Author’s Note: We are getting there, we are getting there, but we have some secrets to reveal first. Many gay men, probably most, have had intimate experience with women. These two are no exception. Both have always been chick magnets – with twists.

Gay Jocks and Girlfriends

Taking the turnoff for the gas station, the air between them crackled with sexual energy. As he pulled into the left turn lane in front of the gas station, before them to the east, a long, two-lane road went straight to the horizon and the Sierra Nevadas beyond. Nathan had to wait a few seconds before pulling into the place. Next door was a McDonalds. Across the street was a Wendy’s and a Texaco. Behind them was the freeway. It was typical, tasteless America – “Get your gas, sugary snacks, alcohol, and fat-fried carbohydrates here!”

When they got out, Nathan gave Adrian a twenty and moved to the pump to use his ATM card. Adrian went in. It took some time to fill both tanks, for his twenty gallon auxiliary tank was bone dry. Long before he was done, Adrian returned with his coffee and a bag of snacks and drinks. He told Nathan that they said the bathrooms were out of order, so he was going over to the McDonald’s to piss. He returned just as Nathan finished filling the tanks. Since the station was suddenly busy, and cars were waiting for a pump, he moved his truck over to the shady side of the building, and then he himself went to the McDonalds to relieve himself while Adrian “watched the gear.”

Rejoining him, Adrian commented, “Wow, it sure gets hot in the truck as soon as the air-conditioning is off.”

He handed Nathan the bag of food he’d bought. He said, “You didn’t specify, so I just got whatever. I put some more Gatorades in the cooler. I got some milk too.”

Nathan nodded at that. “I bet you got used to the heat, riding in the southwest, huh?” He inspected the haul. He saw Corn Nuts, a couple of Hershey’s chocolate bars, and a couple of bags of trail mix that looked healthy. Nathan had not eaten Corn Nuts in years. He had liked them as a kid, so he opened a bag, and had some. They were crunchy, salty, and delicious. He remembered why he had liked them.

About the heat, Adrian carried on, “Fuck yeah I did. You get so it doesn’t even matter. You learn to ‘wear’ the heat. That’s what I call it. One time, in the ‘Four Corners’ area… You know where that is?”

“Yeah. It’s where Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, but anyway?”

“No, it’s Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, but anyway, I was in the middle of nowhere man, and I was just about out of water. It was so beautiful, just beautiful there! The sand and mountains were all these shades of gold, pink, orange, and this almost red color, but like rust, you know? And the feeling of space! It was glorious! I was on this little road. It was pretty well paved; that’s why I took it, but I had not seen any signs of people, and there had been no cars for, like, an hour, and I was actually starting to worry, looking down the road, I was feeling I was heading into a ‘death ride.’ That’s what we call a really grueling ride. So I was riding along, and I felt my sweat drying before I sweated, so it was over a hundred twenty, and I felt it then. That shadow. It was a premonition. I slowed down. I sipped my last water. I was debating: Should I wait till evening to ride when the desert cooled off? Should I keep going? Should I head back? Well, I stopped to tie one of my t-shirts on my head. That’s my cotton one. They say ‘cotton kills,’ but cotton is better in the heat than synthetics, I think.”

He looked at Nathan to see what he thought, opening a bag of Corn Nuts too.

“Yeah, I agree. A lot of sports clothing promo is just hype, but anyway?”

“Well, I saw this vehicle in the far distance, and I watched and watched. This was before I endoed over that baby’s head – that’s a rock, about the size of, well, a baby’s head! – and smashed my glasses, so I could see it was a blue pickup with plywood sides around the bed, and I waved at them, but the guy had already been slowing. It was full of Indians, front and back. A whole family, mom, dad, kids, grandma, grandpa, grandkids. They all stared at me. The driver said, ‘You know you’re on the Navaho Rez, right?’ He was not accusing, but he kinda had a warning tone. I told him, ‘No. I do know it’s very peaceful, and the desert is beautiful, and I just felt like something would happen if I took this road.’ The grandma was nodding at that. He asked me, ‘You got water?’ I told him, ‘Not enough. Is it better to go forward or back?’ He said it was about the same. So that was one of those eighty mile stretches with no water. Well, they gave me some water. I filled up all my bottles. Then, thoughtless me! I asked him, ‘But you have enough water, don’t you?’ He said they had enough, but he told me that people around there had to haul water in. There was no water at their house! He showed me the tanks in his truck. They all acted like they had all the time in the world, just stopped in the middle of the road. He had me drink as much water as I could and told me to try to stay relaxed and not ride hard. He even let me soak my headdress. He told me that there was a road about forty miles ahead, on the right, and down that road were some houses, and they had a well. They would share water, and to say that ‘Blue Jay Joe’ sent me.”

