Chapter 4

Wednesday

 

 

I woke up horny, early that morning. I had woken up in the middle of night, finding Adam gone and my bed awkwardly lacking his presence and his body heat. I had gone up to open wide the curtains and the French doors of the balcony, and peeked outside, naked. The light breeze had sent shivers on my body, which the moonlight made look very pale. Everything was dark, everything was quiet. I could feel the dried cum on my belly and chest, and a little bit on my neck too. I rubbed it slowly, scratched it and looked at the white crusty flecks on my nails. I watched Adam's window and wished him silently goodnight.


I was surprised to wake up horny. It was indeed very early, a good thirty minutes before 6 am, when I would receive the wake-up call from the reception. But I was mostly surprised because I had fallen back asleep mellowed by images of Adam's light touch and caresses on my shoulders and cheeks, yet I woke up stirred by a painfully rigid erection and a longing for tightly grabbing his cock, his ass cheeks, or the back of his head. There will be plenty of time today, I thought, plenty of time this week.

 

I took a long shower and got ready for that morning's excursion. As I was about to step out of my room, I turned around, undressed quickly to remove my underwear and put back my shorts on, feeling the fabric and zipper rub not entirely pleasantly against my pubic hair, my dick and my balls. It felt absurdly daring, somehow; I also knew that the only point of my impulsive attempt at self-pleasure or self-amusement was really for the thrill of letting Adam know, at some carefully planned moment, that my cock, the cock he had so lovely venerated a few hours ago, was just one layer closer to his reach.

 

I had planned to skip breakfast again, but had intended to grab a fruit or two for the bus trip. As I walked down the stairs to the restaurant, however, I realized that what had gone on between Adam and me the previous night had changed more than the outcome of my future interactions with him. I looked forward to other stolen moments with him alone but suddenly recognized that much of our discreet, questioning and tentative flirting was over. If I entered the restaurant and both Adam and Siobhan were having their breakfast, I'd also have to face an actual, tangible reality: this is a woman whose husband I had sex with last night, unbeknownst to her; this is a man who crassly, even if tenderly, cheated on his wife with me. Oddly, I felt ready to face them both in the bus, or among Egyptian ruins, or by the swimming pool. But I couldn't quite bring myself to enter an empty, bleak, whitely lit dining hall and come face to face with them. I didn't know what, if anything, he had told her to justify his late coming back to their room; I didn't know whether she had noticed at all; I wasn't even sure what time Adam had actually left my room. I had fallen asleep before him (in his arms, I remembered in a brief, warming, flash) and hadn't felt him or heard him leave. I climbed back the stairs up to my floor, hurriedly, and went to knock at my father's door. I'll be with him, I thought, everything will be all right.

 

And everything was. Adam and his wife were among the last people to get in the bus. It was hard to gauge her mood, as she was hidden behind large dark sunglasses. They briskly walked past us towards the seats in the back. "Hi, Benjamin," he said, with an effort to be casual that may have been obvious only to me. They were both seated by the time I uttered a brief "Hey Adam, what's up?", half covered by the growling sound of the bus engine revving up.

 

We spent that morning in the Valley of the Kings and it was a lovely morning: breathtaking landscapes flooded by a blinding sun, stingingly hot strolls from one tomb entrance to another, the endearingly energetic erudition of our guide, the contagious sheer pleasure of my dad. And those tombs. Those astounding, mesmerizing, gilded and colorful caves, lavish follies deeply buried under sandy desolation - even I was waxing lyrical by the time we drove back to the hotel.

 

There was enough to wonder and gawk at that whole morning to help me keep in check the magnetic pull I nonetheless acutely felt towards Adam. Our playful flirtation punctuated our walks, our guide's lectures, and our careful examination of the tombs' walls. Gone was the eagerness or the uncertainty. There was something organic, almost telepathic, and definitely joyful about our silent connections. He and I both used every opportunity given to lightly touch each other, casually and furtively. We were obviously thirsty for each other, parched even at times, yet the shared certainty of forthcoming, more adequate settings for jumping each other kept us from doing anything rash, obvious or foolish. We did come close, however, on a few occasions.

 

A couple of tombs were only accessible through very long, very narrow, very steep, and somewhat dark flights of wooden stairs, heading straight down the belly of the hills. People prone to claustrophobia (as, apparently, Siobhan was) and people of weaker physical condition (as, unexpectedly, my father considered himself to be) were discouraged to visit them. Twice, thus, Adam and I walked down, wandered around and walked back up, like two unsupervised children. We systematically opted to close ranks whenever on these stairs; hence the rest of the group would be ahead of us, safely oblivious. When we first walked down, Adam was right behind me; he grazed my head and my neck with his fingers, caressed my shoulders and my biceps. When the tour of that tomb was over, we stayed slightly behind and he suddenly grabbed me, pushed me against a wall, behind a corner, making us invisible to the group. We kissed deeply and hurriedly, I held his face, his warm, sweaty face, between my hands. He hugged me and held me tight, then buried his face in my neck. "Oh, Benjamin", he said.

