Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:42:50 EST From: Xtian@aol.com Subject: "The Man and the Moon"....gay male short story "The Man and the Moon" by Christian Draz Boston, MA The Man and the Moon It was a July night of surpassing mildness, one of those midsummer nights where even at the tip of Cape Cod the heat of the day settled simply into a caressing warmth rather than the usual chill rising from the surrounding water. The air was sweet and still, the night sky clear and black, its ocean profligacy of stars extinguished by a boastful moon, so passingly full of itself. Just as much as a cloudless summer's day, this was a night to turn me out of my house and urge me to the beach, to swim not in the ocean's ebb and flux but in this floodtide of warmth and moonlight. Climbing onto my bike, I pedaled north, away from the petty luminous static of Provincetown, into the dappled dark of the beech forest, and then across the cool silver of the undulating dunes. By the time I reached Race Point and the ocean's edge, I had passed into a world washed of color but aglow with lunar shimmer. Leaving my bike and shoes behind, I followed the shadow I now cast out unto the beach. The day's warmth still radiated from the sand into the soles of my feet. Ahead lay the sighing pewter sea. To the east the shingled roof and tower of the old coast guard station rose pallidly above the dunes. And over everything, sand and surf and dunes, shone a lordly, incandescent moon. A shiver of delight passed across my skin: an exquisite sense of well-being seemed all around me, as present as the warmth of the night air and the light of the full moon. Alone at the water's edge, I began walking east across the wet sand, feeling as if I were swimming slowly through the night sea of summer. A gently rhythmic surf, foaming silver and darker lead, rose, fell and withdrew. Glancing down, I smiled to see that as my feet passed through the tide-borne seaweed, they released bursts of algal phosphorescence, faint echoes of the night's greater light... Looking ahead now, I was startled to discover in the middle distance what seemed not just a flicker but a pool of phosphorescence, glowing above the moving line of surf. Concentrating my attention on this shimmering spot, it soon enough took on the more recognizable shape of a white tee shirt, allowing me to make out the body it clothed. It was another man, drawn like myself to this spot on this night. Perhaps he didn't see me, in any event he didn't move as I came towards him. Turning at last towards me, I saw the light of the moon reflected in his glasses. He was tall and his moonlit tee shirt covered broad shoulders and a full chest. As I drew closer, I could make out his dark disheveled hair and the black runner's shorts he wore. Watching me approach, he seemed to be inviting me to speak. "I guess one other man realized how magical this night would be out here," I said as if sharing an intimacy with him. A thoughtful voice replied,"Yes, I couldn't miss this. I come here so often in the day, but this...." "I know," I agreed, stopping beside him now. This said, there seemed no need to say more, and we simply stood side by side, two men watching the play of moonlight on the ocean, sharing now what we had both been experiencing alone... Then, tentatively, we edged closer until each could feel the hair on his arm grazing the hair on the other's, the subtlest of erotic frictions. Deliberately I pressed my skin against his, and felt the pressure silently returned. Can this be happening?, I asked myself, acutely alert to the sudden electric momentum of this moment, sparking within me an aurora borealis of desire. Turning at last to look at him, I saw how handsome he was, his features chiseled in deep shadow and cool glow by the raking moonlight. He turned towards me. We both smiled and as naturally as the waves breaking at our feet, began to kiss...slowly at first, then deeply. Once again I felt that sense of wonder and gratitude at another man's body, felt within my embrace the thrilling mystery of solidness made animate. My hands slipped beneath his tee shirt to find that tauter shirt of flesh beneath, smooth and warm to the touch. One hand climbed the trunk of his spine to the branching of his lats. The other pushed past the band of his shorts to clasp the flexing firmness of his gluts. Rounding the swell of his buttock, my fingers slipped into the damp trough of his ass. A groan of pleasure vibrated deep in his chest and I felt his cock swell and pulse inside his running shorts. I'd found my man out. I crab-walked the two of us up slope of the beach, hungry now to get him on drier and more level sand. Beyond the wrack line, we halted. I pulled his tee shirt up and off his torso, and hastily feasted on the cool play of light and shadow the moon cast across him. Yanking off my own shirt, I pulled him into the coarse tangle of my chest hair, scouring him with my pectorals, feeling his nipples catch and pull against my own. Sighing now with my own pleasure, I brought my mouth level with his pecs, taking one tit then the other between my teeth, gently gnawing and tugging. With my hands on his hips I slowly, happily pushed down his running shorts, releasing his cock swell from the pouch. Taking its heft in hand, within seconds it was fully engorged, rampant in the moonlight. With my free hand I pushed down my shorts, releasing my own swollen cock, glistening with precum even in this half light. Kneeling now in the sand, I grabbed his gleaming tee shirt and spread it out in the sand behind his muscled legs. "Here, sit down," I said, guiding his hips onto the shirt. Rising up on my knees, I gently pushed him back until he was stretched out on the sand, a leg on each side of me, his tee shirt cupping his buttocks. He lay beneath my gaze, naked but for his glasses that now and then flashed twin reflections of the moon. Drunk now with privilege and pleasure, I softly exhaled, "Christ, you're beautiful," as I blotted my body upon his, in a Rorschach of lips, chest, belly, and cock... Lifting my head, I whispered, "I want to be inside you." A sharp intake of breath, a momentary spasm of tension quickly followed by relaxing acquiescence was his reply. Rising up on my haunches, I leaned down to trace a path with my tongue across this moonlit geography of my lust, the bedrock gully between his pectoral muscles, the heaving quicksand of his belly, the damp thicket of his groin, the ridge and dome of his penis. I ran my tongue down the inside of his thick splayed legs which he now drew up. Spreading his thighs with my hands, I found the seam of flesh beneath his ball sack and traced it with the tip of my tongue until I felt the puckered entry to his ass. Broken moans rumbled softly from his chest as I lathered this sweet locus of converging desire, both his and mine. Pushing up his muscular thighs, I positioned my body between them. Slick with anticipation, I entered him...and entering him, he pushed out to embrace me. And the lambent world around us shrank to that sole embrace. With each thrust I felt the tension leave his body. With each thrust his hips rose from the sand to meet mine. With each thrust, he became more engorged...until that final moment when without so much as the touch of a hand, his masculinity betrayed him and surrendered his bounty. *** The moon, wearing the expression of wry and tolerant forbearance it had worn through all of human history, continued, placid, proud and imperturbable, its stately progress across the night sky. Beneath it lay two men, now at rest. And on the belly of the darker glistened a small luminous nebula of seed, above which shone a larger spray, a shimmering Milky Way of release, now spreading to conjoin with the first in an indivisible universe of pleasure.