Piper and Alph
© 2007 by Anel Viz. All rights reserved.
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3. Undressed
Alph slept till almost ten Friday morning, long after Piper had left. He didn’t hear him puttering around the room as he got dressed. He awoke feeling fine. Barely a trace of the symptoms that had plagued him for the past two days remained. He phoned Piper at work to give him the good news.
“So you think we’ll be able to go after all?”
“I’m sure of it. Where will we go?”
“We can discuss that when I get back. We wouldn’t leave till tomorrow morning anyway. And you may relapse. Take care of yourself. Don’t go running around, and don’t go making dinner either.”
“I was thinking of taking you out to eat. Somewhere nice.”
“Sounds good.”
“But I’ll have to make reservations. When will you be home?”
“Five-thirty at the latest.”
On his friends’ recommendation, Alph reserved a table at one of the classiest French restaurants in town, so they dressed for the occasion in sports jackets and ties. They ate by candlelight and shared a bottle of wine.
“Romantic?”
“Yes, but intimidating too. What am I supposed to do with all these forks?”
“Ignore them.”
“And eat with my hands?”
“The waiter will take them away and bring a new one with every course.”
“But they’re clean! I hope they share their tips with the dishwashers if they give them all that extra work.”
“Ever the practical egalitarian. So, where are we going tomorrow?”
“There’s a state park a couple of hours’ drive away that runs along the shore. Some beautiful nature trails, good birding, very peaceful.”
“Swimming?”
“A quick dip in and out. The water’s too cold for more than that.”
“I think I know which one you mean. You know, I lived here for eight years and never got around to going there. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Have you been there much?”
“I try to get there a couple of times a year.”
“I was hoping to take you somewhere you’ve never been before. Somewhere neither of us has been.”
“Well, I’d like to be able to show you around too, and you know the city already. It hasn’t changed that much.”
“No, it hasn’t really. More cars, taller trees.”
“And the park has a nude beach now.”
“Ah! Scenery.”
“Not official, but it’s tolerated. Everyone knows about it, and the park rangers leave you alone. It’s a popular spot, and they’d have to lease a convoy of paddy wagons if they wanted to arrest everybody.”
“Has anyone ever been arrested there?”
“Not that I know of, and it’s been a nude beach for years. For littering or gathering firewood they might, but not for bounding around in the buff. Now if they caught anyone having sex that would be another matter, but it’s not that kind of nude beach. It’s a mixed crowd. Coed, some kids too, but the gays tend to hang out at one of end of it.”
It struck Alph that Piper was playing it safe again. Public nudity would fill in for the barrier of distance and a bad cold. “So we’ll be having a closer look at each other.”
“Not so close as afterwards, when we check for ticks.”
“Ticks?”
“’Tis the season.”
“And we get to pull them out too? That’ll be a new thrill for me.”
“You don’t have to pull them out, just pick them off. It takes a tick a couple of hours to dig its way in.”
“Live and learn. How close do you have to check?”
“Pretty damn close. They’re hell to get out once they’ve burrowed their way in, and they carry some nasty diseases. But they’re pretty easy to see if you’re not too hairy.”
“Except in those nooks and crannies.”
“All of ’em. I had one in my belly button once. Dug its way in among all those damn curlicues and had the feast of a lifetime. I couldn’t get a grip on it until it had swelled up and by then it just wouldn’t let go. The doctor painted all this nasty stuff on it and it just wiggled its legs in protest. He had to cut it out.”
“Can we change the subject now? They’re bringing our food.”
When they got home Piper said, “I’d like to take your picture.”
“I think we’ll be taking plenty of pictures tomorrow.”
“But you won’t be wearing a tie. I think you look nice in a tie.”
“I could bring one with me and wear just that.” But he stood for a picture. Piper took several with his digital camera, then transferred them to his computer to see which had come out best.
“Let me take some of you too. I forgot to bring a camera, so you send me the ones I like as attachments.”
“I don’t photograph well.”
“Fine. Then they won’t go in the book. I’d still like to have a couple for myself.”
Piper acquiesced, but he was ill at ease in front of a camera and looked it in the photos, so Alph hung on to the camera and eventually came up with a few good shots by snapping candids as he puttered around the house. The best of them, Piper taking off his tie and jacket, were really quite charming.
“The beginning of a strip tease.”
“That would be the only part worth watching. I really hate looking at myself in photos.”
“Promise you’ll send me these anyway.”
“Do I have to?”
“If you want your camera back.”
“Then I promise.”
Alph yawned as he handed him the camera. “It’s later than I thought,” Piper said, “and you’ve been ill. We spent a long time over dinner. I’m used to eating quickly, and didn’t realize how long it took. I can’t remember when I last had a meal like that. It was excellent. Thank you.”
