. meeting.
As I was driving, I found my thoughts wandering back over the time Alex and I had spent together this past weekend. Last night was particularly vivid. I'd given Alex a full-body massage that had taken at least an hour to complete. At the end of it, he was all but purring in delight, while I enjoyed the complementary satisfactions of a job well done and an hour's time spent in stroking, caressing, kneading, and manipulating the bare flesh of the man I loved. While there had been moments when I'd felt a soupon of arousal or desire for him, that hadn't been my primary focus or intention for the evening.
"I feel like a new man, Troy," he'd said when I'd finished massaging his face and scalp, the last two areas of his body I'd worked on. "Thank you." Then he'd pulled my head downward and planted a kiss on my lips.
"Good," I told him when he let me go again. "Then I accomplished what I set out to do."
"There's still an item left on my agenda that I'd like to take care of," he said, looking up at me and smiling lazily.
"What's that?" I asked. "I thought I told you today was a rest day where you're concerned."
"You did, and I haven't forgotten. There's undeniably some work involved for me in what I have in mind, but it's both pleasant and very relaxing. But I'll need some help from you to make it happen."
"Glad to be of assistance," I reassured him, "if I can. What did you have in mind?"
"I wasn't kidding this afternoon when I made that comment about having you up my crack, Troy," he replied earnestly. "I want you to fuck me tonight."
"Funny you should mention that, Alex," I told him.
"Why's that?" he wanted to know.
"Because most of the time I'm more interested in getting the fucking than I am in giving it. But I do enjoy a change of pace now and again, and I was just thinking that your arse was one of the best-looking I've seen in quite a while."
Now it was Alex's turn to chuckle, and mine to inquire why. "Nothing, really," he explained, "it's just that probably seven or eight times out of ten I want to be the top. As you say, though, there are those occasions when the time and the person are right, and I want to change roles. It seems a little bit ironic that we both have similar feelings about reciprocity, though with different primary preferences, and that we also both seem to be in a mood to change our luck tonight."
Personally, I found a deeper meaning than mere irony in the situation, but I resolved to hold my peace awhile longer. Better to wait and see if my feelings lasted, and also how Alex seemed to feel about me, before saying anything out loud.
"How's about a quick soak in the hot tub?" I proposed. "Much as I enjoy doing massages, they do tend to leave me a bit tense myself."
"You go on ahead," Alex said, rising from the futon. "I'll grab us some wine and finger food, and join you in a bit."
I had been lounging amid the soothing bubbles and enjoying the twinkling lights of the city below for around 20 minutes when Alex finally emerged from the French doors leading to the master suite, a heavily laden tray in his hands. He set it down on a low table next to the tub and began handing me things to set in the receptacles provided for them on the rim. When he'd given me my glass of wine, he picked up one for himself and stepped into the water. Setting his glass down, he sank to a seat one place away from mine: close enough for some contact and an intimate conversation, but not crowding me.
Moving a foot over to stroke one of his, I said, "Hey, you. I was just about to send out a search party." Sipping from my glass -- an excellent red, fruity and with just enough tannin to bite a little without choking one -- I added, "This is great stuff, Alex. What is it?"
"Beringer's Gamay Beaujolais. We had a wine-tasting at the bar awhile back that featured their vintages, and I've been addicted to it ever since." He shifted his foot so our ankles were crossed, stroking the back of my calf as he continued, "And I'm sorry about the delay, but I had to make a pit stop even before getting the food ready. Amazing what having someone work your body over for more than an hour will do for your bladder pressure. If you hadn't stopped when you did, I might've made quite the mess out of your futon."
"Wouldn't have hurt it a bit if you had," I replied. "Underneath the outer cover there's a good rubberised one -- otherwise, the thing would start soaking up oil every time I used it and start to get rancid." I paused to nibble on a succulent bit of Jarlsberg cheese atop a water biscuit, then switched topics as I began stroking up Alex's shin with my toes. Despite my overall state of relaxation, there was a significant tenseness in my groin that grew stronger by the minute. From what I could see through the water in the dim light, Alex appeared to be in a similar state of arousal.
Neither of us was in a mood to hurry things, however. We continued to make casual conversation, drink our wine, and nibble on the snacks Alex had prepared, while our feet moved in gentle caresses beneath the hot, swirling water. Ever so gradually we moved closer to one another, so that by the time the food had disappeared and we were beginning to consider moving to another theatre of operations, we had our arms around one another and were locked together at the lips, sharing the last of the wine between us in a lingering kiss.
Alex was the first to break it. "Make love to me under the stars, Troy," he said throatily, his body melting bonelessly against my own.
"Surely not on the bare deck?" I replied.
"Tonight, I wouldn't mind," he said, grinning at my wry face. "But there was one other reason I took so long in getting out here -- I brought out a futon of my own, some pillows, and a few other necessities. They're over by the chaise where you held me this afternoon. I'll take care of this stuff. Why don't you go make us up a bed?"
"You're the one who's going to be lying in it," I teased him as I disentangled myself from his embrace and got out of the tub, "so you should be the one to make it. G'wan, I'll clear this stuff to the kitchen and shut off the tub."
