Coming of Age
By: Brock Archer
(© 2020 by the author)

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

barcher@tickiestories.us

Chapter 11
French Exposure

School was easy for me, but  I still had to study to maintain straight A’s—unlike Johnny, who, as he once told me, had a “pornogra…er…photographic memory.” He could read or hear something once, and it was forever etched into his brain. He was more than a walking encyclopedia, though. He had a very unique way of thinking. He could analyze a problem or situation down to its finest detail, but he could also connect seemingly unrelated elements or events and synthesize them into a unified whole. Most people lean more toward the ability to analyze or to synthesize, but rare are the people who can do both well, and nobody did it as well as Johnny.

Mike was not able to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but he sent Mom and Dad tickets to spend the December holidays in Australia, where it is summer at that time of the year, which meant that I was left in charge of the farm those two weeks. Of course, we had Eddie and Carlos to do the work, but I had to oversee things. The Andersens invited me to spend Christmas Day with them, and Johnny and I were able to hang out together some, but he also had other family obligations…when he was not “deflowering every virgin in West Texas.”

Once the NFL season was over, Mike spent more time at the farm, but he was always coming and going. He would be home for a few days and off to New York or San Francisco on business or some other exciting place to film TV commercials or make public appearances. His ads the first season had made him a national celebrity, and he was appearing frequently on TV talk shows. He had picked up endorsement contracts with eight or 10 more companies: cereals, shaving products, athletic shoes, airlines, and even women’s lingerie. By Memorial Day, he was making more money from endorsements than he was from playing football.

With summer approaching, he gave Mom and Dad an Alaskan cruise combined with a train tour across the Canadian Rockies. I asked him if he would be doing another photo shoot in Hawaii, hoping that he would take Johnny and me along again, but he said no, he would not be going to Hawaii, and when he saw the disappointment on my face, he added, “The French Riviera this year.” Then when he saw my excitement, he continued, “I was thinking of just taking Johnny this year.” For just a second or two, I was shocked, but I quickly realized that he was just teasing me. “How’s your French?” he asked.

Since Mike was a little more prepared for this photo shoot and not quite as rushed as the year before, he scheduled two weeks, one for the shoot and one to play tourist. The three of us spent seven days exploring Paris and the French countryside.

The photo shoot had a different theme that year with a different photographer, a Frenchman. Claude was younger, much more handsome, and not quite as intense as Armando, and he took a very personal approach to his work. He insisted on spending a whole day with Mike getting to know him before starting to shoot. He wanted to understand “who you are as a person, a man” and not just his body, and since Johnny and I were a part of who Mike was, Claude insisted on having us participate.

Claude met us at our hotel in Nice for breakfast and stayed with us until bedtime. He led us on a walking tour of Old Nice, took us to the Palais de Festivals, where the Cannes Film Festival is held every year, and suggested other tourist sites we might want to take in.

But he spent most of the time asking us about our lives. He wanted to know about football, not the game so much as our commitment to it. He quickly latched onto the fact that all three of us are pretty intelligent, so he asked about what kind of books we like to read, our favorite artists and philosophers, and our personal heroes. He asked Johnny and me what we wanted to study in college, and he asked Mike what he would be doing if he were not playing football. He asked about Mom and Dad and what it had been like for Mike and me growing up on a farm. He asked about our thoughts on religion, politics, and current events. And after we had eaten dinner and returned to Mike’s suite, he asked about our sex lives.

“That’s kind of personal,” Mike said.

“Yes, of course,” he replied. “It is your personality, not just your body, that I must photograph. Sex is a fundamental element of life, is it not? Sex is what we are selling in this advertising campaign. In order to capture your sexuality, I need to understand it.”

Mike thought for a minute and came to the conclusion that Claude’s premise made some sense. When Mike began to talk about his sexuality, Johnny and I got up to leave, but Mike said, “Guys, if this is going to make you uncomfortable, I understand, but I trust you, and if you want to stay, I don’t mind.”

I was touched by the confidence Mike was entrusting in us and the sense that Johnny and I were mature enough to be part of the discussion. I think Mike had also figured out that we were both no longer virgins.

Claude asked Mike about his early experiences with masturbation and whether he had ever masturbated with other boys. Mike acknowledged that he had masturbated with other boys, and when Claude asked if he had ever jerked another boy off or had another boy jerk him off, he said that he had, but only a few times. Mike talked about those experiences and said that he had stopped masturbating regularly with other boys when he started dating girls, but that he had masturbated with other guys three or four times until he graduated from high school.