“Interesting!” Nathan exclaimed, lost in his story, had made no move to drive off. It was then about three in the afternoon. He was enjoying his Corn Nuts too.

Adrian asked him, “So are we gonna go?”

Jogged into action, realizing that Adrian was rather hypnotic in his tales, he said, “Yep. We’re going to have to make tracks now. Not even time to stop to eat if we want to make camp before dark, and we’ll be pushing it. So? Carry on!”

Nathan started the truck. He remembered how as a kid, the other nice thing about Corn Nuts was the tall, narrow bag allowed one to pour the crunchy snack bits into ones mouth. They were good driving food. Nathan usually did not like to eat and drive. He was fussy about all his vehicles and disliked the mess that eating and driving brought to them. Ignoring all that, he pulled out onto the road and was soon on the freeway.

Adrian continued with his story. “So it was a beating, that ride. I trusted that I’d have water, so I drank and drank all that water he gave me, timing it so I would run out in the forty mile stretch. It was flat, but it was fuck hot! It turned out that the road he told me about went all the way to the horizon, and it was dark by the time that I came to these houses in the middle of emptiness. They were little stucco places with old cars and shit around, and something that looked like a meeting place, and there were people out front, and boy did they stare at me? I asked a woman where I could buy water, and told her ‘Blue Jay Joe’ said to ask, and she just stared and stared, but when I said ‘Blue Jay Joe,’ her eyes lit up. She said, ‘Blue Jay Joe?’ Then she fired off all this talk to a little kid in what I learned was Navajo. She did not even speak English! And this kid ran off, and we all just stood there, staring at each other until this big, tough looking guy came over from one of the houses, and he told me they didn’t get visitors much. He said he would give me some water, but if I was gonna ride in the desert, I’d need a trailer to haul water. He said that’s what other cyclists did. But of course, I didn’t have a trailer, but I did have some money that I’d earned helping load hay bales at the last ranch I’d stopped at, so I asked him where the nearest bike shop was, and they all thought that was pretty funny! But he told me he thought one of his friends might have a bike trailer in his shit because he had a bunch of bike stuff, but I’d have to wait ’till morning. But, anyway, he invited me over and they they fed me chili beans and frybread. You ever have frybread?”

“Indeed I have, Adrian, and when we get to camp, I’ll make you some!”

“Oh good! Man, that was the best bread! So, anyway, I was in their house, and there was an old woman who was weaving this blanket, and it was one room, but there was a bedroom for the parents, and it had an outhouse, and a hand pumped well, and that water was SO delicious! It was cold! And there were always these kids coming in and out to look at me and talk in Navajo. It’s a pretty language! Like, everything rhymes, and it has these rhythmic patterns! I slept on the floor with them with my pad and sleeping bag. They had all these bedrolls themselves. It was great! And the next day we went to one of the other houses, and oh yeah! They all woke up early, like at three, and bunch of men took off. They all washed their hands and faces in the same bucket. They raised sheep. That’s what they did. They made wool. That’s what they used for the blankets, and they made a lot of money from those blankets. That’s what the kids said. I was always playing with the kids. They were so cute! I played soccer with them, and catch, and hide and seek; oh, all sorts of stuff. The desert hides a lot of life. There are all kinds of critters, and they were always catching them and showing me. But, anyway, in the morning we went to this other house, and sure enough, this guy had, like, ten beat up old bicycles and sure enough, a BoB Trailer. You know what that is?”

“Yeah. It’s a single wheel trailer, ‘Beast of Burden,’ they named it. They are good on rough roads.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Good on ‘single track’ as we call it. But it was broken, and it needed a weld, and that took another day, and that’s when I learned about ‘Indian time.’ You ever heard of that?”

“Yes. It means you have to be patient. It happens when it happens. We are on Indian time, you and I. Right now.”

“Adrian grinned. “Except we are in a bit of a hurry.”