Within five minutes, I returned to the deck to find Alex lying seductively in the middle of a large futon spread on the lower portion of the decking. He had a pillow beneath his hips and another behind his head. A small deck table to one side bore a lit citronella candle in blue glass, a bottle of lubricant, and an assortment of condoms. With a couple of fingers of his left hand, he was pulling the foreskin slowly back and forth across the head of his rock-hard dick, while propping himself up on his right arm.
I sank down onto the mat beside him and gently brushed his hand away from his cock before replacing it with my own. As I did so, he draped his left arm across my body and fondled my butt cheeks briefly, then drew me closer to him. As our skin made contact, once more the nubs of his nipple piercing made themselves known against my pectoral muscle. The thought of it brought me to an even higher plane of desire, and I abandoned my stroking of Alex's cock to pull against him as he was pulling against me, until we were in full-body contact from crotches to clavicles, and then joined again at the lips.
"God, I want you, Alex," I panted against his cheek.
"Then please take me, Troy," he replied with an even greater urgency.
I reluctantly broke away from him to sit up and grab the lube and a foil-wrapped condom. But when I opened its package, Alex took it from my hands and finished unwrapping it himself. When he popped it in his mouth, I presumed it was to provide a bit of spit for interior lubrication at the tip.
I quickly discovered that I was mistaken in that assumption. Alex crabbed himself around, lowered his head to my crotch, and tried to unroll the rubber down my shaft with only his lips and tongue for assistance -- but without much success. We both chortled when we figured out that he'd had it turned the wrong way when he put it in his mouth. That bobble taken care of, the operation went smoothly and pleasantly (at least for me) until the prophylactic was securely stretched over my hard seven inches.
When he had finished, Alex bobbed his head a few times up and down my now latex-coated cock before moving to lie back against the pillows once more. With his legs slightly spread, he looked up at me and softly said, "Fuck me, Troy. I want you inside me."
Obeying his demand, I squirted a glob of lube into the palm of my left hand. Most of it went to coat my cock, but I also swabbed some on the first two fingers of my right hand, which I then used to grease up his hole. His pucker yielded to the slight pressure of my "fuck you" finger, and allowed it entrance to the warm cavern beyond. Alex didn't tighten up as I smeared the soothing gel around inside him; rather, he lay back with a contented sigh and spread his legs even wider to allow me access to his arse and room to kneel between his thighs.
Gently I bent his knees back to his chest, which left his hole just about on a level with my prick. Scooting forward a little, I took it in my slickened left hand and aimed it at its target. When Alex felt the head of my cock at the entrance to his chute, he moved his heels to rest on my shoulders and held his hands lightly on the outside of my upper thighs, as if he wanted to pull me into him should I be too long in getting there myself.
Even here, however, speed was not on my mind. I was resolved to take things slowly and gently, and to make the drama last as long as possible. I didn't even care that much about getting my rocks off, as long as Alex enjoyed himself. The one thing I didn't want, at least tonight, was the kind of pile-driving, wild-animal dance of lust that was the stock in trade of virtually every gay porn flick I'd ever seen.
Tensing up, I thrust my hips slightly forward until I had gained entrance to his prize. Slowly, gradually, I pushed further and further in until I could feel Alex's nuts resting against the place where my pubic hair would normally be. I allowed myself to rest buried inside him for a few moments, savouring the warm, moist tightness around my shaft. Then, as Alex sighed again, I began to withdraw only a little more quickly than I had entered him.
"Yes, Troy, yes!" he murmured. "Fuck me, it feels great!"
Twitching and bucking my hips, I complied. After several minutes, I bent him further back under me and rose from my knees to my feet. The muscles in his gut gripped me tightly, and the contractions when I'd drag the head of my cock over his prostate only added to the feelings I was getting from him as I pushed and pulled my way in and out of his arsehole. I had to pause for a few moments a couple of times to prevent myself from giving in to instinct and ramming myself into him for all I was worth.
After ten minutes or so, Alex was moaning and grunting incoherently with nearly every thrust or withdrawal, occasionally panting words of encouragement or praise, and rolling his head from side to side on the pillow. Although he'd barely touched his own manhood, it seemed fairly clear that a climax was imminent unless I drastically changed course. Instinct argued in favour of picking up the pace, both to bring Alex off and perhaps to provoke an explosion of my own in the process, but I successfully resisted the temptation. In fact, I did just the opposite and slowed down the timing of my thrusts even further.
It wasn't but a minute or two later when Alex moaned, "Oh, God, Troy, fuck me! I'm gonna come!" True to his word, it took only a few short strokes on his rigid penis to release a gusher of cream that pooled at the base of his throat. As his orgasm sent his muscles into spasms around my cock, I bent forward to lap at the puddle of his seed, and savour its taste. Going back for seconds, I shared the remnants of his load with him, continuing my long, slow strokes in and out of his chute as I did so.
Alex broke our kiss, and I took that opportunity to withdraw slowly from his welcoming warmth. His face took on a puzzled expression until I had him stretch out on his side and then spooned in behind him. Raising his left leg, Alex guided my cock back into his rear passage, sighing as I sank in to the hilt once more.
"You feel great up there, Troy," he said, turning his head over his shoulder so I could kiss him as I slowly fucked his accommodating arse.
"Hope you'll feel as good when its your cock in my butt," I told him, grunting a bit with my thrusts. Some minutes later I noticed, both that Alex's prick was growing hard again (or should I have said "still"?) and that those old familiar tingles were beginning to develop at the base of my spine. Just then a cramp knotted my left calf, effectively putting an end to my ability to do any good for either one of us, at least in our present position.