 

As we walked back up, I took care to be the one at the end of the line. I grabbed his ass cheeks and felt them move and squeeze with each of his climbing steps. I inserted my hand underneath his t-shirt, caressing his damp lower back. I inserted a hand inside the leg of his shorts, feeling the moist curly hair of his thigh. Just before we were about to exit, half blinded by the narrow torrent of light coming through the narrow passageway, I got close to his ear and whispered "I'm not wearing underwear and you're making me fucking hard". I couldn't see his reaction and cursed myself for having impulsively ruined the timing. I felt suddenly cheap, a little crass, and very stupid. But I heard him say "Nice", though I couldn't be sure whether it was directed at me or at my father, who was welcoming us back out with an expectant and questioning look.

 

As we entered the other trickily accessible tomb, I purposefully walked behind Adam. I grabbed his ass again and was surprised at my growing obsession with it. I tried to insert a hand inside his shorts and underwear, hoping to feel the pale, soft flesh of his cheeks, but our position and the tightness of his belt made it impossible to go further than an inch or two. I tried to reach for the front of his body and grope his crotch, but here too the acrobatics needed almost made us trip and fall. He turned around and flashed me a wide smile.

 

My growing erection was clearly visible by the time we reached our deeply buried destination. I tried to cover it by readjusting my cock upward and by standing behind Adam while listening to our guide. Like most of the other, older, men in our little group, Adam put his hands behind his back. But unlike all the other, better focused, men of our group, these hands reached for another man's dick. He fondled mine, played with it, rubbed it through the fabric of my shorts. Once again we found a brief moment, in a dark corner, to be alone. He unzipped my shorts and took my half hard cock in his mouth. It only lasted a couple of seconds, as we both felt rushed, scared and a little humbled by our surroundings.

 

This is fucking amazing, I thought as we walked back up, this is absolutely fucking amazing: I got a blow job in an Egyptian tomb. I didn't, of course, not really, but this was a story I couldn't wait to tell someone – until I realized there was no one I could actually tell this story. I'd have to lie, or I'd have to wait.

 

And this is when it hit me. This is the moment when some vague facts about my future became just a little crisper. Maybe I'm gay. Or bisexual. But I'm something-sexual, because I knew I wanted to have a life where these things happen and I knew I wanted to have friends to whom I could tell these stories. Because this moment which had just happened with Adam, this two-second long slurping on my half-hard penis, was so fucking amazing and fun and thrilling and exhilarating that I couldn't imagine having to make anything like that either shamefully forbidden or frustratingly secret.

 

* * *

 

I was somewhat dazed during the rest of our visit, which also included a walk through the ruins of a small temple ("Ptolemaic", my father tried to explain, puzzled at my lack of focus). I wasn't aloof or distant and nothing in my behavior alarmed Adam in any significant way. In fact, I think we were both a bit stunned by how far our mutual attraction could take us, when only loosely kept in check by propriety, surveillance, or reason.

 

I actually slept in the bus on the drive back. I tried to dream about Adam when I started to feel myself dozing off, but my mind took me somewhere else. It was something about my forthcoming first day in college, about starting a new life there, about the possibilities seemingly offered by the brochure pictures of Princeton I had stared at for long hours in the days following my acceptance letter. My father nudged me gently when we got to the hotel and told me he was going to call my brothers and try to catch them before they went off to work and school.

 

I faintly heard his voice talking to them, through the wall separating our rooms. Both when I stepped in and out of my bathroom to take a shower, I could make out the elation and enthusiasm in his voice.

 

"They're both fine", he told me as soon as we sat down for lunch. "Andrew was excited we saw the tombs this morning. That's what he remembers best about our trip, apparently. Well, you saw the tombs, I should say. Andrew chided me for not walking down the stairs with you. I'm not that old, he said!"

 

"You're not." However ridiculous, I felt a pang of light offense that these tombs meant something to other people, whereas I had already started to feel like Adam and I had claimed them as our own.

 

"I know, but, well, I had seen them, and these stairs are quite treacherous. Anyway, they both said hi."

 

"Dustin did too?" I raised one weary eyebrow. My younger brother and I had never been close and the day when we had dropped him off at Maya's, an old family friend, on our way to the airport, had been one of particular animosity between us.

 

"Yes, Ben, he did. I think he's doing really well. Maya may be spoiling him a bit, but they seem to be having a great time."

 

"Being spoiled is something he easily deals with." I smiled a bit, to alleviate some of the pettiness that had come out unexpectedly. My father seemed to ignore the comment.

 

"Andrew and Corinna are spending the weekend up in the Finger Lakes. They're going with Ethan, to his parents' cabin there, which should be nice."

 

"They're taking the baby with them?"

 

"Yes. Well, I assume so. A baby is not something you leave behind."

 

He froze for a second. I recognized that halted look, the one he displayed when he realized he may have been insensitive or clumsy. Dustin was very much a baby when our mother took off. I felt sorry for my father, the way I always do when I see or feel him tense up when he thinks he may have hurt my or Dustin's feelings in an off-hand remark either about my mother or about any analogy that could be construed as being about her. I tried to help him by changing the topic slightly.

 

"How is Ethan?"

 

"He's well, I think. Finishing his dissertation, I'm sure. Andrew mentioned a new boyfriend, so that's good."

