Ambling slowly, he navigated his footfalls over the huge boulders and jagged rocks while taking in the surrounds. His senses were in overdrive with the sun on his skin, with a gentle, tickling breeze and with the sounds of an ocean against the coast of a continent. His gaze darted frenetically, shifting from the deep blue of a flawless, summer’s sky, down to the shimmering, intense blue of crystal water, before back to the shore of soft, golden sands.

 

The beach that he was only a minute or so from reaching was small. It was maybe one hundred foot wide but it was barely thirty foot from the water’s edge, before the sand reached the wall, which rose high like a mountain, a natural barrier from the ocean. The tide was obviously out and the hot sun had dried the sand to loose and soft. He glanced at the vertical carpet of green, both dark and light in hue, as the trees and coastal scrub made the rising wall seem impenetrable.

 

The tiny, deserted beach had been an unexpected discovery, as he journeyed the precarious path that followed the high cliffs of the west coast. The day had begun with a desire to go to the beach, however, when he arrived at his destination, he discovered a forest of people. Walking to the end of the beach, he stepped onto the rocks and continued walking. He wanted to find somewhere to settle alone. He wanted somewhere to think and to feel free within his mind.

 

To begin, he thought he would walk for a bit until he found a small and quiet spot. His walk, though, had evolved into a hike and for what must have been an hour, he had not seen a soul or any sign of life or proof that he shared this world with other people. He had found himself adoring the solitude and the quiet away from humanity. The farther he walked the more internal his consciousness sank.

 

The sun was hot and soon he stopped. He pulled his pack from his shoulders and then removed his shirt. As of that year, forty-eight-year-old Skip was now retired US Army and his body was fit and his chest, arms and legs were still quite the sight. Wearing only shorts and runners, he continued onward and soon he drifted further into a fantasy; a dream that this world away from home was his life, as opposed to the actual life he lived. A regional native rather than a coastal native, Skip was only in southern California for a week, away from the responsibilities and routines of what his real world imbued.

 

The feeling of the sun on his skin made it tingle. He knew the hot rays were baking his body but it felt so good. For a brief moment he thought of his wife, his stepdaughter and his stepson but they were an alternate world made real and in spite of the fact he loved them, he wanted no part of them today.

 

Before stepping down off the final rock onto the little, golden beach, he removed his runners and held them in his hands. When his feet hit the sand and the soft grains rubbed and massaged his soles, he actually sighed with enjoyment and stopped to curl his toes and dig his feet in deeper. He closed his eyes and a subtle smile conveyed the sensual deliciousness, which was only seen by the breeze and the warm sunrays and the embrace of nature at its finest.

 

The water touched the beach in sweet, relentless ripples and he submerged his feet into the continuous tsunamis for ants. It was cool but not cold and his heat-swollen toes sang hymns to this new god. Again his senses were going wild, as nature stimulated with pristine pictures, salty aromas and the most sensuous fingertips of air and heat on hot, moist skin.

 

“Today I could die and be happy,” he thought.

 

Walking again, he reached the center of the beach. He stopped again and facing the water directly, he stared out over the incessantly mutable liquid. Perhaps one hundred foot or so away from shore was a small island. It was not even as wide as the beach but he thought it must be the reason for the soft, rolling ripples, as opposed to waves. Turning away, he considered a place to settle and then he walked up the beach to the wall.

 

Unsaddling his pack and placing it on the ground, he removed a towel and floated it out and rested it on the sand. He glanced around as if searching for hidden people and then with a choice that was out of the ordinary, he dropped his shorts and kicked them to the side. Naked, he stretched out his cock and then turned to face the water again.

 

An expression of serenity consumed his face. The sun was so warm and it felt so good and a small though perfect breeze randomly caressed his flesh. The water called in a silent offer to partake while his simple choice to be naked out in the open, was no less than a man’s long-forgotten self, set free.

 

Settling down onto his soft towel, he propped on his elbows and allowed his eyes to scan. This simple vista was for him, a paradise on earth. Everything seemed magical and somehow managed to paint a scene of the beginning of an unwritten novel, which would have begun when he was a boy.

 

The warmth of the sun on his unconfined cock, initiated a slow thickening, lengthening and then a gradual movement and turning, before it imitated Superman lifting diagonally into the air. His eyes closed for no more than a second and he clenched until his erection reached the limit it could never exceed.

