The contents of this story are fictional. Any resemblance of characters to living or lived persons is strictly coincidental. Certain characters engage in sexual acts which may or may not be legal in the state or country in which a reader may reside. Any reader with objections to graphic descriptions of sexual encounters between males who may not have reached the legal age of consent, or whose local, regional, state or national jurisprudence prohibits such descriptions, should not read further.
 

Silk

by: eastbayjag@aol.com

For Noel

I walked along The Embankment in the fog, Big Ben's tolling of the hour behind me somehow corresponding with my steps. There was no foot traffic at this hour, Sunday Morning at eight. I guess all the tourists were at their breakfasts, the real people of London at the markets, or in church, or at home with the Sunday papers before the fire.

The fog was only just starting to lift a bit, the sun obscured totally, still. It was that time before the coal fires were completely switched to the natural gas that had waited for eons below the waves of the North Sea, when the fogs became sometimes killers.

I had started walking from my tiny temporary flat in Redhill Gardens, still musing over the events of the night before, my body still feeling the impact of more than three hours of love-making before my shattering climax. Three hours of looking deep into his dark eyes, feeling his strong hands gripping my shoulders, his lips brushing mine as he moved -- or not -- within me. Three hours of my heart beating so loudly it deafened me to the sounds of the taxis below my little window, rushing with their rattling little sewing-machine engines to and from Earl's Court, or Harrods, or Sloane Square.

Harrods is closed on Sundays, of course. But The Sales were on, the regular January Clearance. I'd gone yesterday, braving the crowds as I searched for a bargain.

Our paths first crossed in the little restaurant nearby, Chanterelle, the one that was so pretentiously gay, but with such wonderful food. He was with friends, I was alone. We exchanged glances at least a dozen times, but nothing was said. I left before they finished, charmed by his brilliant smile. He looked to be about my height, slim and strongly but elegantly masculine. His wonderfully handsome and wholesome face, his dark flashing eyes, deep-set under strong brows . . . I fantasized about him that night in my lonely little bed.

We'd said "hello" for the first time in Il Palio di Siena, the tiny Italian Restaurant just up the Earl's Court Road from the tube station, halfway to the Cromwell Road. I did a doubletake as I entered, seeing him on the right side of the restaurant, just beyond the "L" of the door. I almost forgot to say hello to Mama, the nice Italian lady who spoke almost no English, but said everything in her broad smile as she took your coat into her little cramped closet at the back of the room. He sent my heart thumping when he stood and came to my table, leaving his friend alone for just a minute, smiling broadly as he reached out with his big hand and introduced himself as "the man you seduced Sunday evening with your smile."  He spoke in an English accent that intimated culture, education, class. My hand disappeared in his, and my hands are not small. His ears jutted from his fashionably-cut hair, just enough to be seen. He had a vertical cleft in his chin that crinkled when he smiled, and the acne of youth had left a few tell-tale marks on his cheeks that did nothing to take away from his immense beauty.

I was nearly speechless. We spoke only briefly, exchanged names, I gave him my telephone number. He promised to ring me up the morrow to see if I was free for a pint. He went back to the table with his friend, and I realised how tall he was, at least six-four. His shoulders were square and broad, but not hulking. His shape was manly, virile, with long but not skinny legs, an ass that bellowed "strength" to all who looked. Several besides me did, and I was somehow jealous, though I barely remembered his name.

He and his friend left before my starter arrived. He smiled at me as they left, and I was hooked. I noticed everything. His companion was a man, perhaps thirty, affable, relaxed. There was no indication that they were other than friends, dinner companions. There was hope.

I ate slowly -- pasta, a veal chop with fresh sage, faggiolini. I stayed at the restaurant another two hours, gradually emptying a full bottle of Barolo the proprietor recommended, along with two litres of San Pellegrino. I think I may have hoped he would come back.

He telephoned Saturday just as I got in from shopping, still confused about what a shilling was, and with a pocketful of change -- I couldn't make change at all, getting confused when the merchant would say "seven and six, guv." I just handed over a one pound note and prayed I didn't look the total fool. The conversation was only tw oor three sentences.

"I need to see you," he said. I melted into a puddle at his feet. Me, the six-foot macho football player. At least in High School.

"Yes."

"Seven o'clock at the King's Arms?"

"Of course."

"You know it?"

"Behind the King's Road?"

"Yes. See you then." He rung off without another word. Just as well, I was totally tongue-tied.

