Disclaimer: This is a work of gay fiction. It will contain scenes describing sex between adult males. If that offends you, if you are underage, or if it is illegal to possess such material where you are, then stop now!
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CHAPTER FOUR: FOUNDATION
In the misty twilight between waking and sleeping, I was aware that my topside was warm under the heavy comforter, but my feet and flanks were feeling the morning chill. Somehow, I could not get my coverings to fit around my body properly. I groped for the edge of the cover, and my mind crossed that invisible boundary between being mostly asleep and mostly awake. The room was still bathed in that blue light, but....
That was no comforter! It was Nicholas' naked body sprawled directly on top of mine! My hand was pulling at his buttock and thigh, vainly trying to spread his warmth around my own leg and hip. His cheek rested on my shoulder. His rock-hard cock was poking at the 'tween-space behind my balls and an inch from my asshole. My own equally hard cock was being mashed into my navel by his abdomen. It was an excruciatingly humiliating position to wake up in. And, oh yeah, one more thing: I found the warm weight of his body on mine strangely pleasing. But I'd have to worry about that later. For now, how to extricate myself from the tangle of his embrace? I felt tension stirring in his muscles throughout his body. He was about to wake up. I closed my eyes and resumed the slow, deliberate breathing of slumber. Suddenly, Nicholas' entire body twitched as he became conscious enough to recognize where he was. Then it began to vibrate rhythmically. What the...the sonofabitch was chuckling to himself at our predicament. I felt warm air on my cheek and opened my eyes. Nicholas' big brown eyes were one and a half inches from mine. They sparkled with mischievous humor. Our noses touched lightly.
"Sorry. In that wrestling match we call sleeping, I seem to have pinned you, bud."
"Well, if you were trying to rape me, you missed. But just barely."
"There's a rematch tonight."
"I can't wait. Is my breath as rank as yours?"
"At least. Let me see if I can get myself disentangled here."
Suddenly, the white light bulb glared harshly, and almost immediately the door burst open.
"Rise and shine, you slug-a-beds," sang out Frank's voice. "Well-you two have certainly gotten to know one another during the night. In the hallway, chop-chop!" He moved away, chuckling, to attack Elijah and Trevor's door next to ours. I could hear the voices of Adrian, Dennis, and Owen out there, too, rousing the others.
Nicholas struggled to get off of me, and I rolled off the cot as well.
"I don't know which is lumpier, the mattress or you," he said.
"Can't help it. Morning wood. You have it, too."
We squinted at one another in the glare of the intruding light. If my face was as puffy as his, and my eyes as red, along with that plucked chicken look, we must be quite a sight. We both burst out laughing, and crab-walked together out into the hallway.
There were matching pairs of running shoes beside our door, and all of the others as well. Ours were just alike, down to the ten and a half size, but each had our first name neatly printed inside the tongue. There were thin half-socks in one shoe of the pair. We sat down on the floor and got to work getting them on.
"Say, what do you think we're going to be doing today, guys?" called out Patrick.
"Can't imagine," replied Matthew.
As we all got shod, Adrian reappeared wearing nothing but shoes just like ours.
"Take five in the john, men, and then head down the back stairs at the end of that hallway to meet up for our morning run. Don't dilly-dally."
It was early for my morning BM, and try as I might, I could not produce it, seated beside an equally barren Nicholas on the porcelain toilet. "Move on, guys, and let us have a go at it," pled Michael. He and Peter took our places, and from the sound and smell of it, at least one of them had greater luck with the project. This did not bode well for me, I thought, if the run was a long one. The exercise would soon do its work on my gut, and I'd have to find some place to go! It appeared as if constant humiliation was to be my lot in this place. I stuffed a wad of tissue into my shoe, and seeing me, Nicholas did the same.
We managed to get down four flights of steps without falling to our death. We emerged onto a porch near where the swimming pool jutted out from the basement of the building. All five of our leaders were there, in their running shoes.
"Leave the shackles here, guys, to pick up later. But run with your partner. You're still together in this."
I bent to remove my ankle strap, and almost got my nose right in Lamar's ass crack, as he bent over just ahead of me. The same must have happened to Gregory behind me, because while he was in the vicinity, he planted a big, wet kiss on my butt cheek, and laughed.
"Nice ta meet ya," he taunted.
We were getting a little chummy for my taste, I thought.