“Indians can definitely move quickly when they are chasing the sun, and we are.”

The traffic was fairly light and fast moving, so Nathan was able to do seventy-eight miles per hour. One time a highway patrolman had told him that it was precisely nine miles an hour above the speed limit that got their attention.

“OK then, Nathan. Anyway, so I was asking, ‘What can I do to help?’ And they said, ‘You can play with the kids,’ So I played with the kids. But the kids had their little chores, so I did that with them. Finally, the guy who had the welding equipment came in, and he said they’d look at in the morning, and there was this one girl, older you know? A teenager? And shes was always near, but kinda distant, watching. And in the evening, after dinner, I was out back with the kids. It was still light out, and the sky was beautiful, and I could hear all these little animals in the scrub, waking up and getting busy. They do that in the desert, you know?”

Nathan had finished his snack. He crumpled up the bag and put it in the trash bag behind the seat without looking and sipped his coffee. He nodded his understanding of desert fauna.

Adrian continued, “So this girl who had been watching me, she sat next to me and told me her name was Rose. She was seventeen, she said. She looked like an Indian from a movie. Very regal. And she had the softest, sweetest, highest voice. We talked about life there. She was learning to weave from her grandmother, she told me. Her mother had died, and her father was ‘gone.’ She asked me if thought she was pretty, and I told her I thought she was beautiful and I liked her voice and she smelled good. So, anyway, she just went inside and got some blankets, and when she came out she just took my hand and we walked out into the desert. It was dark then. She took me to this spot in the scrub where it was flat and sandy, and we had bushes all around us, so it was private, and we made love. Just like that. Without a word. She wanted me to just fuck her. No foreplay other than a bit of naked snuggling. She laughed when I tried to kiss her, like I was being silly, but she liked to nuzzle and snuggle. She had the most beautiful smooth, brown skin.

“She wanted my baby, Nathan.”

“Wow. Just, ‘Wow.’”

Adrian nodded. “When we were done, she patted her belly and smiled at me. I told her that if she had a child that looked like me, that she must let me know. The next day, I made sure she had my family’s contact information. But the funny thing is, no one said anything. Everyone knew, and no one cared. If anything, they liked me better. It’s a different culture.”

“That was great, Adrian. So you got that BoB trailer working?”

“Yeah. It took a bit of tweaking. It had a twist in it, and we had to cannibalize a broken, kid’s bike for another axle, but we got it working and got it attached to my bike. I traded them my tent, and they gave me a nice, light tarp to use instead, but I think they just took my tent because they did not want to insult me. It was OK. The kids liked it when I set it up for them to play in, so they all agreed it was a good trade. It was a good thing I saved my money too, because I had to buy a new wheel after I crashed on the way into Arizona!”

“But you got rid of that trailer along the way? I mean, you obviously don’t have a trailer.”

“Yeah, once I was across the Mojave and in Indio, California at this bike shop, I sold it to a guy for two hundred bucks! He was kind of a dick, so I don’t feel bad, but he needed it to get through the desert. Anyway, I needed the money to finish the trip, and by then, I was traveling really light. If I did another long trip, I’d use a trailer. I’d get a different one though. There’s a better BoB trailer that has a spring loaded wheel. But trailers are cool. They make your bike handle better. With loaded panniers, your super light and agile bike just feels like a pig, and it’s really hard on tires and wheels. Road geeks will disagree, but that’s what they do; they endlessly debate everything, and they are extremely status conscious and materialistic, always bragging about their shit, like, ‘My shit is better than your shit,’ or ‘Oh, if only I had that shit over there!’ I was that way when I started too, but I lost that. It’s all shit, Nathan, just shit!”

It was an accomplished fact. Nathan was in love.

“That’s what Brian said too, Adrian, near the end. He would love you!”

“I’d love it if you told me about him, Nathan, I mean, this trip is – for you – in his honor, right?”

“It is, Adrian. It is, and I will tell you about him, but will you finish your story about Diane first? You said you and her got ‘kinky,’ and then you went off on another story, which was just great, but Diane?”

