Taste-Test

The Year of Experimentation (which actually lasted a lot longer than just that one year) had all begun one lonely wind-swept and off-and-on rainy late Sunday afternoon. After what he had considered to be a moderately successful visit to his estranged family up in the city (his wife had taken the kids and left him-she was far too success-oriented for his ways, and some time ago she had yelled at him that she was sick of being tied to a 'nobody loser' and off they'd gone. Now he visited once a fortnight and over those months had felt the distance between himself and his offspring get wider and wider as they were drawn into her whirlpool of 'be somebody' 'stand out from the crowd' and so on. Now he knew they merely tolerated his visits and him out of a politeness which he sensed would not last much longer. But anyway, today's visit hadn't gone too badly): so after he had left them he had driven the hour long drive back to the seaside suburb which had once been home to them all, except that now apparently it was a 'place for losers to live and hide', a suburb he really liked because of its proximity to beautiful beaches and good fishing and nice old-fashioned pubs: he had driven back but not wanted to go home. It was early enough still to have put his car away and made the short walk to his favourite tavern, but he didn't feel like that at the moment. So he drove down to the fore-shore, parked in one of the deserted car-parks (only deserted because of the time of year and the weather-in summer they were permanently full), locked his car as per the instructions on the sign-"Look, lock, leave"-(look at what, he had always wondered), and climbed the stairs up to the walkway which separated the beach itself from the parks and barbecues and lawns and playgrounds of the foreshore area.

He leant on the rail and looked down at the beach and out to the ocean. The beach was deserted of course-the wind was strong and very cold-and the ocean was annoyed today, waves whipping into the beach, choppy and angry looking. The ocean looked lonely today, just as he felt lonely. How had it all turned out so lonely? But he shrugged his shoulders as he so often did nowadays. It had taken him months to acknowledge that life had not turned out as he had hoped, and that now, when it seemed to have all gone so wrong, there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe there was, but if so, he could not see what, despite hours, days, months, trying to figure it out.

He shivered in the wind, and lit a cigarette, turned and sat on one of the benches looking out over the sea. It would probably be best to just go home, leave the car, go to the tavern for a couple of hours, pick up some takeaway and go home. It was too cold here, and being the only person there as far as he was aware just added to his feeling of lonely helplessness. At least at the tavern there would be people and noise, even if most of them were much younger than he.

But that odd urge that had entered his thinking months ago, and now would not go away, told him to at least stay for a while. He had heard somewhere-no, be honest, he had looked it up on the internet-that this park was what was known as a cruise area, that at night, after all the family picnickers had gone home and it was dark, this was one of those areas where middle-aged men like himself wandered in the hope of meeting up with one another or with younger men, to do those things two men might do with each other.

And that now was what attracted him here, even though he had not yet found the courage to come here at night time actively looking. But he was interested. After more than half a lifetime of heterosexuality, he had for some months been very interested in what it would be like to stroke another man's cock, to watch the semen erupt from it, to taste it, to take that semen in his mouth, yes even to take the cock in his mouth, to savour the thick fluid in his mouth, and swallow it, and enjoy doing something that in all his upbringing and life-style and acquaintances and knowledge was forbidden and taboo. And the urge had just grown stronger and stronger over these months, and he wondered if he would ever have the courage to do something about it, beyond the aimless wandering around the internet looking and doing nothing.

Neville crushed the cigarette butt under his foot and sighed, as the people he worked with had noticed he did so often nowadays, and tried to find the will to leave. But despite the wind and the occasional little spits of rain, he felt happy there, as happy as he ever felt now anyway, and he lit another cigarette, and tried to put the curiosity out of his mind-I'll never have the nerve anyway, was his thought whenever the urge to do something different came into his mind, and this urge was certainly very different-and said to himself that it was too early for them anyway so he needn't worry about having to make a decision of any sort, and he would stay here another half hour, and when he turned his head to look at his watch his eyes wandered up the pathway that led, at the other end of the park, to a café and restaurant precinct, and he saw him, and a pain dug at his stomach.

