Peter checked an impulse to go to him and put an arm around him. The boy was already emotionally overwrought; tenderness might further undermine his control. Showing him his body seemed a more straightforward alternative. He hesitated for a moment and then stood up. “All right, Jeff. Let’s get some of those knots untied.” He went to the door and locked it. He unhitched the cloth from around his waist and tossed it aside and turned back to Jeff. They had swum together so often with very little more on that he couldn’t imagine his nakedness being much of a thrill. “This is what I look like,” he said, approaching the boy.
Jeff’s eyes were fixed on the bit he had never seen. When Peter stopped in front of him, his chest heaved with a deep convulsive breath. “You’re so incredibly beautiful. You and Charlie are the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. I knew it. You’re bigger right now than I am with an erection.”
“I doubt it, but if we’re going to pursue our comparative study, you’d better let me see.”
Jeff disentangled himself from the chair and stood. He kicked off his sandals and peeled off his shirt. In a moment, he had got his legs out of his shorts and underpants. He kept his eyes averted.
“Good lord. You actually do have an erection,” Peter exclaimed. The boy’s torso was still hairless but there was a shading of down on his chest and across his flat belly. Only the pubic hair had developed. From it, the pale sex rose at a steep angle, giving an impression of great vigor. Its adult virility was a shock in juxtaposition to the tanned, coltish, angular, boy’s body. “It’s just what I told you. You have a good average cock. If anything, a little bigger than average. I’m afraid my vocabulary isn’t as elegant as yours. I can’t refer to our phalli.”
“Is it bigger than Dimitri’s?” Jeff’s eyes were still averted.
“Considerably, unless he’s grown.”
Jeff looked up with an urgent plea in his limpid eyes. “I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do. If Dimitri and I were like this, what would happen?”
Peter smiled at him. “If you were like this, you’d be in bed together and nature would take its course.”
“But I don’t know anything about nature. How does one start?”
“Any way that strikes your fancy. Making love is an expression of desire. It’s supposed to be fun. If I were Dimitri, what would you want to do?”
“Can I tell you the truth? Kiss your—I don’t see how I can say it but it’s true—I want to kiss your cock. Is that ridiculous?”
Peter laughed. “You can’t expect me to think so. I’ve been rather partial to kissing cocks in my time. Lots of people are, women as well as men. You won’t go down in history as the inventor of cocksucking.”
Jeff looked at him gravely. “Would you let me?”
“Are you kidding? Of course not.” There was a sharpness in his refusal which he immediately regretted. He wasn’t angry. He felt a deep affection for the boy and now that his first surprise at developments had worn off, completely at ease. Being naked together made him feel, like a kid again, but that wasn’t unusual for him. He often wondered if he would ever feel fully grown up. Did he feel young because he looked young or was it the other way around? Maybe when he was forty at last, he’d crumple with the weight of years. Meanwhile, it was very pleasant to see an attractive youth with an erection. He couldn’t wait to tell Charlie about it. He approached Jeff, but stopped before he was within reach. “In the first place, you couldn’t give me a hard-on. That’s not because you’re not a damned attractive kid, but it’s just the way it is. A lot of people think queers will go for any guy they can get their hands on, but you must know better than that. So let’s stick to Dimitri.”
“How can I think about Dimitri with you here?” His eyes dropped once more to the object of his cult. “It’s absolutely ravishing. I could kill myself with envy. It’s obviously twice as big as mine.”
“Don’t be silly. Bigger maybe, but so what? All this fuss about size is silly. It may be important to Dimitri but it isn’t particularly to most people. I’ve always enjoyed having a little extra to wave around, but it hasn’t been a big thing in my life.”
“Is Charlie much bigger than you?”
