Monday, March 26, 2007

Out of Uniform

I feel like I spend a lot of time here whining about how much time I'm spending at work these days, but, well, I do spend an awful lot of time at work these days, and it affects all the other areas of my life. Including, apparently, my ability to concentrate on and manage my schedule. I am pretty sure, for example, that I knew some time back that Saturday evening, b&c and one of his girlfriends were going to Baltimore to the opera. (The silver lining of busy season is the iron clad excuse for missing the opera. "Oh, Die Walkyrie? Really? Six whole hours of Wagner? Wow. And it's when? Oh, the end of March. On a Thursday. Oh, gosh darn it. Tax season you know. I just can't. Sorry. What do you mean you can hear the sarcasm even over the phone? Hey, I think this line's about to go...." And then, "What do you mean did I just hang up on you? I've been having a lot of problems with this phone. I think maybe it knows when I've got so much work to do that I can't be having long conversations about why I don't have six hours to sit through Wagner during tax season. Did I just say that out loud? I think you have a wrong number, sir." And then the battery on the cell phone dies. No, really.) And EFU (elder filial unit) insists that she had told me that she was going on a church retreat. And I'm sure that I did know that YFU (younger filial unit) had a ballet recital and that her mother was taking her, and that I wasn't going because I was going on Sunday. Sadly, I didn't realize any of these things until about 5:00 Saturday afternoon, at work, when it very suddenly hit me that I had a free evening.

If I'm at work, I can't get on Manhunt or any of the hook-up services that are even more sordid than Manhunt and that I may or may not know about and have used on occasion. That leaves me with gay.com and craigslist. But unless there's someone I already know on gay.com, it usually takes me a little while to find someone appropriate. And craigslist is in general a pretty slow proposition. And I really, really wanted to be out of the office by 6. And I was still trying to get some work done, so I had pretty much given up on anything less solitary than going home and spending a long time jerking off. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Especially when I haven't had much opportunity to do it lately.

But then (at about 5:40) I saw an ad on craigslist:

in need of a deep tissue massage here

need to unwind from stress
can u help out?
clean cut guy here

So I shot the guy an email, and thus began the craigslist shuffle. I emailed him, and he emailed me, and I emailed him, and he emailed me, and after just four eight twelve brief emails, I was on my way out of the office headed in the general direction of my new friend, to whom I'd given my number so that he could call with his address because he "[had] to be discrete." Normally, I would think twice about playing with someone who doesn't know the difference between "discreet" and "discrete," but, oh hell, who am I kidding? Some of the hottest sex I ever had was with a landscape architect whose vocabulary was, apparently, limited to "harder."

Anyway, he called me, and I put on my butchest voice (I'm a bass, so it's not much of a stretch; I just say less: real men grunt) and he told me that he'd already started on a glass of wine (which he'd recommended) and that he'd found the oil, turned up the heat, and darkened the room (all of which I'd recommended). And then he told me where he was and that he really appreciated my discretion because he was in the military, and he didn't normally do this sort of thing, but that he was just so very, very tense because he'd had the worst week ever. And I said "Anything I can do to support our troops." My exact words. And then I got off the phone because I'd had to pull off the road to write down the directions, and I wanted to get going again.

It is important to me that you understand that I am not making this shit up. I have, out of respect for Jim (not his real name) changed numerous details about him and about the particulars of the setting to ensure anonymity (not that I actually know his real last name or anything), but if I were making this shit up, it would a) be a lot steamier and b) end differently. I am, however, making up this next part, but only because it's easier to dramatize this way than to write out in tedious narrative. With that in mind, I invite you to imagine me driving down the highway, with a man on each shoulder.

Good Teddy (stylishly attired in a brilliantly white jockstrap and sporting a halo, tastefully covered in white feathers): You are so going to hell.

Evil Teddy (looking verrrrrry butch in a black jockstrap and carrying a riding crop): Oh god. Who invited angelboy?

GT: Dude. You are messing with a straight, military guy. Does this not set off any alarms?

ET: Alarms? Come on, this is how half of the entries in The Great Cock Hunt start, and it always works out just fine for Alex.

GT: I hate to be the one to burst your little bubble of decadence, but "Alex" makes that shit up.

ET: No way. The Great Cock Hunt is an honest look at sex among late twenty-something white men in New York City.

GT: Is not.

ET: Is too.

Real Teddy: Boys...

GT: Did you hear yourself? "Anything I can do to support our troops." You said that without evident irony!

ET: Oh, leave him alone. He does support our troops. You know that he almost cries every time they play a profile of a dead soldier on NPR.

GT: Fine. But a straight man?

ET: If he's straight, why's he on craigslist advertising for massage in the men seeking men?

GT: He didn't even know what "massage with release" is.