"Roll onto your back," Alex said in response to my gasp of pain and one-word explanation of the problem, "and try to relax."
"Easier said than done," I replied, though eventually I did manage to lie back against another of the pillows he'd provided. My cock, though still buried in Alex's arsehole, was beginning to go soft. I thought for sure we were going to have to call it a night.
Alex, on the other hand, had different plans. Rolling with me, he squeezed his sphincter tight around the base of my shaft as he skewed himself around to the point where he could plant his feet to either side of my legs and, keeping one hand on the deck for balance, began doing squat- thrusts up and down while impaled on my rapidly reinflating probe. When he'd gotten a rhythm established, he began stroking his own meat in time with his movements on mine.
He was going at a faster pace than I'd set myself, but there was precious little I could do about that now. Eventually, the cramp resolved itself with some help from me, and I was able once more to relax in the joy of congress with the man I had begun to love. He was grunting gutturally again as he rose and fell on the spike of my flesh embedded deep inside him, and stroking his own penis as he did so.
All of a sudden, his free arm flashed down to the deck planking as well and Alex was, in the derisive phrase from my youth, sitting on it and spinning, until he was once more face to face with me. His need and his desire were evident both in the angry tumescence of his maleness and in the flush and the sheen of sweat that suffused his upper body.
"I'm pretty close," he said in a harsh whisper, eyes closed and his muscular contractions as he began to stroke himself anew doing marvellous things to my cock.
"Me, too," I told him, "though maybe not as close as you are."
"Let me bring you off, Troy," he said.
"You're in the driver's seat; go for it."
He did. I expected him to resume his cycle of squatting and rising, but instead, Alex masturbated me with his gut. Rhythmically contracting and relaxing his inner muscles as he squatted above me and worked another rhythm of desire on his own meat, he began to propel us both gradually upward along the ladder toward ultimate release.
Alex got there first. Taking a page from my notebook, he worked his cock with slow, even strokes. I felt his orgasm beginning, as his gut went into paroxysms of ecstasy around my cock, just before the first gobbet of semen squirted from the head of his dick to drop, via the fingers of his right hand clutched around it, onto my belly.
I opened my eyes at that first spasm, just in time to see his head thrown back, eyes closed, and his mouth hanging open in a rictus of release as several more explosions of seed released themselves to pool in a glistening slick on my smooth-shaven pubis. The inner contractions of his body, and the outer stimulus of watching him spew his load all over me, combined to effect a similar explosion from me, though obviously neither of us could see it. Grunting soundlessly (or nearly so) with each new eruption of my essence into the thin latex that was the only thing between me and the flesh of my lover, I rode the crest of the wave as long as I could, then slumped languidly against the cushions beneath me with a prolonged sigh of contentment. Hearing that, Alex opened his own eyes, smiled beatifically at me, and then leaned over carefully to pry my lips open with his tongue.
Chapter Six -- Oh, By the Way...
Di's fork hit her plate with a loud clatter that caused several people at nearby tables to look over in our direction. When their gazes had returned to their own plates or to their luncheon companions, she leaned close to me and murmured, "And that's what you had going on in the back of your head the whole time you were with the mayor? Christ on a pogo stick, Troy, how the hell did you manage to concentrate?"
"Well, if I said it was the natural result of my enormous talents and formidable training, combined with a fierce devotion to the disciplines of my craft, I'd have to pick you up off the floor and probably administer the Heimlich as well, so let's not go there. If it's the truth you're wanting..."
"'Tis," she said, lapsing into the brogue that she'd arguably gotten from the same combination of parental genes that had given her a complexion of both the smoothness and the colour of fresh cream, and the unruly mop of red-gold curls that topped it off.
"I didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Manage to concentrate -- or not very well, anyway. Fortunately for appearances' sake, that's about all this meeting was for: appearances. The mayor knows damn good and well how I feel about her arena project -- I've written about it often enough! -- and neither of us really believed that anything she said to me today was going to change that. But someone on her P.R. staff convinced her to give it another college try, and I figured I might at least pick up some tidbits I could use later, so I went along with it."
"Think you'll be able to remember anything she said by tomorrow?" Di inquired archly, an eyebrow rising delicately upward into her hairline.
"Di, you know as well as I do that Her Honour would have trouble finding a coherent sentence with two hands, a compass, and a detailed map. If she ever said anything worth remembering, it was either a complete accident, a horrendous gaffe, or planned well in advance by someone on her staff -- who probably wrote it in the first place. But she's a good egg and I like most of what she stands for, so I don't mind the tortured syntax and the rambling periods too much. Besides," I added, holding up my miniature tape recorder, "sometimes she lets things slip without realising it, so I always bring along a memory aid."
"Get anything?"
"Maybe. But I'll have to review the tapes and do some digging in the archives to be sure. Speaking of which, it's time to head back. Can't have the dragon lady thinking I've gone out for a quickie with the boyfriend on my lunch hour!"
"Especially since the day's likely to come when you will be," she sniggered as we dropped bills on the table to cover the reckoning and the tip and rose to leave.