“Oh, Lord. He really is twice as big as you are, but he’s a phenomenon. I admit I’m nuts about it.” Peter laughed. “I’ve always wished he could make a cast of it. It would be quite a hunk of hardware.” Jeff lifted his great adoring dark eyes and Peter felt the contact between them beginning to flow directly and easily. The boy’s expression had cleared. He was excited and curious but his adoration wasn’t primarily sexual, fervent but not passionate. He looked at the tenderly curving lips and experienced a stunned moment as he realized that this was the kid he had watched grow up, young enough to be his son, here, naked with him, the persistent erection still lifted before him. “I have a sneaking suspicion I rather hoped you’d turn out to be one of us,” he said with a smile. “You’re certainly the most attractive boy we know. I suppose you’ve never been kissed, have you? If you put your clothes on, we might do something about that.”
The ardent young face lighted up; the yearning eyes dropped for another lingering look at Peter’s midsection. Then he pulled himself up and with more grace and purpose in his movements than Peter had seen in him before, he returned to where he had dropped his clothes. The erection gave him the pagan look of a naughty Greek vase painting. Peter retrieved his sarong and hitched it around him. He was glad he hadn’t made a great mystery about his body. They could deal with each other as friends now on an equal footing with no meaningless strains or tensions between them. He wandered over to Jeff while he tucked himself back into his shorts. Jeff looked at him expectantly as he finished buttoning up. Peter took a step closer and tilted his head toward him with the back of his hand and their mouths met. Jeff’s was closed. Peter ran his tongue lightly along his lips and they opened with a gasp. Their tongues touched and then Peter pulled back with a laugh. “You mustn’t keep your mouth closed when you’re consumed with passion.” He was thinking of the thousands of distasteful open-mouthed male kisses he had received at “gay” cocktail parties in the old days.
Jeff’s eyes were aglow with wonder. “Oh, my God, Peter. That’s fantastic.” His voice had deepened with emotion. “That’s the most thrilling thing I’ve ever imagined. I’m in love with you, of course, but not like with Dimitri or some ordinary mortal. It’s good you don’t want me—not that I ever thought you did—but it would be too much. Show me more—tell me everything while I’m still innocent. I don’t want it to be an ugly shock. Just tell me everything people do. You can’t corrupt me because I intend to find out anyway. I guess I know already, but tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do with Dimitri.”
Peter ran his fingers along the sharp line of jaw and then dropped his hand and took Jeff’s and led him to a chair. He sat opposite him. “If you know, you know,” he said baldly. “He likes to be fucked. He’ll want your cock inside him.”
“Yes, but doesn’t it hurt? I should think it would be better for me to be small if that’s what he wants.”
“That isn’t the way it works. Guys who like to be fucked like to feel it. The bigger the better. I happen to know what I’m talking about.”
“And you say that I’m maybe a bit bigger than average? All right, what do I do? How do I go about it?”
“You’ll be in bed, of course. It doesn’t strike me as all that mysterious. Hell.” Peter sat back with a helpless little chuckle. “When you’re in bed with somebody you want, and kissing him and all that, you just let yourself go. You’ll probably find yourself kissing him in the most unlikely places. I’m sure you won’t think of anything that’ll surprise Dimitri.”
Gloom seemed to be descending on his audience. “You’re not telling me,” Jeff muttered heavily. “I mean, how do you get in the right position and that sort of thing?”
“Oh, dear. I guess I’m going to have to write the script. Look, you don’t have to leap at him and plunge yourse
lf into him. Maybe you’ll find some entertainment along the way. If you want to suck his cock, I’m sure he’ll be delighted. When he comes, swallow it. You know that much, don’t you?”
“No. I’ve wondered. It doesn’t make you sick or anything?”
“Of course not. It’s good for you. Some guys spit it out. It creates an unfriendly atmosphere.” He rose and went across to a drawer in the bedside table. He pulled out a tube of lubricant he kept there. He and Charlie used the room sometimes because it was safely isolated from the children.
He returned to Jeff and perched on the arm of his chair. “You have to use something to make it easier. Even some girls do. Dimitri will undoubtedly have something, olive oil or vaseline or God knows what, but it’s much better with this. You can get it at the pharmacy. Take some with you tonight. It’ll show him you know what it’s all about. When an opportune moment occurs to make free with his bottom, spread it around and have at him.”