Following the five leaders, we set out running. It was still dark out, but within five or ten minutes, the dawn began to break over the mountain. We ran around the edge of the golf course and off down a trail up the narrowing hollow. In a couple of miles, there was a gap in the hill to the west, and our trail meandered through it. That part was single file. We emerged onto a wider track, like a logging road, and Dennis held back to warn us, "We're in the national forest now, it surrounds our property on three sides. So if you see any hikers or fishermen, just wave, and keep running." We never did encounter any outsiders on that stretch, all summer. After a few miles, we took a smaller trail back onto the Association property, and meandered along a small stream, over more hills, down ridge tops, and beside a small lake. Every few miles, we encountered a yellow water cooler. I have no idea how many miles we ran, but we kept up a side-splitting pace for a couple of hours.
At this point, I began to appreciate how well-matched Nicholas and I were. Both of us had been slacking on the exercise for the past nine months, but previously, we had been athletes in good shape. We were able to keep up with one another just fine. We finished in the first half-dozen or so pairs, and might have done better if we had not, as I predicted, stopped to take a shit in the bushes of the national forest land. (In a few days, our systems adjusted so that we could do our business at the appointed time, 4:30 in the morning.) Other pairs began to lag behind. At the end of the run, it took half an hour for the last of the pairs to come straggling in. Adrian and Owen were waiting for them at the porch. But instead of berating them for being lard-ass sissies, or worse, they encouraged them, complimenting them on finishing a difficult run, and telling them how much easier it would be daily from then on. (And they were right. In no time at all, all our times improved, and we added another leg to our run to lengthen it another several miles.)
We were allowed to go up and put away our shoes, shower, and brush teeth when we finished our run. This time, there were stacks of soft, white towels on the table in the drying room. There was no shaving to be done that morning-but in the future, for the next month, we shaved our faces every day, and one another's entire bodies every third day.
The room across the hall, where we'd buzzed one another's heads, was actually our dining room. It now had two long tables, highly lacquered for easy cleaning, with benches. We took our seats, and a couple of the waiters appeared with trays of food. There was no coffee. I won't bore you with menus, but suffice it to say that our chef was well read in the latest nutritional studies.
It wasn't that they starved us. In fact, we consumed prodigious quantities. But there was no waste of calories on junk, and all of us began to assume our ideal weight very quickly. Probably two thirds of us lost weight, but the other third gained weight. All of us rearranged it, slimming in waist and hips and building up our shoulders, chests, biceps, and thighs.
At one point, I thought I would strangle my grandmother for an order of French fries. I dreamed of potato chips. But that was early on. By week three, I didn't really even want any of that stuff, and by the end of the summer, I wouldn't take it if it was offered.
I also figured out after a few days why we were served instead of having a buffet. Portion control. Some of us got more calories than others. We weighed in every week down in the fitness center, and if our weight loss was too much, our servings got mysteriously bigger. Poor David eyed his meals, especially the meats, sadly for several weeks. He had the most weight of any of us to take off. But he never complained, and he told me later that the joy of watching himself trim down for the first time in his life was what kept him going those first few weeks.
At the end of that first Monday breakfast, a naked Adam came in with a sheaf of papers. Each pair of us had a schedule for the week, dividing us up and staggering some of the activities through the day. Nicholas and I looked ours over keenly.
Each day was divided into two blocks of work time, eight to noon and one to five, with lunch in the middle. There were also two activities, physical training and mental training. Half of us were in one, and half in the other for each segment. For example, Nicholas and I started out in mental training, and our first module was Academics, meeting in a room in the west wing of our dormitory floor. There were also sections called Social Skills, Personal Finances, Professional Life, and Self-Fulfillment-- well, you get the picture. The academic module began with a pretest, and then sent us into computer instruction on whatever we needed to catch up on. There was also a unit on study skills and discipline. Frank and Owen were tutors for that group, and they proved to be knowledgeable in any discipline I could imagine. Not just pretty faces, those guys, they were sharp as well. We moved from one aspect of the mental excellence program to another all summer long. I found the individualized instruction much less boring than normal classes, and doing it naked was a definite advantage. On the one hand, I felt more natural and comfortable than ever before, and on the other, it seemed so normal that I actually hardly noticed it after a short time.