 

Ethan was my brother's best friend, and had been so since they met early in high school. I vaguely remember my father and Andrew telling me about Ethan coming out, which left the seven-year old that I was fairly unfazed. Ever since then, the close bond between Andrew and him had given Ethan an important presence in my life. They both moved to New York for college and came back to Philly together frequently, Ethan very often staying at our place. I'm not sure why, but Ethan evidently preferred to spend time with us rather than with his own family, with whom we effectively shared him. We had him for Thanksgiving, they kept him for Christmas.

 

As my father went to replenish his plate at the buffet, I stared for a while at Adam's empty chair (why do these people never have lunch?), but my mind drifted back to Ethan. He came out when he was seventeen, which I then realized was an astoundingly young age to do so. It dawned on me too that Adam and Ethan (and Andrew) were about the same age. So, at the time Adam was secretly fooling around with the friend he mentioned, or jerking off with his cousin, Ethan was rounding up the courage to tell his parents and his straight best friend that he knew he was gay and wanted to be recognized as such. Ten years later, Ethan is a thriving, serene, steady NYU grad student and yoga instructor; Adam is a blushing, fearful man, easily seduced by a random semi-naked young American and married to (and thwarted by) an angry bitch.

 

I knew I was being callously unfair. I knew I couldn't fathom what it meant to come of age in the eighties wherever it is in Britain that Adam was from, and I knew Ethan came from a well-off family of progressive intellectuals (his father had once been friends for a while with Gore Vidal, I still remember that). But my brief acrimony must have stemmed from knowing that I myself was at the exact age when Adam and Ethan made radically different choices, or, at least, took radically different paths. And it scared me. I was nowhere near the lucidity and self-awareness that Ethan seemed to have achieved. Whatever I was aware of wasn't crisp enough, nor properly grasped and processed; it was easily shelved, readily added to the clutter of my sexual experiences and my longings for various shades of intimacy.

 

My father interrupted my thoughts when he came back with a full plate for himself. I wasn't very hungry, but watched him eat with the kind of pleasure a parent displays at the appetite of an ailing child. I had been troubled by his declining to walk down the tombs, even as distracted and eager as I had been by the prospects of some time alone with Adam. I did not like to see my father ageing and he usually didn't give me many occasions to do so.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't until I lay by the pool that I realized how happy I felt to be reunited with Adam, albeit at our usual inconspicuous distance. We exchanged glances and smiles before I dove into the refreshing water. I swam a few laps, basking in his gaze, lifted myself out in one swift movement, shook water out of my hair and face, lay down and let the sun dry me off.

 

I thought about Ethan again. I thought about calling him when I got back, about having him talk to me about coming out and about knowing for sure that you're gay. I quickly waved these thoughts away, however. Bringing up the subject, manufacturing such a conversation, implied a degree of clarity and resolution that I was lacking. It would also mean discussing frankly and openly sexual matters with him, something with which I wasn't comfortable. My puzzlement wasn't really about what I felt I was missing, but rather at the lack of apparent consistency or overall logic of my sexual connections and tastes. I liked jerking off with Jason, but never felt a craving to kiss him; I loved kissing my girlfriend, but I was pretty sure I preferred sex with the more audacious woman with whom I was cheating on her. I loved the adoring embraces of Adam's eager hands, but right then, at that moment, all I really wanted to see and touch was his cock.

 

There was, and had been for a while, something astonishing and literally awesome about seeing another man's dick. Not quite in pornographic pictures, which transported sex in general (and hard cocks in particular) in a different dimension: staged, distorted and overlit. But the incongruous reality, the actual physicality of a guy's penis was violently arousing to me. I saw Jason at soccer practice twice a week and showered with him and the rest of the team on each occasion. While there had been some fascination with the mildly homoerotic mood inherent to the setting, I never felt more aroused than when I was with him, at his place, in his room, and he would take his hardening cock out of his pants. We never really jerked off together fully naked and I never felt a need for that. Jason was never hotter than when fully dressed the way I normally knew him (baseball hat, t-shirt, jeans and Converses), while displaying and furiously stroking his dick, his pants down just the necessary length for easy movements.

 

It was uncomfortable, yet inescapable, for me to assign to Ethan the first instance I could recall when the sight of a naked male made me quiver in an unfamiliar way. I vividly remembered a time when he was staying at our house for a couple of days. I was young, maybe fourteen. I went to the bathroom one morning to brush my teeth and, as I opened the door without knocking, I found him in the bathroom, naked and shaving in front of the mirror. I was briefly stunned, mumbled some apologies, retreated quickly, and slammed the door. I vaguely heard him say "no worries" very casually. I walked back to my room, slightly dizzy and very much shaken by the joltingly erotic sight of his penis. I had only seen it for a split second, but I had found it thick, silky and, somehow, beautiful. That image stayed with me for years. I knew it wasn't the sign of an attraction to Ethan himself (even though my relationship with him would take, seven years later, a brief, yet intense, sexual turn), but the recurring flashes of that moment did become both a nagging reminder of the incompleteness of my developing sexuality and some of sort of beacon I knew I needed to follow through the fog of my scattered attractions.