Jeff looked at the tube without moving. There was a moment of silence and then he burst out querulously, “I knew it. I knew it couldn’t possibly work.”
“What’s the matter?” Peter dropped a steadying hand onto his bare shoulder.
“I’ve had an erection until this minute,” he protested as if he’d been somehow cheated. “Thinking about all this, it shrivelled right away. That stuff, having to stop everything to put it on. The trouble is, I probably don’t even want it that way. Looking at your great golden phallus made me realize that I’m just like him. I want—I’ll want him inside me. The whole thing’s ridiculous.”
Peter checked his laughter. Jeff’s young confused innocence made his throat ache. He settled himself more comfortably on the arm of the chair and lifted his hand and began to stroke the boy’s hair reassuringly. The head dropped against his rib cage. It gave him a nice little paternal thrill which, as he had learned with Little Pete, linked up somehow with sexuality. “I don’t think it’ll be any great loss if things don’t work out tonight,” he said sympathetically, “but if you’re really in love with Dimitri, don’t worry about the sex part. Maybe with you, he’ll learn something new about himself. It can work both ways, you know. Charlie and I found that out. He’d kill me if he knew I’d told you that. He doesn’t like us to talk about our sex life and he’s probably right. I’ll make an exception for you. I’m making a lot of exceptions for you.” The head pressed closer against him and he smiled down at it. “Right from the beginning, Charlie always took me, fucked me, and I couldn’t imagine it being any other way. But then, just about the time we were getting together with Martha—he decided he wanted it the other way around. He’s very mental about things. I’m just a cheerful idiot. I thought he was mad and thought it would spoil everything but of course it was bliss, like everything with him. I think he thought it was time for me to develop the more aggressive, sort of masculine part of me and that it would help me have a try at girls and I guess he was right. It’s what I said earlier—it’s good to keep yourself open to new experience. I’d certainly never looked at a girl before and I’m glad he changed that, even though I don’t exactly go chasing after them very often. It’s just that it’s good to respond to everybody as much as possible. That’s why I think everybody is probably meant to be bisexual instead of being pressured one way or the other. The point is, he’s always made life bigger and better by paying attention to the way we’ve developed and making something of it. Even when we were having problems—my problems mostly, such as infidelity—only once, believe it or not, but there were temptations—he was able to help us through them by adapting and finding ways of making even bad things work for us. He drives me wild sometimes when he gets going on some new line, always all of it working away inside him, but I think that’s behind us now. He’s made life marvelous. That’s why I take love seriously. That’s why I’m talking so much. I’d like you to understand how good it can be. I don’t believe much in your rendezvous tonight. Dimitri doesn’t care about people.”
Jeff reached up and seized his hand and clung to it as if he were frightened. “I guess that’s the sort of thing you have to learn by experience.” His voice came out deep and full of pain. “Isn’t it natural to think that somebody you’re all involved with is going to be different with you than he is with others?”
“Natural enough, but it almost never works that way. I wish we could find you somebody who would make you forget all about him.”
Jeff’s shoulders lurched with the rumble of a chuckle. Peter wanted to be able to look into his face for what was coming next, but he kept his head averted. Peter pressed it to him briefly and stood and withdrew his hand. Holding the boy, thinking about Charlie, talking about the intimate wonders of their life, had stirred his sex. It lifted against his loincloth and its increased length and weight made it swing conspicuously when he walked. He hitched the cloth more firmly around him and returned the tube to the bedside table and circled Jeff so that he was able to keep his back to him until he dropped into a chair and faced him.
“Now listen, Jeff, honey,” he began incisively. “Why don’t you cancel your date? You’re obviously not happy about the whole idea.”
“It’s too late.” Jeff clawed at the hair Peter had lovingly smoothed and dropped his hand over his eyes. “I’ve made such a big thing of it. I have to go through with it.”