“And I suppose we’ll want to make an early start of it too, won’t we?” Alph picked up his pillow to headed for the sofa.
“Wait a minute,” Piper interrupted, “you’re sleeping here tonight. I don’t want any chance of a relapse.”
“I’m fine; you can see that for yourself. Besides, this is your house and I am not going to let you spend another night on the sofa.”
“Well, you’re not going to sleep on the sofa either.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than they realized what that meant. Their talk came to a dead halt, and the hush was so complete you’d have thought they had stopped breathing. Those ten seconds of silence seemed like minutes.
Alph spoke first. “Then we both sleep in the bed... together. You’re not afraid of catching whatever it was I had?”
“I probably caught it already, and if I haven’t caught yet, I’m not going to. But do you mean it? Would you really sleep with me?”
“Why not? We’ll being sharing a bed at the motel anyway. You weren’t planning on our taking separate rooms, I hope.”
“Most motel rooms come with two beds.”
“Yes, but one of them is for our packs. Cheap motel rooms never have a convenient place to stow your suitcases.”
They stood across the bed from each other, not sure what their next move should be, much less how to make it. Both felt a faint stirring in the groin that resisted becoming an erection, as they had when they looked at the photos together a couple of nights before. Should they kiss? It seemed too precipitous. After all, they had agreed to no more than sharing a bed.
“Let’s undress in the dark and save the revelations for tomorrow,” Piper said, and switched off the light.
They’d been in bed only a couple of minutes when Alph’s boyfriend rang his cellphone to check up on him. “I called a couple of times earlier and kept getting your voice mail.”
“I turned it off. We were at a restaurant.”
“So you’re better now?”
“Yeah, the cold only lasted two days.”
“So you’ll be taking that trip?”
“It looks like it. I’m glad you got through to me since it just hit me that you might not be able to over the weekend. We’re going to a park and I’m not sure I’ll pick up a signal there.”
“Your boyfriend?” Piper whispered. Alph nodded, and Piper sensed his gesture, but in the dark he couldn’t tell if he moved his head up and down or side to side.
“So you’re back to sleeping on the sofa.”
“Not yet. He won’t let me. Says he’s afraid I’ll relapse.”
“Have you taken over his bed completely then?”
Alph hesitated. “Well... no, not completely.”
“Oh, I see. Did I interrupt anything?”
“No, you didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Would I have interrupted anything if I’d called an hour later?”
“I honestly don’t know. Why don’t you call back in an hour and find out?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Not what? Call back or find out?”
“Call back and find out that way.”
“Would you want me to tell you if something happens?”
“With all the sordid details?”
“No. Just whether or not anything happened.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask, because I won’t lie to you.”
“I know you won’t. But if I don’t ask, how will I know if nothing happens?”
“You won’t. Consider it a trade-off. Look, if you don’t want me to do anything, just say so.”
“I don’t want to tell you what to do. Would you tell me what to do?”
“I guess not. Whatever happens, you know I love you, don’t you?”
“I love you too.”
Alph sighed as he reached over to lay the phone on the night table. “Your boyfriend?” Piper asked again.
“Couldn’t you tell?”
“Is he jealous?”
“Hard to say. Well, yes, he is, at least a little, but it’s hard to tell how much. Are you?”
“Of the two of you? What a question! Of course not, no more than I am of any couple lucky enough to be in a relationship, but that’s not the same kind of jealousy. I’ll admit I’m more than a little envious of him, but I’m not jealous.”
“The gentleman doth protest to much.”
“Not as much as I’d protest if you tried anything.”
Thus his half of the conversation had brought their whole flirtation game out into the open and one step beyond, while at the same time putting the kibosh on anything happening that night.
They moved closer together in their sleep and woke up in a bit of a tangle, both opening their eyes at the same time. The sun was just starting to rise.
“Oh, that is nice!” Alph’s morning erection was pressing into Piper’s hip.
“It won’t be for long. I’m about to get up and piss it all away.”
They had their first real look at each other in the morning light. After avoiding it for so long, they found they didn’t feel at all self-conscious about standing in front of each other in all their middle-aged glory, totally exposed. In retrospect it seemed inconceivable that two committed naturists should have spent four days alone together swathed in all that unnecessary fabric.
Piper stood at the foot of the bed, held his arms out at shoulder level, palms up, and turned slowly in place; then he dropped his arms to his sides and said, “I told you you’d be disappointed.”
Alph wasn’t looking for eye candy. He found little basis for Piper’s constant denigration of his physique, though it did not bear much resemblance to what the word suggests to most of us. That is not to say he was all skin and bones. Undressed, he offered no surprises. As Alph expected, the fellow had no meat on him to speak of besides the meat that hung between his legs, of which there was goodly, if somewhat skinny, portion, and it was not at all unattractive. It fact, its thinness may have made it look longer than it actually was.