 

I heard a splash sound and opened my eyes to find Adam and Siobhan in the pool. It was the first time I'd seen her in the water. Our eyes met and he gave me a quick and uneasy look, as if apologizing for his wife intruding in yet another territory we had claimed as our own. I felt very horny, dangerously and recklessly so. I knew I had the start of an erection which might begin to show, even in my loose trunks. I stood up and, in one swift movement, dove into the pool. Adam and Siobhan were both in the shallow end when I surfaced; his glistening, lightly tanned chest was beautiful. They started to do laps, side by side, and I went underwater, taking in as much air as I could, going deep to the floor of the pool and feeling like a male mermaid. I opened my eyes and watched from below their legs move, bending and straightening, slowly propelling them forward. It was a lovely, blurry sight and for a moment I wished I could watch them have sex, right there in the pool, see their bodies touching, these four legs like the tentacles of a sexy beast. I went up for air, gasped, inhaled and came back down. I watched Adam's thighs, which looked strong and graceful; I watched his crotch and ass wrapped in and sharpened by tight speedos. I thought about his cock, barely visible, probably shriveled by the cool water and bunched up by his swimwear. It had been so incredibly hard last night, a stick of concrete solidly affixed to his lithe body. I could barely bend it and if I did, it would slam back against his stomach when I released my grip; I had never seen or felt anything quite like that with Jason's lubed-up small penis, which I had held and stroked a few times.

 

I was out of breath and resurfaced a little light-headed. I adjusted my eyes to the blinding sun and heard Siobhan say, as she stepped out of the pool, "Well, see you later, then". "Yes, darling. Enjoy," Adam replied. We both watched her dry herself off, gather some of her belongings, and walk away toward the lobby. I looked at Adam questioningly. He smiled, darted a look towards my father, whom he found sleeping, and swam towards me. "She's going to the spa. She's having a massage too." Then, as if that information wasn't enough for me to understand what his pleading and hungry eyes were conveying, he whispered "I reckon we have almost two hours to ourselves".

 

I instantly felt my erection revived. "Meet me in fifteen minutes in my room, okay?" I told him before exiting the pool. My father woke as I was toweling myself. "It's too hot for me here", I told him. "I'm gonna head back up and try to take an actual nap with the a/c on or something."

 

"Sure," he said, not completely awake.

 

"I'll be back in a couple of hours or so, I'm sure."

 

"Of course, no worries. Get some rest."

 

I walked to my room briskly and went straight to the balcony. Adam was lounging, letting the sun dry him. He made regular quick checks of his watch. I did too: in ten minutes, he would be there, right next to me. I used that time to watch his body, from afar and unhindered. In a few minutes, I could grab his cock if I wanted to. In a few minutes, I could touch that chest, its light hair, its faintly defined muscles. In a few minutes, I could grab his legs, knead his thighs. I had right in front of me a beautiful, masculine, older body, the kind it never felt fitting to desire or to pursue. In a few minutes, this body, this man, would be mine and I could do with him and to him whatever my lust would savagely drive me to.

 

Adam checked his watch again and stood up. He dressed, obviously trying to put his t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops on at a pace that would be considered normal to any onlooker, instead of with the frenzy of a horny man hurrying to sex. He looked up towards my balcony, saw me, and walked on leisurely towards the lobby. I went to open my door ajar, just as I had two nights before. We had come a long way.

 

As soon as he was inside, I grabbed him and slammed his body against the closing door. We kissed fiercely, releasing with our hungry mouths and tongues some of the tension accumulated throughout the day. His hands were all over me, frantically seizing and grabbing me, hopping vigorously from my neck to my arms, to my waist, to my back, to my head. I was fondling his cock, amazed again at its throbbing hardness. We both came up for air and he stared at me, his eyes piercing, moist, and lustful. We kissed again, instantly back into our frenzy. I undid a couple of buttons of his shorts and slid my hand inside them. His cock felt scorching hot and sweaty. I couldn't stop holding it tight, stroking it a bit, grabbing it like a joystick.

 

Adam pushed me back and opened all the buttons of my short-sleeved shirt. He kissed my chest and my nipples, then licked a trail all the way from my throat down to the top of my shorts. He kneeled and positioned himself comfortably to open my zipper, pull down my trunks to my ankles and engulf my cock. The blowjob he gave me was extraordinary; I rested my head against the door, closed my eyes and put lightly my two hands on his head. I let him slurp, suck, lick, kiss, slurp again on my dick, woozy with the blissful sensation. I bucked a couple of times, when my cock became too sensitive; he mistook these jolts for signs that I was about to cum. "Shoot in my mouth", he mumbled, without releasing my dick. I really wanted to cum and I quickly convinced myself that I had easily a second orgasm in me, that we could still make full use of the time we had been unexpectedly given.

 

I came quite violently inside his mouth, which made him gag. I could see, as I was panting and trying to keep my balance, that he hadn't swallowed my load, his eyes and his locked jaw betraying his indecision or sudden reluctance to ingest sperm. He opened his lips and some of my semen started to dribble out, running along his chin and dropping on his toes and on the v-shaped band of his flip-flops. Then he shut his mouth resolutely, closed his mouth and swallowed all the cum left in one big and loud gulp.

 

My dick was wet and reddened, it was shaking and throbbing, shrinking gradually almost against its own will. He was staring at it, took it in his hand and began to kiss it gently. It hurt when he reached its oversensitive head and I pulled Adam up, bringing him to my level so I could kiss him. His mouth tasted foul with semen, a taste indeed it took a long time for me to acquire. But I hugged him, he hugged me back and whispered to my ear "Oooh, Benjamin".