 

Sighing, he opened his eyes and looked at the smooth and shining tautness of his circumcised cock. The eye looked back at his eyes as it stretched open, with almost an expression of hunger. Unable to ignore the sight it offered or the feeling it sent charging through his entire body; he reached and surrounded it with his fingers, not to masturbate but to acknowledge. He caressed and thoughtfully squeezed and then dropped his hand back to the towel.

 

His cock was a voice. It was the picture of a voice, the voice of a teenager, the teenager he had been so many years before. It spoke of the thoughts he had been thinking all day. Thoughts of his past before he made his choice, the choice that created his life, a life he had long ago decided he had to honor.

 

A sense of resentment filled him, a resentment of self. He was not sad and he was not necessarily unhappy with his life but so often in his silence, he considered what might have been. If only he had honored himself and not the attitudes and beliefs of others. If only society and family and perspectives had not been his driving force.

 

It was a consuming alternative but what it brought to the front of his mind was the realization there was one thing missing from this day. In truth, it was the thing that was missing from everyday of his life. The problem was the thing was not a what but rather, it was a who.

 

The person could have been given a name, if he chose to consider the person to be based on that special period of time from his youth. The person could also have an unknown name, if that random encounter had become more than it had been. The person could even be given another unknown name, if he allowed someone to enter his life today.

 

“That would be nice and I’d even be open to it, if it happened,” he thought but then wondered what the chances would be, of some beautiful man, stumbling onto this little beach as well.

 

With a sudden decision, he lifted his body and walked the short distance to the shore. He stopped and looked left and right, along the craggy cliff walls and along the rocks that lay at their base. He was checking to see if anyone was approaching from either direction, part of him hoping to remain naked and alone, another part begging for another man with a hidden soul.

 

Moving forward, he walked into the water. He found it unusual that it did not become exceptionally deep. He wondered if the island forced the buildup of sand, hindering the ocean waves from washing it away. Not really caring, he dived into chest deep water, submerging his body and cooling its heat. He rose up and turned onto his back, floating while gazing into the endless blue above.

 

Completely at peace and relaxed, he stood and returned to his towel. Lying on his back with the magnificent sun drying him naturally, he closed his eyes and his mind took flight within the bright darkness behind eyelids, before color and pictures took shape and took life. The first thing he saw, though, the face of a friend, the face of a teenager, almost naked while sharing a bed in a cabin beside a lake.

 

How he loved him and how he wanted to reach out and touch that skin. How he wanted that body completely naked and how he wanted to be imprisoned in an eternal, naked embrace.

 

“Please, please, please wake up and kiss me and I’ll be yours forever,” he remembered.

 

Skip’s eyes flicked open from the visual memory. It caressed him softly yet hurt him deeply. The decade’s old wish was still filled with life. The unrequited love, a long-faded color in a well-worn tapestry, Matt could still harden him yet soften his heart in a moment.

 

Standing up, Skip began to walk along the beach beside the wall. A few minutes later, he stopped again, as he looked at an obvious perforation in the green of the foliage. He looked down and saw the way the earth had washed down onto the beach, grey sand mixing with golden sand. Stepping closer, he reached and parted the leaves, revealing a break in the wall and a small, dirt path leading between but with an upward grade.

 

Spontaneously, Skip pushed his body shoulder first through the green and soon he was walking again, following the path up. He came to a rock face and climbed and suddenly he was well above the beach, a litany of dirt paths heading in different directions, trees and bushes surrounding him, as cicada’s piercing screams became louder and yet somehow at one with him.

 

Walking, climbing and rising, five minutes later, he stepped onto a plateau of soft, white sand, a semi-circle of indigenous, wild plant life surrounding him and a view of the beach, the island and the ocean before him. He sat on the oddly cooler, white sand, a cool yet lukewarm feeling on his bare ass. Cross-legged, he stared at the water and felt at one with nature and somehow his naked body made these moments and his feelings intensify.

 

As if out of nowhere, his mind found a time and a place after Matt but before his choice to marry his wife. It was a time and a memory of a stranger. He had been older, more a man than a boy; his fantasies and dreams awash with thoughts of men, in a militant world where pretense was an entity and honesty lived in the fullness of silence.

 

A secret moment in time, perhaps they were moments that manifested an offer to make a different choice. Skip touched him and felt him and loved his skin while the fingers of the stranger on his body were electric. When it happened or where it happened or even whom the stranger was mattered not. The truth was so confronting, so all-consuming and the taste of the stranger was like devouring the only real food on earth.