Di drove off to another photo assignment, and I headed back for my cubicle at the office. I'd be lying if I tried to claim I spent the whole time digging through the morning's interview with the mayor for helpful hints I might be able to parlay into future columns and working to put the finishing touches on my piece for the morrow. It was only now and then that my mind wandered pleasantly over the memories of the weekend and looking forward with anticipation to my date with Alex later in the afternoon.
That anticipation continued right up to the moment when I rang his doorbell, punctually at half-past three. Since he had to be at work by six, we'd agreed to meet as quickly as I could get away from the office to grab a bite to eat together and discuss plans for getting together at greater length in the very near future.
"Hey, gorgeous," I said when he opened the door.
He smiled and said, "Hey, yourself," then motioned me inside. Closing the door behind me he gave me a quick peck on the cheek before taking me by the hand and leading me through the kitchen. Out on the deck, a hybrid afternoon tea waited on the table with the umbrella where we'd had breakfast the day before. The tea was iced, and the sandwiches were more like subs. Yet there was a small plate of the traditional cucumber variety, plus scones with jam and clotted cream, petits fours, cookies ("biscuits" if you're a purist), and a chocolate torte guaranteed to send a diabetic into coma simply from being in the same house with it.
"There goes my waistline," I said, loading a plate and taking an extra-large helping of the torte. "Were you in the kitchen the whole time I was gone?"
"Not hardly," he smiled, sitting down with a plate no less laden than my own. "The sandwiches took no time at all, the cookies and the petits fours came from the patisserie downtown, and I had the torte in the freezer. Scones are ridiculously easy to make, and I baked 'em this morning before it got hot."
"Now it's my turn to ask `where do you put it all?'"
"As someone I know once observed, I don't eat like this every day. Besides, most of the time I walk wherever I need to go, and I often go out hiking on the weekends. Haven't gained a pound since I started law school."
We talked of many inconsequential things as we ate, and played footsie under the table. When the meal was over, I thanked Alex and helped him cope with cleaning up. I wasn't acting entirely from altruism, though: I'd been keeping an eye on the clock, and there was a bit less than an hour left before Alex was going to leave for work. Despite my bold words to Di earlier in the day, I was hoping Alex and I might get to try re-enacting last night's piece de resistance with the roles reversed, though I suspected we might have to make do with less, given the time constraints we were under.
So I was a bit surprised that Alex turned into the living room when the chores were done, rather than heading for the bedroom at the back of the house. Instead, he made his way over to the sofa in front of the picture window. Sitting down and patting the cushion next to him, he turned to me with a rather lawyerly look on his face and said, "C'mon over and sit down for a bit, Troy."
Several rather unpleasant scenarios flashed through my mind in the few seconds it took to cross the room and sit down next to him. At least he put an arm around my shoulders when I'd settled into the cushions: I found that a hopeful sign. It was about then that I noticed a videotape sitting on the coffee table in front of Alex, and I wondered why it was there.
"We need to have a bit of a talk," he said.
The apparent temperature in the room dropped 20 or 30 degrees in the split-second after he finished speaking, and I felt every last morsel of the excellent meal I'd just consumed congealing into an icy, leaden lump at the very pit of my stomach -- after it stopped threatening to return the way it had come. Swallowing rapidly to keep it down (and to moisten my suddenly parched throat), I said, "That sounds serious."
"Only because it is," he replied with a quick grin that lessened my load of anxiety by the minutest fraction. "But you can relax," he added, the grin maturing into another of his picture-perfect smiles. "It's nothing ominous. Let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed having you with me this weekend. From what I could tell, you seemed to be enjoying yourself, too. Is that a fair assessment?"
"You're a very comfortable person to be with, Alex," I told him honestly, "and I had a great time here over the weekend. So much so, in fact, that I drove right past City Hall on my way to a meeting with the mayor this morning, and damn near ran a stop sign into the bargain."
At his puzzled look of inquiry, I added, "I was reminiscing about last night at the time," which elicited a chuckle from him -- another good sign, I thought. "Anyway," I continued, "I can't remember anything in the last year that I enjoyed nearly as much as I did being here with you the last couple of days."
"Might you be interested in exploring the possibility of a relationship?"
"You took the words right out of my mouth. We haven't known each other very long by `normal' standards, but what I do know about you makes me want to spend more time with you and get to know you better. Can I ask how you feel about the idea of a relationship?"
"I'm for it," he said with a grin and a quick tensing of the arm he was holding behind my neck. "I've told you that I noticed you checking me out at work practically from the start. I had the odd notion that I knew you from somewhere, but I couldn't figure out why -- until someone told me you were the Troy Andrews that wrote for the Camera. Incidentally, your mug shot doesn't come close to doing you justice -- you should have Di take a new one."
"I've been meaning to, but there just hasn't been time. Maybe now that we're into summer I'll be able to schedule a time with Di and remember to dress for success that day. If I left it to her, she'd try to sneak in one of the candid shots from the party Saturday night. At least that explains how you knew my name, up there in the hallway."
"Yup. But even before Di approached me to help set you up for that, I'd started making a few discreet inquiries. Everything I heard about you from someone else or observed on my own tended to confirm my gut instincts."
"Which were?"
"That you were a good guy, cute, friendly, easygoing, and someone it might be nice to get together with sometime. That's why I was willing to risk slipping you the key to this place along with the note I gave you at the party -- something I've never done before. But I don't in the least regret it. If what I saw of you this weekend is any indication, my gut instincts were right on target."