The young man was about thirty metres away up the path, walking in his direction, and even from that distance Neville could see he was, yes, there was only one word-the young man was beautiful. Neville looked past him, not wanting to appear to be staring, then cast his eyes around in a circle, looking out to the ocean, then back to the young man; despite himself his eyes lingered on him for a few moments, then he turned and made a pretence of looking behind himself, then back out to the ocean, so his eyes could look again at the young man, close to him now, then he looked down at the ground, his mind going over all he had seen. An extraordinary face, roundish, that would have been called beautiful on a woman, on a young man just amazing; a slim, slender build, about medium height. The young man had very pale almost white blonde hair, cut stylishly, sitting just below his collar. He was wearing tight black jeans, very tight, a white polo shirt (that sort that just has the three buttons at the top) and a white fleecy lined jacket. Neville, as inexperienced as he was with this sort of thing, could see that the jeans were deliberately that tight to accentuate the bulge inside them, and he felt his own cock wanting to bulge in his trousers, the casual slacks he had worn for the family visit.

The young man stopped just a metre from the bench Neville was sitting on, looked around, smiled at him, then went over to the rail, leant on it, looking out to the ocean, and Neville looked at the young man's arse, small and slender inside the tightness of the black jeans, and it occurred to him that the boy-when you're over forty someone around twenty is a boy-wanted him looking at his arse, so Neville did, and asked himself did he dare speak to him.

This was what the urges had been about all these months, this ever-strengthening desire to experiment with male sex, and here he was, a young man, beautiful and slim, leaning over the rail, letting him look at his arse. Neville felt utterly flustered-here was an opportunity, and all he could think about now was leaving. But that beautiful figure kept him on the bench; his fingers trembled as he lit yet another cigarette. Say something, the urges yelled at him. But all he could think was-what if I'm wrong, what if he is just an effeminate looking young man, and if I say the wrong thing, that would be very rude, and probably hurt his feelings, and Neville hated ever doing that, and especially to someone so beautiful. He decided to finish this cigarette then leave; it was all a stupid fantasy anyway.

The young man turned and leant that pretty bum against the rail, and Neville could not for some moments take his eyes from the bulging front of his jeans.

"Hi," said a soft, gentle voice quietly.

"Hello," Neville answered, his mind in overdrive searching for something to say, anything to keep the boy standing there a little longer, lifting his eyes to his face. It was an oval face really, large green eyes and small nose and mouth. A woman's face, Neville thought. His cock twitched and the urges said 'this is what you have been wanting.' The young man smiled at him, a gentle, kind smile, showing small white teeth, then he pushed against the rail, walked across the path (it was only a metre and a bit wide) and sat on the bench next to him, just perhaps ten centimetres separating their hips and thighs. The boy smelt wonderful, Neville could smell his deodorant, and the hints of some sort of body cologne.

"You look sad and lonely," the young man said.

"Oh...I just like looking at the ocean..." how lame is that, Neville howled at himself, hating his shyness.

"It's nice looking at the ocean," the boy said, "so big and mysterious...so angry sometimes, so cruel," there was a soft, beautiful laugh, "so the ocean isn't all that nice really, but it's nice looking at it I guess." And the tone of his voice revealed that he didn't really think that at all, that he was merely being polite.

There was an awkward silence, and Neville wished he knew what to do or say next.

"Do you come here often...to look at the ocean, I mean," the young man asked.

"Not actually to here, no," Neville said. "I live not far from here though, and I often walk on the beach near my place."

"Oh," was the reply. "I hope I'm not intruding, you know, on you," and there was genuine politeness in the boy's voice.

"No, not at all," Neville said. "I guess you are right. Sometimes I do feel very lonely." There, was that the right thing to say, would that give any of the necessary hints, or however this sort of thing was meant to work? You might be wrong, the voice-of-habitual-caution said strongly in his brain. And anyway, do you really have the nerve to go through with anything like this?

"It's just that sometimes men who come here..." the young man said hesitantly, "you know...they want things...you know?"

"Oh?" Neville said somewhat hoarsely, doing his best to give the impression he didn't have the faintest idea what the boy was talking about.

"Yeah...you know...experiences...um," and his trailed off.