 

I nudged him gently toward the bed, slipping out of my trunks, still bunched at my ankles. I sat him down on the edge of the bed after pulling his short and speedos slightly down. I liked that he still had his clothes on, I wasn't surprised to find it expectedly arousing. I tried to reciprocate the fantastic blowjob he had just given me. I may have been skilled, for he pulled his cock out my mouth after just a few minutes. "I don't want to cum just yet."

 

He grabbed me and pulled me towards him, had me lie on my back and climbed on top of me to kiss me some more. Again, his hands were darting all over my body, while mine had settled on a firm grip of both his ass cheeks. It was lovely and bracing. He gently pulled up one of my legs, then another. I tried to wrap them around his waist, but the position felt odd and I settled for letting him hold them somewhat mid-air. I felt him getting lost in his own trance, as he was grinding his body against mine in an increasingly animalistic fashion and dry-humping me with grunts and moans. My uneasiness increased when I felt his disturbingly hard dick pressing insistently at my asshole. I was aggressively clenched, hoping that the resistance would be evidence enough of my unwillingness to engage in something that was still frighteningly and disturbingly alien to me. But as I took a deep breath, my sphincter unwittingly opened up just a bit, just enough for his cock to enter me, dryly and painfully, less than an inch in.

 

My reaction was immediate, uncontrolled and violent. My knees, which had been pressed against his chest in a tight embrace, pushed him away, then my right foot jerkily kicked him off me. He fell backwards on the floor. Startled and shocked, he lay there for a long second, his legs dangling in the air like an upturned beetle, one flip-flop still on, the other discarded in the commotion.

 

"I'm so sorry", he cried out.

 

"It's okay", I muttered, panting and confused.

 

"My god, Benjamin, I am so sorry. I just... I don't know, it felt..."

 

"Adam, it's fine", I said, though my voice probably didn't quite match yet my efforts to forget about the whole thing and to start over, somehow.

 

"No, it's not. I don't know what came over me. I thought maybe you wanted it too. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

 

"Stop apologizing, for fuck's sake!" I suddenly shouted. I felt deeply humiliated. Not for feeling abused or manhandled, but rather because my inability or unwillingness to let him penetrate me, to let him perform a sexual act which was common, appreciated and indulged in by sexually mature adults, had suddenly relegated me back to my condition of a seventeen year-old, a kid really, unable to walk the talk. My outburst had been childish too, to make things worse. I felt small, stupid, unmasked.

 

Adam looked lost. He started to pull his pants up, then stopped, doubting himself. He looked at me expectantly. I hated him so much. I loathed him intensely. I wanted him to do something, to take some initiative to pull us out of that downward spiral that was engulfing us. I didn't want him to touch me, which he seemed to feel. I didn't want him to leave, which he also seemed to instinctively assess, probably fuelling his own confusion.

 

He took a deep breath and sat cross-legged, facing me, trying to be calm and soothing. "I don't have a lot of practice, Benjamin."

 

"Please stop calling me Benjamin. It's weird and creepy. I'm Ben".

 

"Okay," he said evenly. "This is fairly new to me, this whole thing."

 

"You've never fucked someone before?"

 

"I have, actually. But not like that. I mean, not someone I cared about. It was... different. It was just sex, I guess."

 

"We barely know each other, Adam. We don't have much more than sex going for us either."

 

"Yes. Yes, of course. I just meant... I don't know, you make me feel things differently. This, what we have, is nothing like I've had before. And I need to control myself a bit more, to respect your boundaries."

 

This deference and sweetness felt unpleasant, bland and emasculating. I couldn't quite join in and discuss some prudish resistance to being fucked, some virginal boundaries I'd have which needed the respect of this gentlemanly stiff young man, courting me like a debutante.

 

"Tell me something sexy, Adam," I blurted out suddenly, ending an awkward silence.

 

"What?"

 

"Tell me something dirty, something really fucking nasty, which you'd want to do to me or with me."

 

He smiled, showing some relief that my mood seemed to change, but still apprehensive about where I was then leading him.

 

"I don't want to do anything dirty to you, Ben," he said, as a child tentatively trying to answer a trick question.

 

"Come on, Adam, please, just let go a little. Let go. You swallowed my spunk a few minutes ago, your mouth is still reeking of sperm, for fuck's sake. What else do you want to do?"

 

"I don't know, Ben. I just... I want to do it again? Maybe I want to lick your ass?" His own mention of my ass suddenly made him obviously scared that he had, yet again, broached a forbidden and antagonizing subject. I tried to reassure him and to move us on by leaving the bed and sitting down behind him, on the floor, my mouth pressed against his ear.

 

"I'd like that", I whispered huskily. "I'd like to do the same to you." My voice and my breath in his ear sent shivers and goose bumps all over his body. I could feel them under my hands holding his arms. "And I'd like you to suck me off some more," I continued, "in a bunch of different places in this hotel, without getting caught. And I'd like to watch you jack off on your balcony, in the middle of the night, and see you cum over the rail, hear the drops on the ground, two floors down. Oh, and I'd love to see your whole body covered with my cum and yours, completely drenched. And you'd rub it and smear it and lick your fingers."