ET: Yeah, and I am Marie of Romania.

GT: I am not interested in your drag career. If he's straight -- and he sounded straight, Marie -- he'll be all nervous, and you'll be low-key and understanding, then he'll want the massage, and then you'll get him all relaxed, and then you'll flip him over, and he'll have wood, and then you'll engineer the happy ending, and then he'll freak out.

ET: So he's going to rub down a naked straight man and jerk a load out of him and then be home early. Where's the downside?

GT: He'll feel awful about it afterwards. Besides, he'll probably never get his on clothes -- let alone his own rocks -- off. And no kissing. He hates that.

ET: Listen, he's doing this guy a favor. He's introducing him to the fabulous world of m2m.

GT: In other words, sex with someone who has no skills and won't reciprocate. Besides, he doesn't want to be this guy's first man. He'll ruin him for everyone else.

ET: Oh yeah, because he's sooooooo great in bed.

RT: Hello! You're talking about me, and I'm right here!

ET: Whatever.

RT: And it looks like we've arrived. Listen, boys, I appreciate your input, but I did tell this guy I was going to show up, and not showing up would be rude. You hate it when I'm rude. Besides, look at this neighborhood. And there's his car.

GT: Oooooh, an Infiniti! He must be an officer!

ET: Slut.

GT: It's just as easy to fuck with the mind of a rich straight man as it is to fuck with the mind of a poor straight man. That's all I'm saying.

RT: You guys stay in the car, ok?



Jim opened his front door when I was halfway up the walk and said hello. I went in and scored some quick points by rubbing his cat the right way. He was holding on to a glass of white wine as if it were a life preserver and offered me a drink and a seat on the sofa. I sat down and asked for a glass of water, and when he came back, his cat was happily purring in my lap.

This seemed to convince him that I was an okay guy, and that was a good thing because he was extremely nervous. He looked very stiff (though I suppose that could have been his military carriage; he was just a few months shy of twenty years of service in the Air Force) and he kept talking about how nervous he was and how stressed he was. He also kept telling me what I nice guy I seemed like: he obviously needed to convince himself that this whole scene was okay. I mostly listened, stroked the kitty, asked simple questions, and gave simple replies to his questions. I was all about the non-threatening. (Which, again, is not much of a stretch. I find it much more of an effort to be threatening in situations where that will be helpful.) Eventually, he got up to get another glass of wine (his third, he said, and he was a man of slight build), and the cat jumped out of my lap. Then when he came back and sat down again, I told him to turn the other way, and I started to talk about tension and where it typically manifests itself in different parts of the body, demonstrating by lightly touching his neck, shoulders, and back.

He seemed okay with that, and he told me that it felt really good to be touched, so I kneaded his shoulders and neck for a bit longer, and he talked more about how difficult his job had been lately, and I murmured sympathetically, and he said "And they're saying I might have to go to Iraq."

Right about here I was thinking that I should have listened to Good Teddy because I was suddenly very sad and very much wanted to be somewhere else, but I wasn't raised that way, so I just said, "That's terrible. I'm so sorry." I guess that was the right thing to say because he relaxed a little bit, and after another minute or two, I asked him whether he wanted to go in the other room, and he said yes.

Truthfully, I was a little hesitant about getting him horizontal, but we'd been sitting in the living room, and it was cold in there, and he'd said the room for the massage was much warmer, and while I had some qualms about how he was going to react, my general preference for men without their clothing won out.

We went into a spare bedroom, where he had lit some candles. There was still a lot of light coming in from outside, so I drew the curtains. He asked whether everything was okay, and I told him it was. I asked him to get undressed while I went to the kitchen to get the oil, which he'd warmed slightly in the microwave. I took some time to run my hands under hot water and warmed the oil a little more so that he could get reasonably comfortable on the bed, and then I came back in.

He still had his glasses on, and I asked him if I could take them. He hesitated, but then he put them on the windowsill. He was still up on his forearms a bit, so I pushed gently on his shoulders so he would lie down, then I turned his head to the side so that it was flat on the pillow.

Then I oiled up my hands and started to work.