 

Was it an hour or was it more? He did not know then and he did not know now and still it did not matter. What mattered was he never saw the stranger again and what mattered even more was he never touched the stranger or tasted the stranger, apart from that one time.

 

“I long and I yearn for the essence of moments like that once more.”

 

His wife, the stepdaughter and the stepson in their home; the picture suddenly in his mind was warm and comforting but the passion was weak in spite of the love being so full and so real. Reality stood beside the memory but the colors were vastly different. One was an easy-listening folk song and the other a ballad that heated the blood, made the heart beat and caught in his throat like a stubborn emotion he could not budge.

 

“Too late, too late, too late,” he thought.

 

He stood and stared at the relentless blue of the ocean, his eyes reaching to the horizon and he knew the water continued on forever. He turned and began to retrace his steps. Stopping and staring at the multitude of paths that led in different directions, he perceived two things. First he imagined naked men, cruising for sex and finding hot lovers amidst moments of freedom but then he considered the alternate paths he could have taken in his life.

 

“All just ifs, buts and maybes,” he told himself.

 

The surrounding trees had subdued the cooling nature of the random breeze and now he was hot and perspiring. Minutes later he emerged, as if through the wall itself but he did not return to his towel. Once again he made his way to the cool and gentle water. He dived and he floated and then he stopped and looked up to see if he could see where he had just been. There, about forty feet directly above his towel, he saw the opening, a window in the leaves and he wondered if he would ever sit in that place again.

 

Refreshed, Skip returned to his towel. He still felt free and fundamentally he still felt good but the prior time of intense thoughts and memories had brought a weight to his shoulders. Wet, he lay upon his towel, closed his eyes and gave the sun permission to dry his skin once more.

 

The bright darkness behind his eyelids beneath the sun, returned for a moment before becoming dark darkness. His conscious mind suggested he was falling asleep but then everything was real. He could sense something, someone, a feeling of eyes watching, his heart rate suggesting an approach. He lifted his head and looked over the water at the small island. He saw the unexpected movement on a rock at the island’s water’s edge and then he saw the figure dive. A moment later the figure was swimming, coming closer, approaching his beach.

 

Approximately thirty foot from shore, the arms ceased and the figure stood. A black-haired man was looking at him. His shoulders, chest and upper arms presented above the surface. He began to walk and as he closed the distance swiftly, the complete revealing of the man’s body was breathtaking.

 

The man was big and as he began to walk up the beach, the face became clearly handsome, the body grew thick and muscled and strong while the arms and legs looked powerful and athletic. Perhaps six foot, he was no giant but he was exceptional and he was also naked.

 

Mere steps before he stopped in front of Skip, his smile was like a beacon bringing light to the dark. Halted, he took a step to block the sun, causing his shadow to fall over Skip’s eyes, which were gazing back at him with desire.

 

“Hi,” Skip said but received no reply.

 

“I’m Skipper, Skip for short,” he said after the uncomfortable pause.

 

Oddly, the towering figure still did not reply. Instead, he smiled, lifted the fingers of his right hand to his large chest and as they touched, he caressed across from right to left and then down, slowly but surely bridging the distance to the thick cock that was rising as his fingers descended.

 

Skip’s heart was beating fast and his stomach was swirling with a desperate and nervous hunger. The man was some personal, idyllic perfection and his actions suggested only one thing.

 

In a way, though, Skip’s mind was also divided. Part of him still lived in that teenage memory, a time of boys with boys. The man in front of him was a man and that was far from an understatement. Time, truth and denial, though, could not remove what had been an empty yet deep need and Skip could not dismiss how much he wanted this man.

 

The magnificent stranger asked, “Am I what you want?”

 

The long considered question of his nature, filled Skip’s mind. Did he want to take this majestic god or did he want the majestic god to take him. There had been so many random thoughts and fantasies throughout his life. Did who he was at any given moment, only depend on his moods or his emotions? At his essence, who and what was he really? What was it that he needed and alternately, what was it that he wanted?

 

Right at that moment, after so much time and life had past, the details did not seem to matter. He wanted the man to hold him, to kiss him, to essentially control his feelings and thoughts and especially his body. He wanted the man to remove the pressure of doubts and uncertainties and choices. It had nothing to do with who he was or was not. It was the need and the ache for his special kind of loneliness to be removed.

 

The man did not seem to care that he had received no answer. He came forward, kneeled on the towel beside Skip, leaned over him and slid his arm beneath Skip’s neck and shoulders. He lifted him, wrapped his other arm around his body and with complete control, he pulled Skip against his chest and pressed his lips to his.