We met at seven Saturday evening for a pint. My body trembled with anticipation, as well as from the shock of feeling my hand disappear into the warm and dry maw of his paw, making me feel at once protected and prey, as from him touching my arm as we ordered. His teeth were white even in the dim of the Public room. He didn't smoke, nor did I, so we used that as an excuse to get a taxi back to my place, where I said I had cold lager in the little postage-stamp fridge. We left for my little flat before I'd even finished half my pint of Best bitter ale.

He had his hand on my elbow as we left, and I felt like he was making a statement to all who watched us leave that I was "his" and they should keep their hands off. People moved aside for us, parting almost as if bidden by royalty as we approached the door, unlike the usual "sliding through" you had to do to get out. I felt a pride that I can't to this day explain. He kept his hand there as we walked towards Peter Jones, as we hailed a taxi, as we got in.

He kept his hand on my knee all the way, as we talked about everything and nothing, Dennis Healy, Princess Margaret's marriage to Anthony Snowdon, whatever. I was sure I was being branded through my trousers. The taxi driver was taciturn -- I suppose he'd seen it all before.

We walked up the narrow staircase single file, and his hand brushed my tail, sending an earthquake through it.

"Nice." He said, and I knew I was going to give it to him, though I had almost never let anyone inside me that way before knowing them for months and months and months. My presbyterian upbringing, I suppose. I preferred drilling for oil myself.

I remember so much, so little. I had a phonograph, just a cheap thing I'd bought at Whiteley's upon arrival, since I'd had to leave all my stereo things at home. Different current and all. I had a new recording of Shéhérezade that I'd found in a shop near the ENO, in a little alleyway behind some theater, around the corner from a little numismatic shop with really old five-pound notes in the window.

I set the record on play/repeat as I offered him the tinned beer and a glass, and we made polite conversation for a second, an hour. I don't remember a single word. I remember every movement of his lips, the blinking of his eyes, the slight flareing out of his nostrils when he smiled. There is no memory of how long before the first kiss, just that it seemed to take forever, that it put me into a different orbit. He was so strong, so male, yet so tender, so loving. His arms around me were immensely overpowering, totally gentle.

Our clothes somehow wound up on the floor in the lounge, and we were in my tiny bedroom, on my narrow bed, our passions rising -- my emotions, too. I remember thinking for a nanosecond - "I don't even know his last name, and I'm in love with him." He kissed away all my doubts, all my reticence. I was his to claim, and he knew it. He traced his lips down my neck, through the little patch of hair at the center of my chest, down the center of my body to my navel, down further a bit, then detouring to my hip, jutting up only a little in comparison to my manhood.

He reached over to the nightstand, and the light in the room suddenly took on a new hue of rose as he casually threw a red pocket square over the top of the lampshade. I'd left it there on the table after a foray into a men's clothing shop in the King's Road, trying to dress up a little for my new job. People wore pocket squares in the office, so I would as well. But I'd not yet plucked up the courage to do it, being a "Yank" and all. Might offend them.

Shéhérezade played on in the lounge, and my bedroom had almost the right hue to be a part of the seraglio.

He traced down further, to my knee, my foot, my toes, and kissed each as if it were a precious ring on a pope's finger. He traced down the sole of my foot to the heel, and then the back of my knee, and it felt like heaven as my legs lifted in concert to his attentions, shivering as he brushed his lips over the tender part behind the knee.

My legs floated up a bit farther, and he was paying homage to the backs of my thighs, then the cheeks of my butt. And then . . . then his tongue touched me at the centre, and I almost cried out as it bored slowly into me, tenderly, but with no room for mistaking that it was there only as a prelude to what would follow. The orchestra surrounded us, bathed us, and I felt as if on another world.

He left me, his tongue moving up to my sac of seed, bathing, nipping, rolling the little orbs between his lips. My staff was next, and it was tortured endlesly by the flicking tongue, salved finally by the warmth of his mouth engulfing me totally in one smooth motion. My legs somehow were on his shoulders, completely comfortable in their new position, mindless of the vulnerability, confident in my lover's intent to treat my body in a kind and gentle but very masculine way.

His lips were on mine, his tongue in my mouth as the second or third playing of the record commenced, the strong opening chords matching the opening of my mouth and my centre to him.  Somehow, magically, he entered me with no fumbling, no awkward preparations, no immense pain. He was not circumcised, and I think this makes entry less forced. It certainly was not a question of being small -- I had never until then seen a man's staff so large, so impressive -- yet it held no fear for me.