When asked how often he masturbated today, Mike said it varied depending on circumstances and opportunities, but on average, probably once or twice a day.

Claude asked if Mike had ever tasted his own cum, and Mike said he had “out of curiosity” and had not found it distasteful but wasn’t particularly interested in doing it again. Asked if he had ever tasted someone else’s cum, he said he had once “by accident,” and he did not elaborate.

“So you have never sucked another man’s cock?” Claude asked.

“No, Mike replied. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” he added. “It’s just not my thing.”

“When did you lose your virginity?” Claude asked.

“Well, I was hoping to do it tonight,” Mike joked, and then he added that it had happened when he was 14. I was a little surprised by that since I was 16 when I lost mine, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised considering how good-looking he was.

Mike described his first experience in some detail, with Claude’s encouragement, and then chronicled his “conquests” through high school and college. He said he was most sexually active when he was in college because as a star football player, he attracted many women who wanted to sleep with him. He also admitted that he had participated in group sex, i.e. orgies, and had experienced sex with as many as three or four women at a time. Asked if he was still as promiscuous, he said no. He explained that he enjoyed sex very much but that he now likes to get to know the women he dates “as people, not just as sex objects.”

When Claude turned to Johnny and me and asked us about our early experiences, Mike said, “That’s it. You can ask me whatever you want, but these guys are off limits. I’ll see you in the morning,” and with that, Mike showed Claude to the door. Johnny and I got up to leave also, but Mike stopped us. He put one hand on my shoulder and one on Johnny’s and looked us straight in the eye.

“Guys,” he said. “I hope I have not embarrassed you tonight. It’s just that I feel that we Americans treat sex too much as if it’s something dirty, and it’s not. Claude was right; it’s a natural part of life, and it’s a beautiful thing when it’s handled properly.” He took a deep breath and continued, “It’s late and I’m tired, and I have to get up and go to work in the morning, but I want you to hear this: if you have any questions or want to talk about anything we discussed tonight, let’s do it. I want you to feel that you can talk to me about anything.”

Back in our room, Johnny and I just looked at each other with our minds glazed over. Mike had shared so much with us. He had bared his soul, a significant part of it anyway, and we just didn’t know what to make of it. We each had a thousand questions and didn’t know where to start. I had gotten erections quite a few times as Mike talked, and I’m sure that Johnny did too. Hell, I imagine that Claude did too, and maybe even Mike had himself. But at that moment, Johnny and I were too overwhelmed to get horny. We just said good night to each other and went to bed.

That night I must have dreamed of Mike masturbating, including the first time I saw him masturbating under the old oak tree, tasting his own cum, and participating in an orgy—because I woke up with a raging hard-on. And I noticed that Johnny did too. So, of course, we had to jerk off before we went down to breakfast.

Claude wasn’t kidding when he said that he wanted to capture Mike’s personality and not just his body in the photo session. He photographed Mike being whimsical in a pillow fight, being cerebral reading a book in bed, and being romantic waltzing with one of the beautiful models.

He also took lots of close-ups of Mike—not of his crotch, but of his face. These were later used in story board ads and became an international sensation because of the emotion they conveyed. Many readers said that they felt as if Mike were looking directly into their souls. Mike received thousands of fan mail letters from women (and men) requesting autographed photos and quite a few that included marriage proposals. These close-ups were also Mike’s favorites…and Mom and Dad’s.

In one of the most memorable photo sets, the most beautiful of the models stood in front of an ornate gold dresser and mirror that looked like they had come from the Palace of Versailles. She wore a gorgeous black evening gown with slits up the side, revealing titillating parts of her legs. Mike stood behind her, his face also visible in the mirror. He was dressed only in very sexy briefs that accentuated his bulge from the profile. With one hand, he was pulling back her long black hair, and with the other he was reaching over her shoulder to help her dab a hint of perfume on her neck.

Though the photo shoot was for Andrew Christian, when they declined to use that particular photo because “it wasn’t a good fit for that campaign,” Claude showed it to Yves Saint Laurent, who negotiated for the rights on a one-time arrangement. The photo appeared in YSL ads in every woman’s magazine right at the beginning of the Christmas season—in a couple of instances, even on the cover. It won numerous advertising awards and became very popular in every corner of the globe. When YSL sales soared, along with magazine sales, the company offered Claude and Mike both long-term contracts.

Like Armando the year before, Claude begged Mike to let him photograph Johnny and me until Mike acquiesced to letting us be extras in a scene as long as we were fully clothed. Then, he allowed us to appear in the background in a shot by the pool provided that our swimsuits were not too skimpy and the scene was not too risqué. “Yes, I understand that you’re selling sex,” he told Claude, “but it’s my sex you’re selling, not theirs.” We ended up being among the people sitting around the pool in lounge chairs.