 

The sigh, a merging mixture of physical and emotional submission, slid from Skip’s lips before the lips took him prisoner. The tongue that slid into his mouth, strong yet tender, caused his heart to pound. The kiss seemed timeless, relentless and it had overpowered him in a way he no longer thought was possible.

 

He felt his body being lowered, he felt the towel touch his back again and then he felt the entire, naked body, give it’s complete weight to his. Skip’s eyes were closed while luminous, neon colors, were flashing behind his eyelids. The body seemed to be devouring his, as if the chest were opening up to close around him. The thick, circumcised cock was bone hard and it was crushing his own and grinding, as the kiss became deeper and more fulfilling.

 

Lifting his arms, Skip wrapped them around the body. It was so large and so strong and he slid his hands and fingers over the skin of the smoothness of the huge back. He reached down and caressed the perfect ass, the butt cheeks taut and tight and incredibly smooth. He then wrapped his arms around the body and crushed it with all the strength he had.

 

Skip felt his life disappear. Here, in these moments, he wanted to remain, to taste the tongue and feel the kiss and hold a man and love his hardness. It was a perfect day and this was the perfect man and no one, not even himself, could judge him or stop him or take these feelings away. This time was for him.

 

Skip moaned, almost a growl and he pushed his own erection desperately against its partner. It seemed as if the solidness of matter lost cohesion, as his thoughts and his feelings made him feel like he was becoming one or merging into the man’s flesh.

 

“I am owned and consumed,” he realized.

 

The beautiful man’s grip unexpectedly tightened on his shoulders and lifted him up. Skip found himself on his knees, as the man continued to rise until he stood right in front of him. In direct line of sight, the hard, horizontal erection reached toward Skip’s lips. No power on earth could have stopped him and as he moved forward, he opened his mouth.

 

Skip lifted his hands and he moved them all over the beautiful body. His mind was so aware; the skin, the muscle, the large hands on his shoulders, the distinct taste on his tongue and the feeling between his lips.

 

Figuratively and literally, Skip drank his lover in and he knew he was himself. Here and now, irrespective of his life, he knew he belonged in the arms of a man. A moment later, he was lowered onto his back, he was surrounded again but this time their bodies were connected, joined in the only way two men can be physically joined.

 

The movement as his lover filled him, as he kissed him and as he touched him, caused Skip’s mind to explode. In that instant, his body was mind-free, heart-free and control-free and the release that followed was like no other in his life to this day.

 

The man’s body was heavy but it slid so sensually, as he filled him and sensitized him and took him to another place and time. When Skip finally returned, the beautiful man was breaking their kiss.

 

“With me or without me, I’ll always be,” the stranger said and then he stood, turned and walked away.

 

Skip lifted his head and watched in disbelief, as his magnificent lover walked down the beach, entered the water and then dived and swam back toward the island. He felt complete and yet he felt as if something had been taken from him. It was the way he always felt.

 

Awakening from sleep and the most exceptional dream, Skip sat up and rivers of sweat ran down his chest and back. He looked up and saw the sun was descending. He reached into his pack and found his watch and realized the afternoon was coming to an end. He stood up and headed for the water once more.

 

Floating on his back again, memories of the dream man swam through his mind. Even in the cool water, his cock became erect and he stood up, turned around and looked toward the island. The dream had been so real and it had said so much. He started to swim, an irrational desire to see if that man was actually on the island.

 

Halfway there, Skip stopped, looked at the rock protrusion that rose from the water and he knew that was all it was. He admonished himself for even deciding to try and he turned back and returned to the beach. He wiped himself dry, donned his shorts and t-shirt and then headed back to the rocks that would lead him back to his car.

 

Reaching the first rock, he sat, dusted the sand from his feet and slid them back into his runners. He stood back up, looked at the sky, looked at the water and the island and then looked back at the beach. He knew in that single moment he would never return to this place again. Not because he did not want to but because his chosen life would be unlikely to give him this free time again.

 

Once more, the memory of his wife and children, the memory of his home and his life, filled his mind. Tomorrow, the world and life he had come to know would reclaim him. Today had been nothing more than the taste of possibility, the taste of the perfect beverage.

 

Skip closed his eyes, pictured the man of his dream and begged he could hold that picture in his memory forever. He opened his eyes, smiled a somewhat resigned smile and then turned and imagined the red dirt of Arizona.

 

The End.