"But...?" I said. "I'm almost sure I heard a `but' lurking around at the end of that speech."
"You have good ears," Alex said with a sigh.
"In my profession," I said with a matching one, "you have to. Do you have reservations, or need some time to recover from a past relationship, or what?"
"Nothing like that, no," he said quickly. "I haven't been seeing anyone regularly almost since I came to Colorado, and Ben's the only `ghost' from the past that still gives me any grief -- though thankfully not very often. No, it's just that I feel you deserve to know what you might be letting yourself in for, should we decide to keep seeing each other."
"You haven't been daylighting as an axe-murderer or anything like that, have you? Grand larceny? High crimes and misdemeanours?"
He chuckled again before shaking his head "no."
"So what's the big deal, then? I can't imagine anything that you could possibly tell me that would make me want to walk out your door right this instant and never come back."
"I can't think of anything quite that bad, either," he said. "But still, do you remember the conversation we had in the hot tub Saturday night?"
"Most of it, yes. Why?"
"Remember that you asked me what I liked to do in bed?"
"Yeah. You said that scat, drugs, and anything non-consensual or potentially dangerous wasn't up your alley, but just about everything else was probably fair game. If you hadn't actually done it already, you'd at least thought about doing it. Am I right?"
"Full marks," he replied. "But more importantly, how do you feel about that?"
"No problems for me," I said. "I'm not interested in anything you've already crossed off the list. And while my sex life has been pretty vanilla up to now, I've had my share of kinky fantasies: even gotten to live out some of them. I suppose there could be a few things on your list that I might not want to try, but the only way we'd ever find that out is on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it would help if I told you that I scored in the mid-50s the last time I took the Purity Test."
"Which version?" he asked with a grin.
"I don't remember the version number, but it was the long form with a thousand questions. My point, though, is that I try to keep an open mind when it comes to sex. I'd like to keep veto power just in case, but I'm at least willing to listen and consider anything you'd care to propose."
"Well, then," he said, picking up the videocassette off the table, "here's my first proposal. If you have some free time tonight, I'd like you to watch this tape. It'll take about an hour unless you stop and rewind frequently -- which you might."
Taking the tape from him, I asked, "What's on it? I've got some research work to do tonight, but nothing that should take very long."
"It's some excerpts from my private video collection. D'you remember me telling you I sometimes liked to tape myself having sex?"
"Hell, yes!" I exclaimed. "And also that I specifically asked to see some of the tapes sometime."
"Now's your chance," he said. "What's on there are bits and pieces culled from around 12 hours' worth of tape going all the way back to my high school days. Most of the early stuff is nothing but J/O sessions, so there's not much of that on there. The scenes on that tape aren't a representative sample of my sex life, or even of my video collection, for that matter. But they are the scenes I thought would give you the best idea of where my boundaries were and some of the wildest things you could expect me to bring up or ask you to try. I'm not ashamed of anything you'll be looking at -- quite the opposite, in fact -- but it seemed right to me that you should know about some of the stuff that goes on inside my head before I ask you to take a flying leap into the unknown and commit to spending time in my world."
"Alex," I told him sincerely, moving closer to him on the couch as I spoke, "I don't care what's on this tape. As long as we're in agreement than anything really far-out gets discussed first, I'm open to risking the occasional walk on the wild side with you. I mean, I didn't run for the door Saturday night when you started pissing on me, did I?"
"No," he began, "but...."
"I know," I interjected. "There was a misunderstanding. Totally my fault, and nothing you could've done about it. The point is, I enjoyed what you did, even though I might never have had the guts to ask you to do it to me or said yes if you had asked. But since I can't think of anything that would come as a bigger surprise to me than that, I really want to keep seeing you no matter what you may like to do in your wilder moments in bed."
"Humour me, please, Troy," he asked, laying a hand atop the one in which I was holding the tape. "I want to keep seeing you, too, but only if you're comfortable knowing who I am and at least some of what I've done -- because there may come a day when I'll ask you to do it with me or to me. Giving you this tape to watch seems the best option. Do it for me?"
"If you're going to put it that way, I can't really say no, can I? Just please don't get all Bambi-eyed on me, or I may have to allege undue influence and try to get you reversed on appeal."
He really smiled then, and patted my hand before saying simply, "Thanks, Troy."
"You're welcome, Alex," I replied. Taking a deep breath and releasing it, I then continued, "But now there's something I need to say and ask you to think about."
"Oh? What's that?"
"I'm a witch."
"A what?"
"A witch. `Wiccan,' if you prefer, though I don't care for that term much myself."
"You don't look like a witch," he said. There was a hint of a smile playing about the corners of his lips and the trace of a guffaw in his voice as he continued, "And I know for a fact that you weigh more than a duck. Are you sure you're a witch?"
Heaving a mental sigh of relief, I allowed a touch of asperity into my tone and said, "I don't happen to have my Witches' Union card on me right now. In fact, I'm pretty sure I left it tucked away at home in the same junk drawer where I keep my Faggots' Union card. You're going to have to take my word on it, I'm afraid."
"I'm glad you told me, Troy," he said. "But I'd more than half guessed already."
"Really? What gave me away?"
