Warning: the following story contains graphic descriptions of sex between consenting adult males. If you are underage or do not wish to read such materials, or if reading this sort of material is illegal in your jurisdiction, then read no further. If you have any feedback or encouragement, feel free to drop me a line at niftystoryteller@yahoo.com.
That night, sleep was a stranger. Beau and I talked until late, trying to see a way out for him, a young man searching and suffering under the weight of family and heritage and bigotry and small-town claustrophobia. There were no easy answers. No one should ever give up his family lightly, even if that family is threatening to suffocate the very life out of him. No matter what we do, where we go, who we become, they are in our blood. At the same time, no one should give himself up, give up his identity, give up his destiny, to an illusion of a happy clan that barely exists in fantasy. There is just too much in the world that is both good and real to turn away.
Beau finally dropped off, but I tossed and turned and only occasionally dozed. It was well past midnight when I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed and went to forage among the provisions that I had brought with me to the cabin. Sandwich in hand, I circled around the living room, touching random objects and feeling the worn floorboards beneath my bare feet. Ever the author, I paused in front of the bookcase. It was crammed floor to ceiling, full of tattered paperback romances, old National Geographics, maybe a dozen volumes of "Reader's Digest Condensed Books" (which, to an author, are truly an abomination), and the inevitable jumble of miscellaneous castoffs that find their way to a vacation house. On the bottom shelf I spied a forlorn old Gideon's Bible. I don't know why, but I instinctively picked it up.
This dusty old book had not comforted a wayward traveler in a good long while. Flipping through the dry pages, I drifted over prophets and psalms, kings and miracles. I don't know if I was looking for some sort of answer, but a sign did appear. Whether luck or divinity produced it, I cannot say. I suppose that Kodak had a claim that was at least as strong as God's. At least that is what I thought when I reached down to pick up the slightly curled snapshot that had fallen from one of the Gospels.
Even in the faded moonlight that shone through the window, I immediately identified the face in the fifty-year-old keyhole to the past. Head thrown back, straw boater hanging on for dear life, lips stretched wide in a laugh that you could almost hear, my dear departed uncle looked like he was no more than twenty years old. Turning the photo over in my hands, I saw that a few words were scrawled on the back in an impatient script, which I recognized to be a prehistoric ancestor to my uncle's.
"Coffee and cream, bourbon and ice, song and dance, biscuits and gravy, thunder and lightning, shoes and socks, 'E' and 'F,' today and tomorrow. Together forever."
I sat down on the couch and just stared at the picture, in no small measure of disbelief. How did this photograph and these words end up here, in this place? My eyes narrowed as I tried to see through the picture to the truth. Did this whisper from the past mean that there was some sort of connection between my uncle and Beau's grandfather? A connection that perhaps had been hidden from public view? Did Edward and Forrest, "E" and "F," belong together in a way that no one else had ever seen? Suddenly weary, I stretched out my body on the worn cushions, eyes beginning to droop, possibilities turning over in my mind. Random thoughts drifted in and out of focus, and lights danced in front of my eyes as my head lolled to one side. Gradually, the pictures in my mind's eye faded to black.
. . .
"Damn, Edward, that fried chicken's good. You're never gonna leave home as long as your mama keeps that cook around."
My uncle, once again a young man, looked up from the straw picnic hamper that he was rifling through and grinned. "Well, I can think of one thing that would get me to leave. And I can guarantee you that ugly old cook ain't got it." He resumed his search in the fading twilight. "Now what did I do with those damn things."
The sun had already set, extinguishing the long shadows cast by trees that encircled the hidden clearing. Just a fingernail of the almost full moon had risen over a distant ridge, bearing the promise of the ghostly illumination that would soon follow. The sky was rapidly deepening from the faded violet of twilight into the deep indigo of a night that was full of promise and possibility. The song of the cicadas mixed with the sound of the waterfall that fed the nearby swimming hole, providing all of the music that anyone, even these two young men, could need. Taking it all in, Forrest Hamilton lolled on the blanket that they had spread on the soft, green grass, next to the remains of their picnic supper. He took a long swig of his beer before pressing the cold glass bottle against his forehead.
"It sure is hot," he said, wriggling his bare toes through the grass. "You interested in taking a little swim?"
Smiling broadly, my uncle triumphantly produced a bundle of Fourth of July sparklers. "I knew I'd stuck these in here." He extracted four from the bundle and fished in his pocket for a lighter. "You say you want to go swim? Oh, I definitely think so. I sure do think so, on a hot night like tonight. But not just yet."
Forrest just smiled and shook his head as my uncle began to dance barefoot around the blanket, illuminated by a shower of sparks from the burning sticks that he held at arm's length. He had rolled up his seersucker pants to mid-calf, and his unbuttoned white shirt flapped open, revealing his smooth, tanned chest.
"I'm Ali Baba," he said in a booming baritone, "here to grant you one wish. Think carefully what it is you wish." He planted himself in front of Forrest. "Speak, silent master, what is your wish? Whatever you say will be my command."