Claude also shot a set in the hotel’s fitness center, and Mike let us be in those shots with the stipulation that we wore gym shorts and not sexy underwear or swimsuits. In some scenes we wore tank tops, and in others we were shirtless, as were Mike and the other models. Claude took lots of shots of Mike bench pressing with one of the models spotting him. In some shots, the spotter was female, in some male. In a variation, Mike was spotting the model, who was looking straight up at his crotch.

In other shots, Mike did squats, bicep curls, leg extensions, and other exercises. Some of these pictures were taken after he had worked up a sweat, the moisture making the fabric around his pubic region and his butt crack semi-transparent.

In the locker room, Claude photographed Mike dressing and undressing, and Mike let us be extras in some of those shots with the stipulation that our faces were not to be shown.

Claude even had Mike showering, naked of course, with his genitals concealed by an object or a person in the foreground. In one case it was a female model sitting on a bench looking directly at Mike and dangling a pair of underwear in her hand as if to say, “What would you give me for this?” From one angle, it was her head that blocked the view of Mike’s genitals, from another it was the dangling underwear. In another context, two male models stood in the foreground facing each other wearing only sexy designer jock straps, their pouches bulging toward each other. Their bodies framed a view of Mike standing between them in the background with only the steam from the hot shower providing an opaque cover for his family jewels.

When Johnny and I were not observing or participating in the photo sessions, we spent most of our time seeing the sights of the French Riviera and cruising the beaches. Given the fact that most of the girls wore string bikinis or thongs and some were topless, it was not surprising that many of the guys on the beach sported boners. Because it was so commonplace, most went without particular notice, but Johnny and I were drawing quite a few looks anyway, so when we got stiffies, they definitely did not go unnoticed. I thought quite a few of the girls—and even some of the guys—were game to mount us right there on the beach. Needless to say, we managed to escort several back to our hotel room or theirs.

And, of course, Johnny and I bedded all three of the female models Claude had hired, and I beat off with one of the male models as well. That model wanted to do much more, but I drew the line. As an enticement, he even offered to include one of the female models in a threesome. It was a very tempting offer. I declined to have sex with him, but Johnny and I did allow him to beat off while watching us fuck the three girls on our last night there. He talked dirty the whole time, which was a real turn on for me, and when he covered himself with his cream, one of the girls licked it up and fed it to me. What’s more, when I fucked one of the girls and my cum oozed out of her pussy, another girl sucked it up and snowballed with me.

At first, I thought Mike was uneasy with that sight, but he was so turned on by the fact that the pudding was coming out of a girl’s pussy that he dared to try it. After all, he rationalized, it was his own cream—mixed with pussy juice—and it was being delivered by a girl. For Johnny, the attraction was that it came out of a woman’s vagina; for me, the attraction was that it had originally come out of a man’s dick. When we repeated that procedure half an hour later, one of the girls sucked up Johnny’s cum and fed it to me, but Johnny wasn’t willing to go so far as to have a girl snowball my cum with him, so I had her deliver it to me.

After our guests said ciao and returned to their own rooms, Johnny and I reflected on the week’s events. Naturally, we talked about our sexcapades, the photo sessions, and that first night when Mike shared so much with us. We began by reviewing many of the experiences that Mike related, but then our conversation became more contemplative. We started asking ourselves what all of that really meant to us. We talked about our sexuality not only in the present context, but also what it might mean for our futures.

We recalled how Mike had answered when Claude asked him if he had ever considered having sex with a man or if he would consider it, so Johnny and I put the same question to each other. Johnny confessed that the thought of sex with another man had crossed his mind and, like Mike, it did not evoke any negative feelings in him, but it just wasn’t something that appealed to him.

I told Johnny that the thought had also crossed my mind more than once. I informed him that the male model who had just left our room had propositioned me, and I had turned him down. I confessed to Johnny that I did not find the guy unattractive or the thought of having sex with him unappealing. I just wasn’t ready to make that experiment. I told him that I was still exploring my sexuality and did not really know who or what I was in that regard.

These were thoughts and feelings that I had never shared with anyone else before—I’m not sure I had even admitted them to myself—and I was enormously relieved that Johnny listened like a true friend: listening, not judging. Ultimately, we agreed that we should be open to new experiences, deciding for ourselves about our sexuality and not letting others determine our sexuality for us.

To be continued...

Posted: 01/15/2021