"Oh, I see," Neville answered, trying to act surprised. The young man changed the subject, he wondered if maybe he'd been wrong, still, there was the way he had been looking at him. He knew that look very well.

"Is it all right if I have a cigarette?" he asked him, and he turned a little so that their knees were touching, and neither pulled away.

"Of course," Neville said, and took the packet from his shirt, and offered it. The young man took a cigarette from the box, and his fingers brushed on Neville's, and Neville thrilled at the warmth of his skin. He offered the boy his lighter, and the boy said,

"The wind could make this tricky," and again the beautiful soft laugh. He turned towards Neville's shoulder, and ducked his head, and his hair brushed that shoulder and Neville looked down at the boy's neck and the smooth skin of it, and the urges said go on, he wants you to, but Neville was too cautious and he just let himself enjoy the closeness of him. He could smell his hair, clean and fresh and recently shampooed, and when the boy had turned himself his thigh pressed closer against Neville's and the warmth of it was tantalising, and the urge voices in Neville's head were winning, and the cautious voice had retreated, not yet defeated, but very close to submitting. Their thighs were touching all the way down now from hip to knee, and Neville did not want him to move. The cigarette lit, the boy sat back up, but he kept the pressure of his thigh against Neville's. He'd had enough experience with this to sense that the older man was very nervous about all this, but also very interested.

"So," Neville asked him, "what is your name?"

"My friends call me Demmi," the young man answered. Neville laughed softly.

"And your not-friends, what do they call you?" trying to keep it light, the scents and warmth of the boy so close to him, leading further towards giving in to the urges-no, not giving in, but doing something he wanted to do, out of character sure, and out of the ordinary definitely, but still something he really wanted to do, but would he be able to find the words, and dare say them out loud. The boy let out a soft sort of half-grunt, half-giggle.

"Faggot, queer, poof, stuff like that," Demmi said. All out in the open now.

"Oh...that's not nice," Neville commented, for some strange reason feeling protective towards the young man.

"No...but...you know...true I guess, and I stay away from people who think that way as much as I can."

There was a pause again, not awkward this time.

"Do you mind if I ask how old you are?" Neville asked.

"Course not. I'm nineteen, I'll be twenty next month, here..." and he reached behind him and pulled a slim wallet from his back pocket, and showed him the photo ID that particular state used. It was all in order, and Neville saw what the Demmi was short for, but said nothing. He had always hated his name too. "I always need it to get into bars." He laughed that beautiful soft laugh again.

Again some silence as Neville racked his brain to come up with the words to explain what it was he wanted to do. He wondered if there was money involved, didn't ask because he thought that might be offensive, and wished he had read up more on the art of the seduction of a beautiful young man. Demmi broke the silence. He had put his cigarette out. He turned his body towards Neville again, again the extra pressure of his thigh.

"What do your friends call you?" he asked very softly, in what struck Neville as a perhaps slightly put-on attempt at a seductive voice.

My friends, Neville wondered. Did he have any friends? Not really. Acquaintances, work colleagues, people he knew to talk to at the tavern. But friends-no, and it was becoming more and more obvious that he couldn't even count his family as friends. Under the veneer of politeness, it was becoming more apparent that they despised him, probably hated him. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders again.

"Neville," he answered, and looked now out to the sea, not wanting to look at the beautiful young man, wanting to flee from here to the safety of the tavern and his home and living alone.

Demmi sensed, strongly, the sad loneliness in the sigh and the shrug. He liked this man already, though he wasn't sure if anything was going to happen here.

"You're lonely," he said, very softly, and gently, and started to trace little circles on the top of Neville's thigh with his fingertips. The weather was cold and windy enough that he was confident they were alone there. "Is there anything you'd like to?" He continued, just as softly, "maybe something new or..."

So the boy had figured him out, Neville thought, and he is inviting me. How to put it so as not to sound coarse or cheap or tasteless? This is it, he told himself, right now is the opportunity, the chance you have contemplated all these months. It was either walkaway now, and no doubt regret passing up this opportunity, or explain, force his nervous self to take the chance and go ahead with it. With trembling fingers (which Demmi noticed) he lit a cigarette, and decided.