Considering how nervous and stressed he was, his back was really not all that tight. It was easy for me to get him physically relaxed within a couple of minutes. Mental relaxation was more elusive. He did, eventually, talk less, but the nervous chatter never entirely abated. If nothing else, he seemed to feel the need to tell me every thirty seconds how good I was making him feel. At first I just tossed it back to him with a "Good. That's how I want you to feel" or something similar, but then I just gave up. In another situation, I likely would have gotten impatient and told him to be quiet, but there is something about applying long, firm strokes to a guy's muscles that saps the impatience and tension out of me. And the more he talked me, the harder it was not to feel sorry for him. While I was still working his back I learned

  • that he had had three serious girlfriends, none of whom had worked out, and the last of whom ("she was in love with my credit card") he'd finished with about six years ago
  • that he had stopped going to family gatherings because he was tired of being asked when he was going to get married
  • that hetero sex had never done all that much for him
  • that on a couple of occasions, his married Air Force buddies had come on to him when they were drunk
  • that he jerked off "all the time"
  • that "all the time" meant twice a day
  • that he hadn't been touched by anyone in years
  • that he loved being touched

I am still not entirely sure what to make of Jim. When I was massaging him, I looked around the room, and I figured that he must have graduated from law school, and when I asked him, he confirmed that but said that what he did now was mainly administrative. I mention that only because it's hard for me to imagine that someone so well educated could be so naive about all matters sexual. I suppose that back when I was married and thought I was straight, I was somewhat naive, but I don't believe I ever achieved his level of cluelessness.

As an example, when I was just about done with his back, he told me that he needed "to go to the bathroom and urinate," and when I told him to go ahead, he got up and apologized for having an erection. And then he apologized for having very recently trimmed his pubic hair very short. He explained that I was the first guy who'd ever seen him with an erection or who'd seen him with trimmed pubes, and that he was worried that I would think it was gay. I explained to him, as gently as I could, that I was really not afraid of erect penises, trimmed pubes, or gay men, and that while I might very well be the first man to see him with wood, his was definitely not the first erection I'd seen. "But it is a very nice one," I added.

It was nice, too. Very average in terms of length and thickness, but it pointed straight up towards his face so that there was a straight line from his cockhead all the way down to his scrotum, which made it seem more substantial, especially against his very smooth body.

He seemed pleased, embarrassed, and somewhat incredulous that I thought he had a nice cock, but he came back and lay back down, and I got to work on his legs. He had thighs of steel. He told me that he used to run all the time, but that he'd gotten a herniated disk and that now his exercise was all on a bicycle. He was depressed about not being able to run, and he told me that as a result he'd started drinking a bit in the evening, and I suggested that drinking was not likely to help his depression, and he told me again what a nice guy I was.

I asked him to turn over, and I started to work on his temples. He had very soft hair, and I told him so: it seemed to make him happy. Then I started to massage his nipples and he told me that they were very sensitive. I had already figured that out from how perky they got when I rubbed them and from the little thread of precum that was leaking down onto his abdomen.

I poured a little pool of warm oil into his bellybutton and used that oil up and down his chest, working his nipples especially, and then running my hands down over his upper thighs. I sat behind his head and started to massage his arms and hands. Every so often, I would tell him something I noticed about his body, and he would be amazed. When I asked him whether he played an instrument, he asked me why, and I told him that he had musician's hands, and he told me that his grandmother used to say the same thing to him. When I told him that he was obviously right-handed, he was astounded: "You know so much about me!" He was facing away from me, so he couldn't see me roll my eyes, and I knew better than to say, "Dude. Even if one arm wasn't significantly bigger than the other, I could have said that to anyone and I'd be right ninety percent of the time."

Jim kept telling me how much he liked what I was doing to him and kept wondering what I was getting out of it -- and hoping that I was getting something out of it. I told him that I very much enjoyed massaging naked men. That's certainly true, but he said it so often that I started to wonder what I was getting out of it. But that's really never the right question when you're on the bed with a naked man. The right question is "Do I want to be here right now?" and in this case, the answer was clearly "Yes." Do my motives matter? Perhaps, but I'm pretty sure they weren't in any way malicious. I was definitely feeling sorry for him, and I was feeling needed, but I was also aroused.

There was something about massaging his hands that he found very intimate, and he started to talk more about how he felt abused by his job and isolated from his friends and, basically, that he was alone and lonely. I started to stroke his hair a little, and he told me that he had started to wonder who he would have to leave things to and how he had hoped to have children but that it seemed unlikely now. I turned him on his side and stretched out beside/behind him and wrapped my arms around him and held him very tightly and said, "You can still have children if you want. You can still do whatever you want: you just have to figure out what that is. You will be okay." I'm not sure any of that was really true, but it might be, and I mostly wanted to comfort him. Anyway, he seemed to believed me: I can be very convincing.

We stayed that way for a while, and he was quieter than he'd been, but he's definitely not the kind to just lie back and enjoy a moment. He kept telling me about how he'd been worried that this was gay, but that he didn't care any more because it felt good and how he hadn't been this relaxed in months or maybe years and so on and so forth. And I was able to just lie there and absorb it all because he felt pretty good in my arms, but then he told me that being held like this was kind of like regressing and being held by a parent, and I was all dude, you may look like a thirty-year-old twink who's spent a little too much time in the sun and got a few premature wrinkles, but you are only a couple years younger than I am, and the only people who are allowed to call me "Daddy" are my children. I didn't say any of that out loud, of course. Instead, I turned him on his back and started to play with his nipple with my left hand while my right hand stroked his cock. Regressing, indeed.