Batting me playfully on the side of the head, he replied, "Hello?! Remember my Uncle One Feather? Lakota wasn't the only thing he taught me, you know. There are some pretty powerful -- well, let's call them `overtones,' for lack of a better word in English -- to your aura. That was my first clue. The second one came last night when you mentioned you compounded your own massage oil and named off the ingredients. The only reason I didn't flat out ask you about it then was that I'd never jump to a conclusion like that unless I had a lot more evidence -- and I was rather pleasantly occupied with other things at the time. Besides, I thought there was some resistance to gays even among pagans."
"Depends on whom you ask. There are some very traditionalist types who insist that one can't possibly give proper honour to the Goddess and the God except in context of male/female sexual polarity, including sexual relations when appropriate. Other groups take a more accommodating stance. But it's a moot point for me, because I'm a solitary: I don't often work in groups. I don't belong to any of the local covens and as far as I know, none of their members even knows I'm a witch."
"I've never heard of a solitary witch before."
"Not many people outside the pagan community have. If you ask me, it's better than even money that there have been far more solitaries throughout history than there have members of formal groups or covens. But at least in the modern tradition, the solitary movement got its real boost when Scott Cunningham started publishing on it in the early '80s. And while none of his published biographers will come out and say it, I'd say it was a fair inference that he was gay, given that he died of complications from AIDS. So I'm in good company on that score anyway." Sneaking a glance at my watch, I saw that it was almost time for him to leave for work and added, "But we can talk about my peculiar religious preferences sometime when you don't have to be at work in 15 minutes. Shall I call you when I've looked at the tape?"
"I'm going to be out of town at an alcohol-awareness training workshop the next couple of days," he said. "Why don't you give me a call around noon on Thursday, if that's convenient, and we'll see where we want to go from there."
"I'd say `have a nice trip,'" I replied, standing up and pulling him from his perch on the sofa into my arms, "but that doesn't sound like it's going to be a whole lot of fun for you."
"It's not," he said, returning my embrace. "But if I pass the training, they'll pay me for the time I was at the workshop and I'm eligible for a raise in my hourly rate. I'll make do."
We kissed for a couple of minutes and exchanged another hug. Then I walked out of the house with him and into an uncertain future. I didn't really like the looks of it.
Chapter Seven -- Homo Home Movies
The rest of the day was an unmitigated disaster. I was in a foul mood when I got back to my two-bedroom apartment, and there wasn't a damn thing I could find to snap myself out of it. Even the sight of the Flatirons, sunset-coloured in purple and rose- gold, did nothing to raise my spirits -- and that worried me. Though I'd lived in sight of that angular sandstone trinity for several years, they'd never lost their ability to move me to awe and wonder, or to give a boost to my sagging morale. That they didn't work their usual magic on me tonight, I hoped, was nothing more than a temporary setback.
I was temperamentally unable to concentrate on anything except Alex for longer than about half an hour, which boded ill for the research project I'd brought home with me. I did manage to wrest a few interesting tidbits from the database before giving it up as a lost cause, but the job was far from being finished. I diddled online for a while, but found nothing to pique my interest at any of my usual haunts and felt disinclined to go looking for new ones. Too agitated even to read, I tried without success to find a movie or something on television to tempt my fancy. Nothing I had on hand or that was scheduled for broadcast that evening interested me in the slightest. Half an hour's contemplation of the titles in my library produced the same result. Finally, I went back to the computer in hopes that something a little more interactive might be able to divert me where more passive forms of entertainment had failed. Opening the games folder I tried and quickly rejected both my flight simulator and SimCity when I noticed a growing fascination with crashes and other disasters.
At last I opened up Civilization II and started a new world. For once luck was with me and I was quickly on a roll. Looking up from the game to give my heavy eyes a rest, I was surprised to discover it was half past ten. Taking into account both the lateness of the hour and the feeling of lassitude behind my eyes, I saved the game, shut off the computer, and headed off to bed in the hope that things would look a little brighter in the morning.
In retrospect, I probably should've known better and stuck to the game. Heavy though my eyes were, they adamantly refused to stay closed. The images of settlers, game terrain, and various military units that danced in the darkness before them didn't help matters any, either. That was how the majority of the night passed -- me staring forlornly at my bedroom ceiling or tossing restlessly on a mattress that seemed made of brick and covered with sandpaper.
I may have dozed, off and on, for a couple of hours before the morning headlines from NPR began playing at a quarter past five. I shut off my clock radio and decided to take a personal day. I function poorly on anything less than about five hours of sleep: give me less than two, and you probably don't want to be in the same room with me, because there's no way of telling what will push my buttons. That's not a spectacle many people have cared to hang around for!
Stumbling into my second bedroom (which doubled as office and ritual space, as need dictated), I checked my calendar and confirmed that Frank was due back from vacation this morning. Had he still been out of the office I'd have forced myself into some semblance of a functioning human being at least until after deadline: otherwise, I'd have been giving my nemesis Clare a free hand with my column. She'd already tried everything from rewriting my material to suit her peculiar notions about grammar and punctuation, to cutting it in half so the original train of thought was barely discernible, and on up to "accidentally" leaving it out altogether. The thought of rending her into tiny bits might have been viscerally satisfying, but it paled in comparison to the jail time I would probably have to serve if I went through with it. Consequently, I made it a point never to be absent when she was filling in for the managing editor.