 

Adam was panting. I had lowered one hand down to his cock, which had quickly hardened again. I was stroking him, finding a rhythm aligned with my speech. He closed his eyes. I jerked him faster, repeating much of what I had just told him. I asked him a couple of times what he'd want to do with me, but he never answered, just moaned. I felt him tense and buck his hips, I knew he was about to cum. I asked him again, blowing softly into his ear, as his climax was just seconds away: "What do you want, Adam? What do you want?"

 

"I want you to fuck me!" he quickly gasped, in between groans and heavy breathing, as he sprayed the carpeted floor with volleys of thick white cum. I kissed him gently all around his neck, holding him, almost carrying him, keeping him from dropping on the floor. He had never felt lighter.

 

* * *

 

Adam had kissed me before I closed the door of my room behind us, cupping my face in his two hands and whispering sweetly "I have to see you tonight". It's only when we started walking down the stairs that I realized we probably should have come back separately; we hadn't used up the whole two hours given to us by his wife's alone time at the hands of the masseur, however, so we were most likely safe. As we arrived in the lobby, Adam walked confidently straight ahead, towards the stairs leading to his own wing, and quickly disappeared. I veered left, toward the pool. I was briefly blinded by the sun which, even if not as bright as it had been earlier, forced me to stop and adjust. The pool area was almost empty, which felt odd and a bit creepy, as I longed for noise and movements to welcome me back to reality. I couldn't see my father, though his bag and books and glasses were right where we had been sitting together earlier. I undressed and dove straight into the pool, to shake off a nagging anxiety that he had gone up to his room and had heard us.

 

I swam idly for fifteen minutes, before seeing him stroll towards me. He'd been in the gift shop of the hotel, he said, but didn't buy anything: "Nothing there that Dustin would like, I'm sure". I smiled, distracted and relieved. I looked up towards Adam's balcony, which had remained disappointingly empty since I'd been in the water. Siobhan stood there now, surprisingly, staring ahead, smoking a cigarette – something I had never seen her do before.

 

* * *

 

"Have you called your mother?" my father asked, while eyeing his full plate with both eagerness and curiosity. He had decided to forego that night any dish that wasn't typically Egyptian and had come back from the buffet with an assortment of food recommended by me or by one of the waiters with the least broken English.

 

"No, not yet. She's still in Colorado, isn't she?"

 

"I don't know. I don't think so. She went to the house last week with your aunt, but I'm pretty sure she'd be back home by now."

 

"I think she was visiting Rick and Estelle in Denver, before heading back."

 

"Oh, okay."

 

"Anyway, I'll just call her from Philly when we get home. There's nothing that can't wait, is there?"

 

"She'd just be glad to hear that everything's well."

 

"She'd hear if things weren't. No news is good news. She can relate to that."

 

My dad threw me a weary smile.

 

"When was the last time you talked to her?" he persisted.

 

"I don't know. After I got the Princeton letter?"

 

"Right. You told me she was pretty happy, right?"

 

"Well, yes." I chuckled at his efforts to put a positive spin to anything my mother did or said these days. "She didn't cry and hug me, like you did."

 

"That would be a hard thing to do on the phone, wouldn't it?"

 

"Cry?"

 

"Hug, silly you. Her mother went to Princeton, one of the very few women in those days. So the place means something special to her."

 

"I know. She said it'll have a `very positive energy' for me. And she'll send me a picture of her mother, so I can put it somewhere in my room."

 

"I think it's sweet."

 

"It is, actually." I paused for a while, realizing it was pleasant to have something nice about my mother we could agree on. "You know she broke it off with the real estate guy?" I continued.

 

"Yes, Ben," my father said. "Dustin told me, he sounded a little upset about it."

 

"Why?" The guy had been a pretentious dick, completely in love with my mother, yet so conservative, in every sense of the word, that I had never figured out what my supposedly free-spirited mother found appealing in this man (whose face I had first seen on a bus bench in an Orange County strip mall). Yet to this day, she insists on claiming that he had been one of the Seven Loves that she, along with every fellow human, is granted during our short life on this planet.

 

"I think Dustin saw some kind of stabilizing aspect to this man. He thought Barbara had been happier, more serene."

 

"She's always happy. Or always claims to be."

 

"Well, that's not the same thing."

 

"It is for her, kind of. Anyway, do we have to talk about her?"

 

"No, not really. Let's talk about you, then." He smiled, knowing that it wasn't a subject I was more prone to dwell on.

 

"There isn't much to say, really." It thought for a while, frowning. "I feel like a lot of things are now changed by the reality of my leaving for college soon."

 

"Changed how?"

 

"I don't know. It just feels like there's this whole period ahead of me where nothing really matters, since I'll be leaving everything behind soon."

 

"And that's scary?"

 

"No, not all. It's just... I don't know, odd. Nothing is suddenly of much consequence, everything is pretty much dwindling down. Like friendship and all. I mean, I like the fact that there is a strong urge or need to enjoy everything and everyone while you still have a chance to. But you're not building anything anymore."

 

"Amy hasn't come for dinner at home in a while now..."

 

"Has Andrew talked to you?"

 

"No, no, your secrets are safe with your brother. But I'm not blind, Ben, your girlfriend had been a frequent guest until, well, she wasn't anymore. Everything all right there?"