“Oh yeah. I got side-tracked. That’s pretty funny, what happened. Like I said, we talked about stuff, so I told her I had tried sticking a carrot up my ass, and I did not like it one bit! One of my books said anal could be great, and I tried to get her to use her fingers, and I wanted to do her, but she would have nothing to do with that! So we cooled it on the sex for a while, but then, one day, she told me when I came over after school that she had a present for me, and she pulled out these dildos! She got three! She said, ‘big, bigger, and biggest!’ But it was more like ‘small, medium, and large!’ So I took them home and practiced, using one of my books, and I finally managed to get to the point where my ass relaxed and it felt really good! I also practiced cock sucking. My books said there was a trick to swallowing cock, and I practiced until I could sometimes do it without gagging. I got a lot of mileage out of those sex toys, Nathan! It was all I had, but I figured that when I finally did it with a guy, I would not be a complete idiot. Did you do that kind of stuff?”

“No, but I worked my way up from little dicks to big dicks as I grew up, doing it with guys who were the same age with pretty much the same equipment. I was a little guy compared to other guys until I was about sixteen, and then I had a huge growth spurt.”

“I was the same way! Like, when I was fourteen, I still didn’t have pubic hair. I was pretty shy then, in the showers. Were you?”

“Not really. It was the highlight of my day. I didn’t give a shit. My dad told me that guys who grew up slowly lived longer. I could talk about things like that with my dad. Plus, I had learned that there were plenty of guys who liked what I had down there, so I had self-confidence that way. Whenever any of the guys would point out how I was dinky-dicked, I’d just shake my head, like, ‘Get a life, you pervert!’”

“That’s great. I never could talk about that with my dad, and certainly not my mom!”

“But anyway, Diane?”

“Oh yeah! Well, Diane also bought herself a toy, and that was a strap-on!”

“Hilarious! Oh, do tell!”

The traffic was then becoming more congested. Nathan was not taking the fastest route through Sacramento because he liked the drive on the 99. Also, there a place he wanted to point out to Adrian.

Adrian, contining, cackled cackled at the memory. “Well, OK, when she showed me that, she was all, ‘You wanna get fucked by a chick?’ Oh, I wanted that! But I asked her, will you let me fuck your ass too? But she said, ‘No, but I will let you suck my ‘dick’ if you wear make-up and dress like a girl!’”

“Oh, HO! Kinky! So? Did you do it?”

“Fuck yeah I did it! We planned it for, like, a week! I put together an outfit for her using some jeans I had outgrown, and she put one together for me. "

“Did you have longer hair then?”

“Yes. My hair was longer than hers. She had gone for a more ‘butch’ look then, and she had a sports bra that flattened her boobs, and she wore those pants, a loose t-shirt, and a baseball cap, and she looked like a really cute boy, but you should have seen how I looked when she put make up on me! I was more fem looking then, too. I was sixteen, but I could pass for fourteen, and she dolled me up in a black bra, stockings with garter straps, a frilly dress, but the panties didn’t work. My junk just flopped out, so I just went bare assed under the dress. We totally ‘camped it up,’ like you said, really pretending she was a boy and I was a girl, and her strap-on was kinda short and thick. It was black and shiny. So I sucked her ‘dick,’ and she fucked my ass! I had to get her to go easy! She was awfully excited, but the way those strap-ons are made is so they push back into the clit, you know, and dude! She got off! It was the first time I had given her an orgasm with me, so that was cool, really cool. I didn’t come though. And I left it that way. I pretended to be a girl who had gotten a guy’s rocks off without coming herself. It was OK. And she liked that. She said I was a ‘good sport.’”

“That’s a great story, Adrian. Really a jewel. So even though you’ve never had sex with a guy, you’ve actually had totally gay sex.”

“Yeah. That was totally gay sex.”

“So how long were you two together?”

“Almost to the end of high school. She finally got a girlfriend, and I started hanging out with Stan again, who by that time was finally feeling lonely, and he actually tried to not be a dick, and we really started to get serious about our ride across America, training a lot, putting together the gear, and saving our money. He got work at the airport washing private planes. He was also learning to fly, so that paid for his lessons and allowed him to save. Those guys who have private planes can be very generous with young guys who are learning to fly. He got lots of flight time and fat tips.”

“Yeah, I hear you. If you got a plane, you ain’t poor, and there has always been a tradition in the male tribe for older guys to help out younger guys, gay or straight.”

“Yeah,” Adrian agreed, looking at Nathan with a subtle, half-smile.

It was an interesting look. Nathan thought. Mysterious!