Andy’s fingers move inside my ass, stretching and pushing me in the place he knows will make me drop the mug of coffee. I reach out trying to balance the mug on the counter. He steadies the mug himself and then engulfs my cock with his lips. I can hear the water in the shower pounding the stone tiles like rain in springtime. Nick is singing softly, “Elaborate Lives” from
Aida
; he’s as much of a show queen as I am, though he feigns disdain for all musical theater except
Rent
, which he considers too generationally relevant to completely discard.
Andy finds my prostate and his poking sends flashes of sensation up behind my eyelids like reverse fireworks, blossoms of darkness that blot out my vision. I gasp and come into his mouth, a bursting trickle, really, my reservoir having already been depleted.
He sucks until he’s tickling me and I push him away.
He looks up at me from beneath his ginger forelock, eyes deep and blue, liquid as a penitent. I want to offer him the absolution he seeks, but he is the wise one. I touch his cheek. “Arise, my son,” he says.
“Thank you, father,” I reply, letting my fingertips guide him up to a standing position. He kisses me; his tongue tastes of cum.
“Is anyone else going to shower this morning?” Nick calls above the sounds of the water.
Andy grins and peels off his shirt and steps into the steaming glass and stone cubicle.
I watch his body disappear into the steam.
It’s almost midnight when my phone rings. I’m standing naked in the kitchen contemplating a Ziploc bag filled with Oreos. I hear music from the front room. The cast of “Glee” singing “No Air”—Jonathan’s personal ring tone. I run into the living room and grab my iPhone from the pile of personal electronics on the bar.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he says.
“Hullo, Johnny Boy.”
“What’s up, Oliver?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“Your message sounded like something.”
“I want to Maria von Trapp,” I blurt.
“Climb ev’ry mountain, baby” he says, laughing.
“Does it make me a bad person?” I ask, opening the French doors and stepping naked onto the wooden decking.
“Everyone thinks about running,” he says. “But is that what you want?”
“I dunno.” I pause. “Where are you?”
“Lame diversion,” he says.
“Fuck you,” I mumble.
“I’m leaning against my bike looking out over the Bay. It’s stunning—sunset here. The sky’s fiery, pink and orange over the hills and the ocean. The bridge is red, almost the color of adobe. It’s the second-most beautiful place on earth.”
“Second?”
“Well, of course there’s your place.”
I laugh. “My place?”
“Fuck you,” he says. He takes a draw from his water bottle. “You’re bookended by beauty.”
“Don’t let your husband hear you talk like that,” I say, embarrassed.
“His words, not mine. He’s the writer.”
“Do you really believe that?” I ask.
“They’re among the most beautiful men I’ve ever known.”
“But is it extraordinary?”
“Your life?” He’s laughing. “Shit.”
“You’re killin’ me.”
“You love it, Oliver. Your house is filled with art; your bed is filled with men; your heart is filled with love. What more could you ask for?”
“Please, sir, I want some more,” I say.
“Never before has a boy wanted more,” he says, half singing.
I sigh.
“O-M-G! Was that a sigh?”
I sigh again.
He’s silent for a moment. “Is that why you called me?”
“No, no, it’s not bad—it’s just that Nick wants Andy to move in. You know, permanently.”
“Girl! Jump! On! That!” Jonathan is shouting; I pull the phone away from my ear.
“Do you think it’ll last?”
“Shouldn’t you be all don’t-rain-on-my-parade instead of the-man-that-got-away?”
“It feels domestic.”
“You’ll be living with two men in a permanent three-way relationship. It’s domestic, but it’d fuckin’ kill that Reverend Dobson asshole.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“Think about the sun, Oliver,” he says.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Did it ever occur to you that life with Nick and Andy
is
the sun and rejecting them is rejecting something extraordinary? Good metaphors work both ways.”
This stumps me.
“The sun’s slipping lower now, Oliver; almost gone below the horizon.”
I imagine what he’s seeing, the incendiary pinks and oranges draining from the sky.
“It’s gone,” he says, his voice soft, resigned.
When I get off the phone, Nick is asleep in Andy’s arms in front of the TV. Andy is watching Jack Tripper fall over the back of the couch and laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen. I lean over the back of the sofa and kiss him.
“So tell me, beautiful, when are you moving in for good?”
TIDES
Michael Bracken
Jamie and I were the only people on the white-sand beach, and we didn’t notice the lone swimmer until he walked out of the Caribbean wearing nothing at all.
My cock stirred at the sight and I blinked. Twice.
Jamie nudged me. “Do you see what I see?”
“So, I’m not imagining it?”
“If you are,” he said, “then I’m having the same fantasy.”