 

"Well, not really." I was tempted, for a second, to delve into details about Amy, about my cheating on her, as if disserting on everything that was still resolutely heterosexual about me would help push down Adam below a few layers of reality and bury Jason completely. But as the nature of my relationship with Tricia was fairly one-dimensionally sexual, I didn't feel comfortable expanding on her or on Amy.

 

"But, that's my point too," I continued. "I can't quite summon the energy to make things work with Amy when, in a few weeks, I'll be at Princeton and she'll be at Smith."

 

"Well, they're not that far away."

 

"Come on, Dad. It nauseates me to see and hear some of my friends swear allegiance and fidelity to each other. Like high-school sweethearts in the fifties. I know it doesn't work that way."

 

"I know. But just try not to hurt her. She might not share your cold rationality."

 

"Cold?"

 

"I don't mean it in a bad way."

 

"I don't feel cold. And I don't like when people say that. I feel hotly rational, if that makes any sense. Like I'm excited for the changes ahead, even a bit overwhelmed. I'm very ready to start the next phase, to try and see new things, new people. It's terrific and daunting."

 

My father looked a bit uneasy, or tentative. "It's wonderful, Ben. Just, you know, be careful."

 

"Says the father who pours wine red wine to his teenage son."

 

"Please. You know what I mean." He fumbled with his napkin. I thought for a moment, probably mistakenly, that his eyes were welling up as he went on: "It's just... You've got so much potential, so much going for you. And I'm so proud and excited to see how you'll turn out. It's always been my dearest wish to provide for you, I don't know, an environment within which you can blossom to your full potential. You know?"

 

"Yes, Dad, I do."

 

"It's just... Be careful. And especially, and I guess there are no other words to say this: be kind to others. Always be kind to others, Benjamin."

 

* * *

 

I was sitting in bed, in t-shirt and boxers, when Adam cautiously came through my door, which I had, again, left ajar. He and Siobhan had had a brief and quiet dinner. I had been more absorbed by my conversation with my father than the previous evenings, but Adam and I had found a few opportunities to exchange glances and some fleeting words. "Wait up for me", he had said lovingly, insistent and blushing, when he walked back from the dessert buffet and I walked to the entrees.

 

He hadn't been sitting alone by the pool when I first entered my room and checked from my balcony. But the lights that were on by my bed may have beckoned him. "It's late, I'm sorry," I told him when he softly closed the door behind him.

 

"Don't worry. I'll claim insomnia and the need to walk."

 

"How long can you stay?"

 

"I don't know. I know I had to see you".

 

He climbed on the bed and sat in front of me, gripping my calves with his hands.

 

"It's funny, you're like a drug to me", he said, looking more melancholic than amused.

 

"It's a little messed up, though."

 

"Yes, I guess," he said grudgingly. "But this is my problem. Don't let it come between us."

 

"We're both lying to people who are important to us."

 

"Yes, I know," he said, reluctant to see my point or to give it some importance. "But we can deal with that later, can't we? Right now, I really can't think of anything else than you. And believe me, for me, it's quite a rare treat to be able to just enjoy the moment." He moved one of his hand up my leg, reaching and passing the opening of my boxers.

 

I wasn't comfortable with the oblivious sweetness with which he seemed intent on enveloping us. Any explicit sign of a burgeoning romance felt brutally at odds with the reality of his predicament and especially of the short time we had together until both of us would go back to our respective countries. There was, rationally, absolutely no prospect for us to see each other again, at least not for a long time. Delving into hypothetical tender feelings, whose finality was fundamentally at odds with our situation, made those very feelings glaringly faker, inflated and hollow. A strong sexual bond, or at least an overwhelming urge to act on an intense sexual attraction, made more sense and felt like a more genuine drive to steal moments together, and make the most of them until reality took us back to our homes and to our futures. The memory of an early girlfriend telling me dryly that I was "in love with love" flashed briefly. I was just fourteen when that happened, whereas Adam was now in his late twenties. The weight of his feelings, the apparently shattering impact of our mating didn't feel quite obfuscating, but rather increasingly cumbersome, as if distracting us from the kind of sexual heights to which I was still hoping it would take us both.

 

His hand had now reached my cock, which he was gently fondling while looking at me intensely. I was growing hard.

 

"Stop", I said, trying to be as gentle as I could. "Not here."

 

"What?" He chuckled, with a hint of incredulity in his eyes.

 

"Show me how much you want me. I want to see it. I want to see it burning in your eyes. But not here. It's too safe here, too predictable."

 

"Where?"

 

"Meet me in the bathroom downstairs in two minutes."

 

"What bathroom?"

 

"Our bathroom."

 

I darted out of bed and quickly slipped in some shorts and flip flops, pushing my erection down. I grabbed my keycard and headed downstairs, soundlessly. The bathroom lights had already been switched off and when I turned them on, the orange tiles on the walls assaulted me. I took a deep breath and went to stand against the sink, facing the door, which was soon to be opened by Adam. I didn't know exactly what I'd do next; I knew I had put us, willingly if thoughtlessly, in this weird situation, in this small room which reeked of cleaning product.

 

Adam tentatively opened the door and tried to lock it behind him, but there was no key or mechanism to do so. He frowned.

 

"Stand against the door", I told him. "We should be okay. Everybody's sleeping and I haven't seen any of the staff using this bathroom."