He pretty quickly grew the hell back up at that point and started talking about how much he loved what I was doing with his cock, along with how no man had ever seen him masturbate let alone jerk him off, along with how his buddies would be shocked if they could see this, along with "you won't tell them, will you?" I tugged on his balls some, and that really made him happy. It didn't shut him up, but I had stopped minding. Underneath all the insecurity and the pressure, he was a pretty decent guy, and I suppose that four decades of repression doesn't crumble without some noise.

Anyway, he was telling me (again) how good he felt, and I told him that I just hoped that he still felt this good after he'd shot his load, and he said, "Wow, you really do know me, don't you?" (Yeah, sweetie, you and every other soon-to-be-ex-straight guy in the world.) At some point, I got between his legs so that I could tug his nuts with one hand and stroke his cock with the other, and I was about to go down on him, when he asked me not to because "that would freak me out." So I didn't, but I did start to lick one of his nipples instead, and that produced an extra shot of precum.

I put him back on the side and wrapped one arm under him to play with the far nipple while the other hand stroked his cock, and I started to suck on the tops of his ears. That didn't freak him out, but it didn't do a whole lot for him, either, so I nuzzled the back of his neck, and he seemed to like that. I knew that kissing him was right out.

I had expected him to cum pretty quickly, but after a while he said that he always masturbated with Vaseline, and I asked him if he wanted some, and he leapt right out of bed to get it, handed me the container, and put his glasses on. I slicked him up well and when I started to twist my fist around his cockhead, his body got stiff and his legs spread out wide. His nuts had pulled up close to his body, and I thought that ejaculation was imminent, but while he was telling me more and more how "horny" he was, I wasn't quite able to pull his trigger. Not that we didn't both have a great time trying.

Finally, he took over, and I played with his nipples, while he stroked another half minute and pumped a huge load all over his chest and abdomen. I was pretty hard at that point, but I'd never taken off my pants, and every time his ass would press back against my cock, he'd scoot forward a little.

I had expected him to jump up and towel off and get that deer-in-the-headlights look, but he just lay there and told me that his heart was beating very hard, so I put my hand down in a puddle of semen and felt it. He finally seemed (relatively) relaxed, and we stayed in that position -- me on my side with my arms around him and my legs wrapped around his -- and talked for a good while. He asked a number of questions, and when I told him that most guys mostly wanted me to fuck them, he seemed so incredulous about the concept of anal sex generally, that I started to wonder a bit whether the whole thing was an act, but I eventually realized that he really was just that sheltered and clueless. And, kind of, sweet.

After I'd been there about 2.5 hours, in total, I mentioned that I probably did need to get going since YFU would be needing to be picked up in the next hour or so, and then he did leap right out of bed. He started apologizing and hoping he hadn't made me late, and I told him that I had my phone with me, and that I'd get a call before I needed to pick her up and that he really, really, really needed to stop worrying so much. He allowed that I was probably right.

He cleaned himself off, thanked me profusely, repeated yet again what a terrific a guy I was, hugged me a few times and saw me to the door. I got back in the car.

ET: Dude, you are so lame. Two and a half hours, and you didn't even fuck him.

RT: Some people would just say "hello."

GT: Don't listen to him. That wasn't lame; it was sweet. And he didn't want to be fucked.

ET: Oh please. Did you see his legs fly out? At least tell me that you're going to fuck him soon. Give that boy two years, and he'll be the biggest bottom in the uniformed services.

RT: Very likely, but I won't be the one to take him there.

GT: Because you have morals!

ET: Because you are lame.

RT: Maybe you're both right. Maybe it seems like it's more effort than it's worth. Maybe it's just that when that guy gives it up, it's going to rock his world, and I don't want to be the one to pick up the pieces.

GT: Maybe that's a mixed metaphor.

RT: Maybe.

ET: And kind of trite.

RT: Undoubtedly so.

GT: So are we happy or are we sad?

RT: We are happy that he had a good time and that we made someone feel better. We are sad that he might be going to Iraq. We are happy that we met a good person. We are sad that he is very fucked up. We are happy that he came like a geyser and that when we get home we will likely do the same.

ET: We are not amused by your use of the first person plural. And why you gotta think so much?

RT: Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, baby.

ET: Anyway, happy, sad, blah, blah, blah, the only question that really matters is, "Are we getting a cheeseburger?"

Oh, hell yes.

1 comment:

S.B. said...

ET and RT sound like very good conversationalists (is that a word?). Nice story.