But it was his body as a whole, not his penis, that Piper deemed less than satisfactory. There was something marionette-like about the way his arms and legs attached to his body. They weren’t sticks; you could see the muscles on them, although they were thin and stretched out. There wasn’t much tone to his skin, but it was smooth, unwrinkled, almost unblemished and, compared to his free-swinging member, did not hang loose on him at all. True, his ass was not exactly a selling point, but he wasn’t knock-kneed or anything, his posture was good, and his relative hairlessness a definite plus.
“You look fine,” Alph told him. “If I wanted some macho guy like one of those in the book, I’d have no trouble hunting down his phone number in the personals.”
“I was always the scrawny kid on the block. It didn’t matter how much I ate or how much I exercised, so I thought, ‘Why bother?’ Exercising, I mean. I always enjoyed eating.”
“Consider yourself lucky you never had to diet. It’s one of life’s greatest displeasures.”
Alph could have afforded to lose a few pounds, but was not overweight. His shock of white hair looked no less impressive seen against an expanse of pale skin. His chest and arms could have used a lot more muscle. Compared with Piper’s waggling dangle, his cock after urination appeared modest and compact, but Piper had felt the proof that it was capable of an impressive growth spurt. (That is, he knew it was prone to growth and could guess about the spurt.)
If Alph had a strong point, it was probably his legs. He used to cycle when he was younger, and had been quite the ballroom dancer too, but where he lived now the traffic was too heavy to take pleasure in his bicycle and ballroom dancing had gone out of fashion. Even when he’d danced regularly he was good ten years younger than most of his partners, and the elderly ladies who continued to show up at the clubs looked too creaky for him to swing around with impunity. Jogging bored him, but he still enjoyed a nice stroll when he had the time, and his thighs and calves had lost little of the shape and tone they had a quarter century before.
In short, what they displayed were two satisfactory, middle-aged male bodies adequately equipped with all the necessary parts, and if neither exuded an erotic power that would cause the typical gay libido to burst into flame, they were not disappointed. Had they had the bodies of scarecrows, however, several months of sexual innuendo alone would have sufficed to set their hearts a-ticking like the Tin Woodsman’s, not with love, though there was a real affection between them, nor with lust, but with a less imperious urge that promised delights no less intense, but which they could control. They felt as if they had passed through a porous wall standing between them and could pursue without inhibitions a flirtation which was no longer just a flirtation and which they would have been content to extend indefinitely, taking pleasure in making the uncertainty of the outcome exquisitely unbearable for the other man and for himself.
If they had thrown themselves into each other’s arms then and there, they would have made their voyage of discovery anti-climactic as well as post-climactic, so they dressed and packed, assuming a sober, businesslike air. When they reached the door, however, before heading for the car Piper asked, “A kiss before we leave?” And they kissed, using just enough tongue to totter on the fence that separates passion from innocence.
They drove to the park each with a hand immobile on the other’s knee, giving no more than an occasional gentle squeeze and never allowing it to creep above the lower thigh or brush the inside of the leg. They were having too much fun toying with the promise of sex to come (an implicit promise at best), so after checking into the motel and pointedly throwing both packs on the same bed, they put off the nude beach for the following day and went on a long hike in the woods. Why rush things?
They set out holding hands, but when the trail became arduous they let go and walked side by side. Sooner than waste their breath on banter, they stopped talking altogether. Their reluctance to play sexual mind games laid to rest, another kind of inhibition rose between them, this time more a question of vanity. It was strenuous going for men their age, and they worried about inadvertently pushing the other beyond what was good for his health, but saying anything might imply that he himself wasn’t up to it and didn’t want to let on, so they pushed on though they would have preferred to stop and take a break. Fortunately, they both had the stamina to handle it, or they might have killed themselves. If either had known what the other was thinking they might have simultaneously dissolved into uncontrollable giggling at the realization that their minds had been chugging along on the same track almost from the moment they finally laid eyes on each other. To say “A penny for your thoughts” would have been a waste of good money. They would have discovered they’d purchased what was already theirs.
They stopped to rest by a stream halfway up a hill. They’d been walking for close to three hours. Piper threw himself back against a massive tree trunk and remained leaning against it. Alph sat down on a stone to take a pebble out of his shoe. The shoe back on his foot, he got up and strode up to Piper till their noses were almost touching, placed his hands on his shoulders and pressed him back against the tree, looking deep into his eyes. Piper let his jaw fall open in expectation of a kiss, but Alph smiled broadly and said, “I’m having a wonderful time.” Then he let go.
“You bastard,” Piper pouted.