In the afternoon, we moved to the physical training area, which was down on the first level of the basement. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, that involved a full hour of weight training, with Adrian and Dennis as trainers. But there was also a full hour massage! And there was a steam room, a sauna, a hot tub, and a cold plunge. In the final hour, which rotated around to accommodate those getting their massages, we could play an hour of basketball on the outdoor court, flag football on the lawn, or water polo in the pool.
On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, we could sign up for optional physical activities. We could play a round of golf, have a tennis match, take riding lessons at the stable, go mountain biking, hiking, or even fly-fishing. We just had to rotate around so that everyone had a chance to do each activity sometimes.
On Sundays, we always had some kind of special event. Some of them were fun, like kayaking and rafting on nearby rivers, sky-diving, rock climbing, and doing rope courses, zip-lines, and such. I will tell more about these later on, and also some of the more harrowing experiences as well. But this review covers our usual routine, and it explains how we made full use of our time to build manly bodies and characters worthy of the great opportunity we were being given. And I have to hand it to our leaders-they were with us every step of the way, if anything working even harder than we did.
At five in the afternoon, we had some time off, but we had to coordinate with our partner how to use it, since we were in shackles. There was a library with newspapers, and a TV lounge where we could catch up on world events, which the team leaders actually considered rather important for us (they often filled us in on the goings on of the world outside while we were exercising or having lunch). Down in the fitness center, there were half a dozen extra massage tables, and Nicholas and I took up giving each other massages on the alternate days, imitating the techniques the masseurs were using on us. Other guys joined us, and a bunch of us became very capable massage therapists over the summer. Our leaders seemed to approve of that as a bonding activity, and Adam came down with us several times to give pointers. Once he let me and Nicholas work together on his incredible body. Just the touch of my fingers on his skin sent electrical currents through my body. At the end of our session, we all had prodigious erections. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
That leaves the time after dinner, which really only amounted to a couple of hours, between seven and nine-thirty or so. Once or twice a week, we watched a movie on the big screen of the house movie theater. We bowled occasionally in the lower basement bowling alley. We had free swim nights. But we also had presentations about men's fashions and grooming, and each of us had consultations on what to wear and what not to wear, for our own coloring and style. On the fashion show night, half a dozen volunteers served as models. We burst out laughing when we saw them strut out wearing clothes! It looked hilarious and totally out of place to us after seeing one another naked for so long.
We all got facials and skin treatments, along with lessons on how to do them for each other and for ourselves later on. We got manicures and pedicures, something most of us would never have dreamed of doing on our own. We were told where we could go in our own towns to get such services in the future. The shelf in our room began to accumulate bottles of skin lotions.
We had lessons on how to give a party, how to set a table, how to know what fork to use, how to address various kinds of people. We even had a series of lessons on dancing. Now that was a strange time! You haven't lived until you've seen three dozen naked young men learning to waltz and samba. But by the time that happened, our inhibitions were so loose, and our relations with one another so solid, I don't think there was a one of us who did not think it was great fun.
From time to time, someone would get called aside for a private appointment of some sort. Peter, Wayne, Keith, and Richard showed up with braces during the first week. Eight or nine men appeared with newly-capped front teeth. And almost all of us got teeth-whitening treatments. Phillip got a reprieve from shaving David's back, as the electrolysist was working on permanently removing the excess hair right down to his butt. That took a while.
By day three, Nicholas had become the best friend I ever had in my life. We talked about everything. There was nothing we would not tell one another about ourselves, our families, and our tastes. For example, I learned that Nicholas and his girlfriend had had a painful break-up several months earlier, in which she told him that he was a clumsy lover. Man, that had to hurt! He was having a little trouble getting back in the saddle after that.
The two of us continued to wake up in a tangle of limbs each morning, but we no longer apologized about it. Even when we were not wearing our shackles, we were side by side. If I could not see Nicholas, I became concerned and started looking for him. And we were not the only ones like that.
One afternoon during free time, I heard Matthew calling, "Taylor! Taylor! Hey, anybody seen Taylor?" His partner was standing right behind him.
Taylor put his arms around Matthew's waist and drew up to him tightly from behind. "I'm here, buddy," he said, and Matthew was perfectly content.
Nicholas and I were so tight with one another, without it being blatantly sexual, and I was still naive enough at that time, that I didn't even wonder then if Taylor and Matthew were getting it on together in their little cell at night. But then, I still had a lot to learn. And those lessons were just about to begin.