The sun-bronzed swimmer finger-combed his long black hair away from his face. The motion of his powerful arms made his broad chest expand and his already-tight abdomen constrict. His thick, uncut phallus and heavy scrotum hung from a dark nest between his thighs, and there was no evidence at all that the warm Caribbean water had caused shrinkage. I had never in my life seen a man so perfect.
“They didn’t say anything about
this
in the brochure,” Jamie said. “I think there would be more men on this beach if they had.”
We had come to the island during spring break to get away from the repressive Baptist university where we were enrolled as sophomores and had booked ourselves into a little-known, out-of-the way place with few of the amenities the expensive resorts on the far side of the island offered. The best things our two-room cottage had going for it were the secluded white-sand beach, the sea view and the privacy that would allow us the opportunity to explore each other at leisure. The trip was Jamie’s idea, and he’d paid for everything. He thought it would be good for our relationship to get away from the university.
Jamie and I couldn’t take our eyes off the naked swimmer, though, and we watched as he walked north along the shoreline until he disappeared from view. As if in a daze, the swimmer never acknowledged us nor ever acted as if he knew we were present.
I leaned over. “If my cock was any harder,” I whispered in Jamie’s ear, “I could pound nails with it.”
“Do you want to go back to the cottage?”
Of course I did, and it wasn’t long before we stripped off our flip-flops and board shorts.
Jamie and I have been together since the day we met during freshman orientation, one blond gravitating toward another with the knowledge that we shared something our classmates didn’t—something that would likely get us expelled if it became common knowledge—and during the eighteen months or so we had been together we had discovered each other’s likes and dislikes.
As soon as we had stripped off our board shorts and tank tops, I sat on the side of the bed and Jamie knelt between my widespread thighs. He cupped my balls in his hand and took the swollen head of my cock in his mouth. He spanked it with his tongue and then licked away the precum that oozed from the pee slit. As he kneaded my nuts together, he slowly took more of my cock into his mouth until he had swallowed about two-thirds of it. Then he drew his mouth back until his pearly white teeth caught on the spongy soft ridge of my glans. He did it again and again, covering my shaft with his saliva, never quite taking all of me down his throat.
Jamie wrapped his free hand around his erect cock and began tugging at it, jerking off as fast as he could. All the while he continued his oral assault on my erection. Jamie came first—he usually does—spewing spunk on my shin, the bedspread and the carpet. By then I was nearing release. I grabbed the back of Jamie’s head, threading my fingers through his short, blond hair and pulling his head down as I thrust my hips upward, slapping his chin with my balls and sinking my cock so deep it triggered his gag reflex.
I came hard, firing hot spunk against the back of Jamie’s throat as I released my grip on his head, allowing him to pull back so that he could swallow every drop of my cum.
After he had swallowed and had licked my cock clean, Jamie rose from the floor and settled onto the bed next to me. “Seeing that guy come out of the water really turned you on, didn’t it?”
I had been with other guys before Jamie, and I had been with other guys since meeting Jamie—though he didn’t know about any of them—and I knew I had to tread carefully. “He was nice to look at,” I admitted, “but he isn’t you.”
Jamie and I saw the swimmer later that evening when we went to a beachside bar a mile from our hotel, a place that was little more than a roof with corner supports, a bar at one end and a dozen tables at the other. He had dressed in a floral print shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals, but it was difficult to look at him without remembering all the sun-bronzed skin we had seen earlier that afternoon. He sat alone, drinking shot after shot of whiskey as he stared out at the water.
Jamie and I sat at the bar nursing piña coladas, sharing funny stories about our past that wouldn’t have been funny if we had been sober and swapping spit every so often, not caring one whit what our bar mates—mostly locals—thought about our public display of affection. Even though I was with Jamie, I kept glancing at the swimmer. Finally, after enough drinks had given me the courage, I pushed myself off the bar stool and made my way to where he sat.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked up and I realized he had at least fifteen years on us.
“We saw you this afternoon.” I indicated Jamie, who was gripping the bar tightly to keep from falling off his stool. “On the beach.”
He said nothing.
“Hob lay gringo?” I slurred. “Polly voo American?”
“I speak English.” He had a deep voice, like Darth Vader without the respirator.
“We saw you drinking alone,” I continued. “We thought you might like company.”
The swimmer glanced at Jamie and then returned his attention to me. He kicked the chair across from him out from under the table and it slid backward a good three feet. “So sit.”
As I sat, I motioned for Jamie. He staggered over with our drinks and dropped onto the chair to my left.
“I’m Kyle,” I said. “This is Jamie.”
The swimmer saw that our glasses were nearly empty, so he caught the heavyset waitress’s attention and indicated with a circular wave of his index finger that he wanted a round of drinks. She waddled away.
Because the swimmer had yet to introduce himself, I asked, “And you are?”
He stared at his empty shot glass for a moment and then said, “Jack. Just call me Jack.”
I said, “Good thing you aren’t drinking Shirley Temples.”