When the operating system finally deigned to accept input from a mere mortal (namely its owner), I called up the paper's dial-in interface and logged on. After leaving a message for Frank saying that I wasn't feeling well and planned to take a sick day (though you'll notice that I didn't specify the exact reason I wasn't feeling well), I called up the piece I'd been planning to run. A quick read-through showed it was in pretty good shape, so I sent off a copy to Frank and told him to give it the once-over and then send it on to the composing editor when he thought it was ready.
I glanced through my e-mail and my appointment calendar; finding nothing that demanded my immediate presence or attention, I gratefully disconnected from the remote host and shut down my machine. On the way back to bed I stopped only long enough to draw the blinds tightly and forward the phone directly to voice mail. That done, I collapsed back into bed where a welcome oblivion quickly took hold of me.
Just before noon I awoke with a start from a dream about Alex. Grabbing the notebook I keep by my bed for just that purpose, I jotted down the date, time, and what details I could recall. There weren't many, and those there were had been mostly vague impressions and not even consistent at that. Judging from the shiny film of pre-cum that coated the tip of my slowly deflating prick, it seemed a fair conclusion that there had been some pretty steamy content in the dream.
A rumble in my guts reminded me that I hadn't eaten very much in the previous 30- odd hours. The importunate promptings of my stomach notwithstanding, food was going to have to wait until I got some more answers. Washed, ritually bathed, and otherwise fortified spiritually, I tossed a couple of sandwiches and some fruit into a thermal pouch and added it, along with a thermos of iced tea, to a satchel of other supplies and slung the whole thing over my shoulder.
Ordinarily, I'd have gone up into the mountains to do what I had in mind, but after a short night's sleep (and on an empty stomach besides), I really didn't feel up to the necessary climb. Slipping into my Birkies, I made for the trail along Boulder Creek which runs several blocks from my apartment. As it was a weekday afternoon, I figured there was a pretty good chance of finding a suitable place where there weren't too many people around.
Once again I was in luck: a large rock not too far from the creek but a ways off the paved pathway, a spreading oak tree on the bank opposite, and no one in sight. I plunked myself down on the warm sandstone boulder, grabbed a few implements and supplies, and set about defining and purifying a space in which to work. When that was done, I layered on some additional assistance in the form of an anointing oil compounded of lemongrass, bay, and nutmeg.
I took careful stock of my surroundings with my five waking senses before starting the gradual journey down to a working trance level. Any changes should alert me to the presence of a possible danger and awaken me from my trance. One problem with working magic in the modern world is that it's not always easy to find a suitable place that is both appropriate to the task in hand and also under one's own control. But one learns to make do with what one can get, and to hope for the best.
When I was ready, I picked a spot in the stream right in front of me, and let my eyes droop to the point where they were almost completely shut. I focused my gaze just beneath the surface of the shallow stream, and let a picture of Alex as I'd first seen him begin forming in my mind's eye. I used that image as a focus for all my hopes, doubts, fears, and aspirations about him and about our relationship. I took a deep breath and held it for a few moments before letting it out slowly while softly calling his name and imbuing its two syllables with the emotional energy I had gathered. Then the waiting began.
Around half an hour later the bark of a dog on the path behind me called me, rather more hastily than I'd have liked, out of trance. As it had been some time since I'd Seen anything anyway, I figured it was all to the good and began shutting things down. Secure once more in the workaday world, I rummaged in my pack for the lunch I'd brought and fell to with gusto while I mused over what I'd learned.
The dream from which I'd awakened prior to setting out on my scrying trip had been a cross between a fairly mild leather-and-bondage fantasy and a very close approximation of a handfasting ceremony. That, coupled with the images that had come to me in trance, left me little closer to enlightenment than I had been when I started. There seemed to be reason to hope for the future of the relationship -- but only if the tricky ground of the present could be safely negotiated.
I continued to consider options and alternative interpretations of what little data I had to go on until it became obvious that my train of thought was steaming rapidly around in circles. Since my backside was going numb from an hour of sitting on uncushioned rock without much opportunity for changing positions, I quickly packed up my things and headed for home. Like it or not, it was time to see what Alex had put on the tape he'd given me.
Sprawled comfortably on the couch (at least as far as my body was concerned), I watched it right through from beginning to end. Apart from the final two segments, which comprised nearly half the total running time between them, it was a series of short vignettes or outtakes, lasting a minute or two apiece for the most part.
The very first ones were all solos. A couple of them appeared to have been recorded while Alex was still in his teens, judging from the sparseness of his pubic growth as captured on film. Some were of him jerking off in various places; others showed him playing water sports games. There was one longer sequence combining the two, with Alex sitting in a lawn chair wearing an old pair of denim shorts and wetting himself before pulling out his cock and jacking off to a ferocious orgasm while still wearing the soaked shorts.
One of the scenes I figured had to have been shot several years previously showed Alex sucking his own dick -- and doing quite a creditable job of it, too, unlike many of the "professionals" I'd seen trying that same tactic. His face and hair were very messy at the end of the clip, and the smile on his face matched my own.
That scene was also the last of the solo segments. It was followed by a group J/O with eight naked guys standing in a rough horseshoe around Alex, also naked, who was lying on a tarp or a mat of some kind. All of them were beating off enthusiastically, and it wasn't long before the first explosion of jizz. Over the course of about five minutes all nine guys shot off, some of them twice, until Alex's body was literally dripping with cum. Again, Alex sported an ear-to-ear grin as the camera zoomed in on his semen-coated body before the scene faded to black.