"I don't want to offend you..." he said.

"You won't...I promise," Demmi interrupted.

"But...I 'd like to touch you... to..." he shifted the cigarette to the hand away from the young man, "to touch you here..." there was a roaring in his ears and his stomach convulsed at the daringness-as he saw it-of what he was doing. He put his free hand at the front of Demmi's jeans, put his fingers against the bulge, could sense his cock through the fabric, he did not dare pause now, I'm doing it, a voice in his head triumphed, I'm touching him-sort of. "I want to stroke this..." and he traced his fingers along the ridge Demmi's slowly hardening cock was making in his jeans, "I want...I want to watch you come, I want to watch it come out of you-taste it." There, it was all said. And he didn't feel wrong or ashamed or anything. Just scared.

This is different, was Demmi's first thought, he wants to get me off, it's usually the other way around.

"That sounds really nice," he said. He pressed a hand to the top of Neville's thigh, into the valley between his thigh and his crotch, sensing the older man's erection. And he was sensitive enough to the feelings of others to appreciate what an effort it had been for Neville to tell him all that. "Is there somewhere we can go?"

Neville had never, in his imaginings about this, considered this aspect-where? He sure as hell wasn't going to do anything in the public toilets, and his timidity would not allow him to take what amounted to a complete stranger back to his house.

"My car is over there, but, people..." There was always of course the possibility that someone might come for a walk or jogging, and the idea of being seen doing something like this terrified him, not because of its sense of not-usualness, but because in this, as in pretty well everything in his life, he was frightened of being noticed.

"Up the road further," Demmi said, still soft and gentle and, to Neville's ears, comforting, "there are some boat ramp carparks, and it's getting late, and in this weather they'd be deserted anyway." It was winter, and even though it was not even five o'clock yet, the cloud cover was darkening the sky already.

"Ok," Neville answered, and stood up, and was not surprised at the violent trembling in his legs. Now or never. Am I really going to do this? He started walking towards where he had parked his car, pausing so that Demmi could walk alongside him, very close.

"Nice car," Demmi commented, as Neville opened the front passenger door for him, and Demmi noted that gesture and appreciated it, and sat himself down. Odd thing to do? Neville asked himself, and then: are you sure you want to do this? But he silenced the caution-voices. He did want to do this; he was not going to back out now. The urge voices had won.

He knew the boat ramp areas that Demmi had referred to, and he drove the car out to the road that ran along the beachfront, turning north and carefully, concentrating fully on what he was doing, his mind though somewhat foggy from the anticipation of what was to come. It reminded him of that evening at Uni, years ago, when a girl had agreed to go home to bed with him, his first one, and his brain had lost all clarity for what seemed like hours.

"I know there are several along here," he said. "Is there anyone in particular we should go to?"

"Not really, miss this one, go to the next one." The one he wanted to miss had a bad memory for him. Neville didn't question it, but drove on. It wasn't far. He pulled onto the crushed limestone drive that wound through some sand dunes, to a large area that was set right back from the road, hidden anyway by the sand dunes, and it was deserted. No-one would go out boating on a day like this. He pulled up at a far edge of the open area, in a little by-way that was itself partially concealed from most of the rest of the car park. He turned the engine off, resisted the urge to have yet another cigarette, decided maybe it would be better not to try to kiss Demmi's pretty mouth.

"Um...shall we get in the back seat? Might be more comfortable?" he suggested. Without speaking the young man smiled at him, such a melting, kind smile, opened his door, got out, then sat himself in the spacious back seat. He was excited by what the older man had said he wanted to do, though a little unsure of what he exactly intended, and of what was expected for him to do. Surely just getting him off wasn't all he wanted?

Neville got in the back seat and shut the door on his side, grateful here for tinted windows. Outside the light was still good enough, he hoped, for him to be able to see what it was he wanted to see, but only just. Fuck it, he thought, and turned on the interior light. It showed up all Demmi's best features, the flawless skin of his face, the lights of his hair, the gentleness of his expression. The urge-voices were completely in charge now.