Alph turned suddenly and pressed his mouth to his for a deep kiss, but he held him by the wrists to keep his hands from wandering. Piper’s fingers clenched and unclenched in their desire to dig into Alph’s shoulders with his arms wrapped round his back, then went limp as Alph prolonged the kiss till they were almost out of breath. “Thirsty?” he asked.
“I’ve a bottle of water in my pack. Didn’t you bring any?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I knew that.”
Alph turned to pick up his pack for a swig of water, and Piper made a playful grab for his ass. He caught the movement through the corner of his eye, jumped out of the way, and slapped his hand. “You naughty man, you! What ever were you thinking?”
“That we should roll naked in the poison oak and get it over with.”
“That would put an end to it, wouldn’t it? Do you think we ought to turn back now? How many miles do you think we’ve come?”
“There’s another trail at the top of the hill that cuts back to the car. It’s maybe a mile longer that way, a mile and a half at most, but we won’t see the same things we saw on the way out.”
“Trees are trees, but it’s your call, buster. Don’t think you can outwalk me.”
By the time they made it to the car they were dragging their feet and ached all over. By a quarter to three they were back at the motel. “Oh, my four pussies!” Alph moaned.
“Your what?”
“Translated, that’s ‘my poor foosies’.”
“Blisters?”
“It doesn’t feel like it, but I pounded the hell out of them. Why didn’t you warn me? I would have worn hiking boots instead of sneakers.”
First they checked each other for ticks. They were sweaty and smelled of salt. Piper found two right away, which he picked off and dumped in the toilet, but Alph found none.
“Look harder. I always have ticks.”
“Well, I don’t see any on the surface, and we didn’t bring a magnifying glass. Am I supposed to check in all the cracks and crannies too?”
“Why not? The last place I want one to lodge is in the folds of my pucker.”
“Then turn around and spread ’em.”
He ran a fingertip down the hairs in his cleft without touching the skin, then crawled around to the other side of him and gently moved his scrotum from side to side, peering with exaggerated intensity in the forking where his legs joined, lifted his penis to look underneath, and even pulled back his foreskin to make doubly sure. “Oh, dear,” he muttered shaking his head.
“Oh my God, not there!”
“Not a one,” Alph said, and he rolled it back into place, looked up, and blew him a kiss.
Next they took long, hot showers (separately) to melt away the cramps, then exchanged half-hour foot massages, continuing up the calf to below the knee, till their muscles felt like butter and the soles of their feet as if they’d never been walked on. They thanked each other with a peck on the lips and stretched out side by side for a short nap. When they felt sufficiently rested, Piper pulled a deck of cards from his pack, and sitting face to face on the bed, they played a few rounds of strip poker in reverse to get slowly back into their clothes, and as soon as the loser was decent they put on their shoes and drove to a promontory to watch the sunset. On the way out Alph put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and exclaimed, “Hell! We forgot to take pictures!”
“Tomorrow, amigo.”
For supper they ordered out for pizza. The delivery boy was so nonplussed to see a man answer the door wrapped only in a towel and another man sitting naked up in bed behind him that he took a step back, and Alph had to reach out to take the pizza from him. “Come a step or two closer, honey,” he said. The look of panic that came over the boy’s face was so comical it cracked him up. Then he assumed a serious expression and added, “If I have to stretch out any further to hand you the money the towel’s going to fall off.”
The kid thanked him for the generous tip and ran for the car. Piper was laughing so hard he was afraid he’d choke, and the tears streamed down his face. “You wicked man! Who gave you permission to hit on anyone but me?”
They’d spent a grueling day for men unaccustomed to regular exercise, and left the pizza half uneaten. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed,” Alph said, falling back on top of the sheet with a thud. It had turned cold when the sun went down, and the heat was on.
“I won’t say no to bed, not tonight!” Piper moved the rest of the pizza onto the dresser, doused the light, and climbed into bed, drawing himself tight against his friend. He waited a second or two, then kissed him on the neck.
“Hey! I’m supposed to take the initiative. That’s what the top does.”
“Then tell me what to do.”
“Come closer, kiss me, and let’s try to get some sleep. I’m worn out.”
“Can’t you get it up?”
“It is up. Feel for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Piper slipped his hand down to his friend’s groin. “Very up. Uppity-up.”
“You like it vigorous, don’t you?”
Piper snuggled back into him and hummed.
“Well, I’m afraid vigor is one thing I’m not capable of now. We’ll spend the day at the beach tomorrow and take things easy. We still have two nights left here.”
Piper whined playfully: “But you will fuck me eventually, won’t you?”
Alph answered him truthfully: “I don’t know.” It was the first time the question had been voiced explicitly. He had made no promises of monogamy, neither to his lover nor himself, but after five years that did not make him any less monogamous.
“Are you going to make me beg for it?”
“No, but it’s so much fun watching you beg. How can I resist?”
Posted: 03/07/08