The next sequence was a threesome that featured Alex, a chestnut blond with "gym rat" practically tattooed on his forehead, and an absolutely stunning Asian -- light almond skin, jet black hair and carefully trimmed (or possibly naturally sparse) pubic hair, well-defined body and swinging about five or five and a half inches. At the outset all three were lounging around in what looked like a dorm or frat house room, clad only in shorts.
Some groping and kissing ensued, and then they peeled off their clothing. All three were uncircumcised, which struck me as a bit odd, given that I'd never once seen an uncut dick in the showers at my alma mater. They continued to make out after they were naked: then the cocksucking began. They ran through all the possible two-on- one combinations before segueing into a daisy chain: Alex sucking the Asian, who sucked the blond, who in turn was going to town on Alex's dick.
That broke up and the blond gloved and lubed himself up to poke his pole inside Alex's butt while Alex sucked the Asian's cock some more. After a while Blondie and the Asian switched ends. The Asian was an enthusiastic bum-fucker, and Alex gave every indication of enjoying the ride he was getting very much.
Blondie was the first of the three to pop, painting a white line across the top of Alex's pecs. That was the cue for the Asian to start stroking Alex's cock in time with his thrusts, which quickly caused Alex to unload onto his abs and pubic bush. The Asian continued to pump away between Alex's rear cheeks for a while before pulling out, stripping off the rubber and unleashing a veritable torrent of cum. I'd never seen such force or volume before -- his first shot flew past Alex's head to catch blond-boy smack in the navel. Several more shots followed the first, decreasing in volume and distance each time, until he'd spent his available reserves. Both Alex's partners then bent down to kiss him and rub their pooled cum into his skin as the scene ended.
The final clip showed Alex and a dark-haired man with high Slavic cheekbones and rather more hair (both face and body) than I liked. I thought I heard Alex call him Petya, but the sound quality was very poor. By coincidence (or perhaps not), it was a light bondage scene with the two of them taking turns in a sling. Apart from the sling and restraints, and some incidental leather apparel, it followed a relatively generic sucking-into-fucking sequence.
Alex took the first turn in the sling, servicing Petya's nicely sized cock (again uncut!) until he unloaded all over Alex's chest. Petya then wrapped a fist securely around Alex's dick and milked him to a rapid climax. I figured that was the end of the tape and had begun reaching for the remote when Petya produced a towel from somewhere off- camera and proceeded to clean them both up, and then took Alex's place in the sling. Petya sucked Alex's cock very well, and particularly seemed to enjoy his ample overhang. Alex's dick was apparently a little bigger than the ones Petya was used to accommodating in his back passage, though, and he had to work it in very slowly. Petya didn't seem to enjoy taking it up the arse nearly as much as Alex had when he was on the bottom, but I thought it spoke well of him that he was willing to try anyway.
That was the end of the tape, and I set it to rewinding before adjusting myself a little more comfortably in my shorts. I needn't have bothered, really: stimulating though the tape had been from a sexual standpoint, the questions that it had provoked were such that I quickly lost all interest in getting my dick off for the immediate future.
I still couldn't fathom Alex's motive for giving me the tape. There was very little on it that I hadn't already either done or wanted to try doing at least once. I hoped his giving me the tape didn't mean Alex figured I was so vanilla that I'd freak if asked to consider anything more than basic one-on-one sucking and fucking. If that was the case, I was going to be quite put out.
On the other hand, it was possible that he was using the tape to tell me, gently, that he was either unready or unable to make an exclusive commitment to one man. What was it he'd said to me Sunday night when the topic of relationships had come up? "I haven't been seeing anyone regularly...." That could be taken to mean that he'd not been seeing anyone, but it could also indicate he'd been seeing a lot of people irregularly. I couldn't quite square that possibility with the Alex I'd come to know in the last few days, but I couldn't dismiss it, either.
I continued to ponder these matters in the back of my head while I grabbed a bite of dinner. I was still restless after eating, but I did want to sit down and have another go at the research project I'd brought home with me the previous afternoon. I was pretty sure there was a smoking gun buried somewhere in the mass of organisational data, tax records, and other documents from the Family Values Coalition that I'd managed to get access to -- and if I could find it quickly, I'd be well on my way to a major expose that would royally annoy certain of Colorado's more conservative (not to say fundamentalist) citizens, and quite likely garner me a couple more award certificates for my office wall.
Several very productive hours later, I had it, though I was not much closer to a solution of my personal dilemmas than I had been when I sat down. I printed off the results of my investigations to discuss with Frank in the morning, gave a last check to my e-mail, and shut things down for the night. I was bone-tired but exhilarated at the prospects of throwing open some very dark closets inside an organisation whose main purpose was to ensure that I stayed not very securely in mine. On the other hand, I was going to have to call Alex tomorrow afternoon, and I hadn't the slightest idea what I was going to say to him. I hate it when that happens.
To be continued.... Mike musing@geocities.com polytropon@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6985/ http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3528/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above post is the sole responsibility of the poster ASSGM Moderator - Mykkhal - moderated.stories@bigfoot.com Info & Archive: http://www.assgm.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------