 

He stood somewhat awkwardly, rested his back against the door, a little too forcefully. He raised a hand, gesturing me toward him.

 

I went to him, kissed him softly on his half-opened lips, then stepped back to my previous position. "Take your clothes off. I want to see you naked," I said, resolutely.

 

He complied, silently and slowly. He kicked his sandals off. Pulled down his navy blue sweatpants, lifted his grey t-shirt. He threw all his clothing on a pile, in the corner of the room. Without further nudging on my part, he slowly pulled his white y-fronts down and stepped out of them. His half-hard dick jumped out.

 

He had never looked more beautiful. The glaring light still made his body appear healthy and strong. I watched the pile of his clothes and felt fiercely turned on by the sight of his white, bunched up underwear which lay on top of his discarded sweatpants. It was intensely erotic: the physical reality of a man, of both his most intimate and most casual accessory. I flashed to a porn picture I had once seen, that of a guy sniffing a pair of undies while jerking off; it had left me cold, puzzled, and mildly grossed out. I got it now, I almost reached for them.

 

The sight in front of me was intoxicating. Adam standing naked against the door, his clothes and underwear on the floor. I was glad we hadn't stayed in my room. This was exciting, this was incredible. We were in a fucking bathroom, a man was naked with a powerful erection, white briefs were a few steps away. Everything was completely out of place, was mind-bogglingly distorted. Sex had taken over a random, public room; sex was suddenly dripping from the walls. It felt like a Dali picture.

 

"Jerk yourself off", I instructed Adam.

 

He was clearly enthralled and gave me what was obviously, but eagerly, a show. He was relaxed, he was beautiful. I had him as I had wanted him: a man, a real man, moved by a strong sexual drive, but measured and touching and sexy, and drifting away from an unhappy life.

 

His eyes were begging me to come closer, to touch him, to kiss him. I stepped towards him and slowly ran my hands over his whole body, rediscovering every inch of flesh, every patch of hair, every muscle. I kneeled and stood up and kneeled down again. I kissed his neck and his ear. I licked his inner thighs and kneaded his calves. I ran my tongue around his nipples and buried my face in his armpits. All the while, he was jerking off, keeping a slow but steady rhythm.

 

I turned him around and pressed myself against his body. I dropped my shorts to my ankles and rubbed my erection against his ass crack. I couldn't stop, I had completely lost control and restraint. I had never had anal sex before and the very idea had actually always seemed a bit uncanny. But right then, in that bathroom, standing so sweatingly close to Adam's body, my dick really felt like a magnet to his asshole, led irrepressibly and mechanically towards its opening. It was dry, though, so I spit on my fingers to lube the head of my cock. I pressed against him, mouthing huskily to his ear "I want you, Adam, I want you so bad right now."

 

There was a clenched resistance, which started to hurt a bit but didn't make my erection subside nor my intent wither. "You're so beautiful, you're so incredibly sexy", I whispered, sending shivers through his neck.

 

"Oh Ben, oooh Ben" was all he could mumble.

 

Another push didn't yield to easier entry and my inexperience left me clueless at what to do next to achieve what I so overpoweringly craved for. Adam muttered something inaudible.

 

"What?"

 

"Tell me you love me", he gasped in one breath. "Tell me you love me, Ben".

 

I froze very briefly, but an intense throbbing of my cock seemed to jolt the words out of me: "I love you".

 

And his sphincter opened. And I was in. Not completely in yet, not fully, moistly, warmly, slickly in, as I would be, a few seconds later, after I had repeated (once? twice?) the magic words that had loosened him and welcomed me.

 

But soon enough, we were having sex, we were fucking, we were actually fucking. It wasn't wholly comfortable; our standing position limited my movements and his, and the inch or two that separated the anus from my more usual point of entry were just a bit awkward. But the heat emanating from our bodies, the pulsating tension I could feel in all of Adam's body, the sheathing tightness of his ass around my cock, the tears rolling down his face to meet his smiling lips, were astonishing. I pulled back at times, just a bit, to take in the full sight of my hard cock sliding in and out of his ass, his stunning ass drawn by stark tan lines and the imprint of his speedos on his very white cheeks.

 

I was making love to Adam. I was fucking a man. The sensation was of an intensity I had rarely encountered; at that time, I actually believed it was the best sex I had ever had. I was flushed, my brain felt swelling, and every thrust sent shivering jolts of pleasure in my shaft, my scrotum, my whole pelvis. I couldn't stop looking at his sweaty back, his white ass, his quivering arms, the back of his head. I was fucking him harder and harder, panting uncontrollably. I was fucking a man. A man is an object of desire I could actually fuck, sex with a man unleashes a raw and overpowering energy: everything I had, at one point or another, vaguely envisioned but carefully suppressed, was exploding to clarity in my mind, was becoming actually and violently real.

 

I don't know when Adam came. He had come before me because, when I slowly disengaged from him, I noticed cum dripping down against the door. For most of our fucking, he had held my hand in his mouth, using his bite both to ride the pain and muffle his cries. He had only let it out a few times to say out loud "This is it, this is it." Something he had said one last time when he felt me ejaculating inside him. "This is it," he had repeated, apparently to himself, while I noticed that my hand bore the red marks of his teeth.