We began the dance of love, and he came fully into me in no more than a minute, the pressure always there, but the progress measured, cautious, gradual. Impossibly, he was totally engulfed, and I felt no pain, only fullness, anticipation. Once the dance floor was completely cleared, he began the waltz, moving precisely and intimately to the music around us, his body flowing into me as his tongue caressed mine. He whispered into my mouth of his desire, his love of the feelings I brought to him, and I screamed quietly of the passions he pulled from me.

He brought me to the brink more times than I could begin to imagine, and then stopped. He made love to my eyes, my nose, my cheeks as I reluctantly settled back into the outer edges of the atmosphere. Then he would begin again, immediately forcing my spirit into space, bringing me more and more swiftly to the edge of the point of no return, and back down, as Rimski-Korsakov wove his magic.

His whole body made love to me, his smooth undulations rocking the bed gently, the knot inside me being brushed continually by the upward curve of his member. He would withdraw only until the crown of it was beyond my prostate, then move in one smooth flow all the way into me, like a bow on the string holding a note forever. He knew where my knot was, and never let me forget it.

The moment finally came when neither of us could stand the suspense, and he took me over the edge with two strong, smooth strokes, finally plunging into me and positing his semen all the way at the bottom of me. I felt the pulsing of his member at my entrance, expanding massively with the first volley, stretching me more, and his semen was fired into me, all the way down the great length of his dick.  My insides grabbed him as I fired my own salvos between us, the pleasure so intense it was actually a little painful. My legs around him pulled him to me, trying to get more of him inside me, and his tongue found the depths of my mouth.

It took me a few minutes to come back to reality, as our breathing slowed and his hardness gradually diminished.

"Wonderful," he said, and I agreed with every fibre in my body.

We caressed gently, saying everything with our touches and brushings of lips, and I somehow fell asleep, my legs still around him, with him embedded inside me, keeping his seed in place.

I awoke at six, and he was not with me. I thought perhaps he had gone to the toilet, or was in the bath. I listened, but heard nothing, and eventually got up to find him.

His clothes were gone, but there was a note, in an envelope with my name on it. A clean, masculine script. I dreaded opening it, and put it to the side as I made a filter coffee. I drank the coffee staring at the envelope, not daring yet to lift the flap. I left it on the counter as I showered and shaved, then stuffed it in my coat pocket as I went out the door. A number to reach him? A little message of love? A "thanks for the memory?" A promise to call tonight? Endless possibilities surged through my head as I walked, first to Sloane Street, then over to the Palace, up to Westminster, down the steps to the Embankment, along the Thames in the cold fog. I shivered more from the feelings of fear of the contents of the envelope, of loneliness, of helplessness, than from the damp mists swirling about me.

I resolved to open it on one of the benches on London Bridge, where I would not be noticed if I broke into tears, but would be "just another dumb tourist" if I did a "singing in the rain" number à la Gene Kelly. The fog would hide me from most folk.

As I got close to the bridge I slowed, not ready yet for the news. The bridge hulked before me, soon to be demolished for a new one, the old apparently being bought by some eccentric in the US. I looked into myself, and thought "how can you have let yourself fall in love with a guy you don't even know?"

I was right -- I didn't know where he was from, save that he was probably English. His last name was a mystery. I didn't know what he did for a living, but it must have been fairly remunerative, given his expensive leather jacket. I didn't know if he was married to man or woman, or single, nothing. I didn't know his age. Thirty? Twenty-five?

All I knew was that he had brought me to an emotional level that I'd never before reached, incited my lust, made love to me like I had never imagined was possible, and disappeared, taking my heart and my almost-virginity with him. I felt so alone, here in the middle of this, the largest city on the planet, and tears threatened to burst through my walls of reserve.

"I haven't cried since my father died, three years ago," I thought. "This is not the time to start."

I mounted the first step of the stairway up to the bridge, and looking up saw at the top a tall, ghostly figure, slim and just standing there, looking down towards me. My heart leapt into my throat, wanting so badly for it to be him. I grasped the envelope in my hand, and climbed the steps two and three at a time, rushing to the top, my blood coursing through my ears, the first bars of Shéhérezade running through my mind.

I know the music is not considered to be the best -- but it has remained my favorite piece of music ever since that night, and now you know why I always wear my signature red silk pocket square, even with an open-necked shirt.