Forrest sat up and turned his face to my uncle's. He reached out and ran his hands up and down my uncle's strong thighs. "I bet you know what my wish is." Pulling my uncle to him, he buried his face in the thin cottony fabric of my uncle's trousers and nuzzled around. "I just bet you know."
As darkness returned, my uncle let the sputtering, spent sticks drop to the ground and reached down to run his fingers through his friend's thick, wavy, chestnut hair. "I know," he almost whispered. "It's my wish too."
Forrest looked up at my uncle and smiled before reaching to pull down the zipper that stared him in the face. My uncle sucked in his breath just a little and instinctively thrust out his hips. The tent that had formed in his crotch betrayed his excited state in a pretty obvious way. He shrugged his shirt off of his shoulders, exposing his lean and muscular frame to view. He was almost hairless, save for the tufts that sprouted from his armpits and the dark trail that started at his navel. His small, dime-sized nipples were dark and engorged, and he lightly brushed the tips of his fingers over them as Forrest slowly inserted his hand through the opening he had created in my uncle's trousers.
Forrest let out a low whistle as his fingers immediately encountered a thick mat of pubic hair and then the heat of my uncle's hard cock. "It feels like you forgot something this morning, Eddie boy, when you got dressed. But I'm liking it."
Carefully and deliberately, Forrest extracted my uncle's cock from the confines of his trousers. Curving prominently to the left, it was hard as a rock and positively quivered with excitement. Involuntarily licking his lips with excitement, Forrest leaned in and breathed deeply, savoring the hot aroma of my uncle's flesh. He brushed his lips against the prow-like head, causing the stiff organ to bounce from left to right. My uncle let out a low, growling groan before reaching down to unbutton his trousers. They immediately slid down his strong legs, exposing the trail of dark hairs that led from his navel to the dark triangle of hair that curled over his heavy prick. Forrest responded by reaching between my uncle's legs and grasping the heavy sac that held a pair of weighty balls, which he gently pulled down and began to tongue.
"Fuck, these nuts are hot," Forrest whispered hoarsely. "I know they're full of your hot cum. I know they're full of sperm you're gonna shoot all over me."
My uncle squatted slightly and spread his legs a little wider, offering the greatest possible access to the erotic core of his body. "I've been saving it up for a coupla days now. I've been waiting for you, cuz I know you want my cum." His words trailed off in a groan as Forrest began to nibble and bite and lick at the sensitive flesh in the fold where my uncle's ballsac hung from his groin. "Unnnh, yeah. Take off your clothes now. I wanna see your skin."
Still nuzzling around in my uncle's groin, Forrest quickly shed his shirt and unzipped his pants. He stood up and stepped out of them, leaving him clad only in his white Jockey shorts, which contrasted sharply with his tanned skin. He pulled my uncle towards him and began to grind his lightly furred chest against my uncle's smooth pecs, while pressing the bulge in his underwear against my uncle's bobbing erection.
Forrest pressed his lips up against my uncle's ear. "You like that skin on skin feeling?" he whispered. "You want to feel even more?"
"What else have you got?" my uncle asked playfully.
"I think I've got something you're gonna like an awful lot. Something nice and big, something I bet I could make you beg for."
"You think so?"
"Oh, I think I know so." Forrest ground the bulge in his briefs even more insistently against my uncle's fat organ. Judging from the size of its outline, Forrest's cock must have been one of the biggest ones in the county, easily besting my uncle's, which was no slouch in its own right. "Come on, get down on your knees and ask for it."
My uncle slowly slid down his friend's body, his tongue leaving a glistening trail across a lean torso. Once on his knees, he placed his open mouth over the bulge in Forrest's underwear and began to pulse his hot breath through the white fabric, which was marked by a growing spot of damp slickness. As he blew, my uncle's hands roamed over his friend's muscular legs, which were covered with the hair that had marked his passage into manhood. He reached around and kneaded Forrest's meaty butt before finally hooking his fingers in the waistband of the tight briefs and pulling them down.
Finally free, Forrest's long, thick cock bounced with excitement that was equaled by my uncle's desire. Letting out a long groan, he moved in to snare the pulsing, leaking head between his lips. Gasping slightly due to its girth, my uncle slowly inhaled inch after inch, not stopping until his nose was buried in his friend's pubic thatch. When he pulled back off, Forrest's stiff organ was clearly coated with shiny saliva, which offered some lubrication as my uncle rocked back and forth, hungrily sucking.
As the moon rose higher in the sky, the two men, once again in the vital ripe bloom of their youth, explored their bodies with lips and tongues and fingers and toes. Their cocks were both the objects of pleasure and the tools by which it was created. Their passion was as intense as if this one night together would be their last, as if they had met in a dreamworld that would fade into nothingness at dawn. Sitting face to face on the blanket, legs crossed over and under, gripping their cocks together, tasting each other's lips, breathing into each other's lungs, excitement building and building, and then finally cumming in a paralyzing spasm, their sperm mixed together as it rained down across their bodies, anointing their hidden union. Retreating into the sky high above them, I saw them hold each other before they were lost from view.