“Look at me, for God’s sakes. What is all this? I’ve been waiting to ask you something. Are you mixed up in this dope business with Dimitri?”
Jeff shook his head. “I know about it, but I’m not really mixed up in it.”
“Then what is it? There’s something you ought to tell me. I’m sure of it.”
“No. Really, I can’t—”
“Listen, Jeff. Aside from his fairly sloppy sex life, Dimitri isn’t a very nice guy. There was some nasty trouble with a rich Englishman in Poros. Dimitri had to get off the island. If we’d known the story when he came here and talked about opening the bar we’d have tried to stop him. You’ve got to tell me if you’re involved with him in any way except for planning to go to bed with him.”
Jeff lifted his head and revealed his eyes at last. They were troubled but candid. His mouth worked briefly before he got out any words. “That’s really all it is. The complications have to do with that. Everything will be all straight after tonight. He’s had an enormous hold over me, but you’ve made me see I’ve been an hysterical child. It’s because I haven’t had a sex life. Any initiation will do. Just the idea of its being messy scares me. I suppose that’s part of being immature. One shouldn’t expect everything to be all moonlight and roses.”
“No, but it’s not as messy as you might think. When Charlie kicked me out, I had myself fucked by every attractive guy I could find. I know.”
A peal of laughter burst from the boy. “You really are extraordinary. You make everything seem so healthy and natural. I’ve been noticing lately how rare that is.”
Peter rose on an impulse to go to him, but found that he was still in a noticeably aroused state and turned hastily and took refuge behind his desk. He didn’t know why he went on feeling so sexy. It certainly wasn’t Jeff. A mood of the moment. Maybe he should go find Charlie. The word he considered the ugliest in the language crossed his mind: tumescent. It was joined by his second ugliest word: penis. He had a slightly tumescent penis. A horrible disease. Jesus. He smiled to himself and looked at Jeff. “Don’t forget, honey. We belong to each other a little now so if you hurt yourself you’ll be hurting me, too. Don’t forget that. Come to me if there’s something you want to talk about. After this, you can tell me anything.”
“How could I forget? It means so much to me.” His eyes wavered and an uncharacteristic little playful smile sprang to his lips. “You know, that little skirt is much more revealing than you may realize. Your—your cock is much bigger than it was. I have to go. Let me see it first.”
“Don’t you think we’ve done enough stripping for today?”
“You stripped too soon.
That’s a cheat.” Jeff rose. Standing straight, he was a tall and distinguished-looking youth. His eyes were fixed on the sarong.
“You know how cocks are,” Peter said. “You never know what they’re going to do next. I long ago gave up taking any responsibility for mine.”
“Then it’s all right if I see it. Looking at it draped like that just inflames my fevered imagination.”
Peter threw his head back and laughed. “God forbid I should do that.” He pulled the sarong off as he came out from behind the desk. Glancing down, he was surprised to see that things had gone so far. He hadn’t felt that sexy, but there was nothing to do but make a joke of it. “Here we are. Time for the second showing.”
Jeff approached, his eyes wide and intent on it. “Oh, Peter,” he said in an awed murmur. “You’re sublime. It’s what I imagined only more so. How can you say size doesn’t matter? I’d sell my soul for something like that.” He stopped and reached out and ran his hand down the length of it.
“Hey. Who told you you could do that?” Peter demanded without moving.
“You don’t have to tell me. I know I can touch you without its being a big thing between us. You know I’m not going to do anything wild. You have me completely under control. You know that.”
“Okay, but don’t let’s push it.” At the first caressing touch, his sex had lengthened with a little leap and stiffened slightly but he could feel that this was as far as it would go. A pity in a way. Jeff was such an appreciative audience. He deserved to see the complete production. With a little surge of exhibitionism, he thrust his hips forward to give it greater prominence. It slanted down away from his body, lifting with only a hint of erection but extended almost its full erect length.
The Peter & Charlie Trilogy Page 79