The Oldest Lifeguard

Rob stood up in the lifeguard's chair and stretched his body, flexing his muscles and giving his best deadpan John Wayne expression. Most of the lifeguards wore T-shirts, but Rob was vain that way. He was shirtless, his torso deeply tanned, his muscles glistening in the late afternoon sun, thanks to a film of sweat and a light lathering of suntan lotion. He looked good—even at the age of thirty-two—and he knew he looked good. He worked out an hour or two a day—religiously. It was about as close as he came to a religion—the worship of good body definition—his own body definition. He was pushing 200 pounds, but had a fullback's body. All hard muscle and cut definition. Still, the body of a Zeus now rather than an Apollo.

The lifeguard chairs extended all the way down the ten-mile stretch of the Ocean City, Maryland, beach from the inlet to the Delaware line, the stands set at intervals of five city blocks. Rob held court at 95th Street, on the beach side of the Pyramid condo. It was a choice spot, as well it should be, because, after sixteen years as a lifeguard on this beach, Rob, by far the oldest lifeguard ever on the Ocean City Beach Patrol—OCPB—had the most seniority. By rights he should be chief of the guards now and work in an office and occasionally drive between the stands on the beach in a dune buggy to check on the guys. But Rob had never wanted to be in an office. He'd always wanted to be out here on the beach.

Of course there was more money to being chief and working in the office, but Rob didn't do this for the money. This was what Rob wanted to do in life, and he was a little concerned that his application for a seventeenth year hadn't come back approved yet. It was mid-September, nearly the end of the OCPB coverage season. He didn't know what else he'd do over the summers if it wasn't this.

He looked down and saw that one of his regulars, Eric Someoneorother, had a hand on his bare foot and was looking up at where he stood in the chair, his gaze seeming to be more focused up the leg opening of Rob's shorts than up into his face.

"Hi, there, Rob," said Eric, a short and thin nineteen-year-old with reddish blond hair and not a bad build. Rob knew the young man was good on a board and that he'd been here off and on all summer—this being his first summer out here. Rob also knew him to be one of his regulars now. Probably not a resident of Ocean City, but living not too far away. And Rob knew the guy had money.

"How's it goin', Eric?" Rob called down to him. They seemed to appreciate it if he remembered their names.

"Wondered if maybe . . . whether you . . .?"

"Will you be at Randy's later?" Rob asked. "No can do before that. I'll be spinning them at Randy's after 8:30, though."

"See you then," Eric said, backing away from the stand reluctantly and returning to the group of other young, well-cut guys he was with. All the good-looking young guys on the beach seemed to congregate around Rob's stand. As long as they did, Rob continued to believe that he had it—had what it took to hold down this lifestyle.

Rob's lifestyle had pretty much stopped in time fifteen years previously. He'd become a lifeguard at sixteen, one of the youngest accepted into the OCPB at the time. His parents had split up and he'd gone with his dad for the summer. His dad had rented a place in an old "hodge-podge" complex of wooden buildings put together in the early 1950s around Baltimore and 6th, one block off the ocean-side boardwalk and three blocks off the bay. They hadn't any better place to be, so the father bought the two-bedroom walkup with a view of an alley and had left it to Rob when he died seven years later.

He had left Rob some money too, but Rob saved the earnings from this to help finance his beach bum trips to the Caribbean seven months out of the year. To augment the work he picked up in bars and the tourists he picked up on the beach. For his months here, he lived off the skimpy lifeguard salary, which he augmented by disk jockeying at Randy's a couple of hours most nights, pimping to tourists—a source of income that had gone down over the past six years—and his "other pursuit."

Ocean City was not gay friendly, at least on the surface. There was only one gay-friendly bar, the Underground, in Ocean City proper. This had always worked to Rob's advantage, though. There were gays vacationing in Ocean City, whether the city was friendly to them or not. And they didn't want to be deprived while they were here. Rob had always helped them not be deprived—for a price. At some point, fewer men were willing to pay for it and Rob had to either give it away or seek it out himself. But he wasn't at the stage of paying for it himself—yet.

Where Rob did most of his extracurricular activity, including hooking up, was at Randy's, which was the short name for Randy's Flight Club, which was on the mainland across the Route 50 causeway from Ocean City, in a growing area known as Ocean City West. The club was in what had once been an airplane hangar next to the airport off Stephen Decatur Highway. This was where Rob hung out most evenings, sharing DJ duties and hooking up with guys in various ways.

Eric's need would have to wait for Randy's this evening—and could only come after Rob's own itch was scratched.

Meanwhile, Rob finished his stretches and sat back down on the lifeguard stand seat. Another hour, and it would be 5:30, the lifeguard stand-down for the day. Another week and a half of this, and another summer season would be chalked up. The beach was more and more deserted with each passing day now—except for the hopeful group of young men congregating around his stand and using the presence of a volleyball net to cover their real purpose for gathering here. Attendance would flare up on the weekends through the rest of September, but be pretty dead during the week.

Rob looked down at the group of young men milling around below and around his stand. Best-looking tail on the beach, he decided. He looked them up and down real good, trying to decide if there was one of them above the age of eighteen that he hadn't already fucked. At first scan he couldn't identify a single one who hadn't already writhed under him.

But then, yes, his eyes lit on the quiet one—the toned black guy, Cal. He'd shown up on the last four weekends and had come into Randy's one Saturday night too. That must mean that he was approachable, Rob thought. Could be a top, though. Rob couldn't think of any reason he was sticking with the crowd unless he was cruising or seeking. In either department Rob could take care of him—and would like to. But then maybe he was a top too. Rob had managed to turn his share of tops, but there was something determined and stubborn about Cal that indicated he wasn't likely to change.

* * * *

Eric fought to focus on Rob's ass as the older man rose from the bed and moved toward the bathroom. He didn't know what was in those white pills Rob had given him beyond the base of Caberlin-brand dopamine, medically used for Parkinson's Disease but used in Erick and Rob's circles for sustained erections and multiple ejaculations.

The young mainline Philadelphian had had the multiple ejaculations and, still having a long, thick erection, he was looking forward to a couple more ejaculations when Rob got back from the john. The drug was what Eric had come home with Rob from Randy's the previous night to obtain—the Caberlin and the Ecstasy, barbiturates, amphetamines, and even the pot. The whole line of goods that Rob supplied to the young men who came to Ocean City and sought him out.

Eric had just started at Swarthmore and had come back to Ocean City the second weekend because he believed he couldn't maintain the pace of university studies or get in good with the math professor who had made a pass at him after his second class without the help of the drugs. And there were some other students he wanted to impress off the bat. So, although he thought the experimentation, guided by the older lifeguard, Rob, all summer was just a summer thing, he was hooked now.

The major kicker to the arrangement was the expense—and not just what Rob charged him for the drugs—but that Rob took an extra cut out of the service each time by getting Eric high on the drugs he had to buy and that, while he was high on sexual enhancers, Rob fucked him.

"No fuckee, no drugee," was one of Rob's favorite expressions.

Eric lay there on Rob's bed in the semidarkness of the light shining through the open bedroom door from Rob's living room. His eyes focused—as well as they could from the haziness and heart palpitations induced by the drug, which wouldn't wear off for hours—on Rob rising from the bed. Eric trembled at the muscular perfection and deep tan of the lifeguard as he moved to the bathroom, the whiteness of his plump buttocks against the deep tan of the rest of his body providing a sharp focal point. And then he moaned as Rob returned from the john, the same slash of whiteness at the hips and groin providing stark visual centering on the man's gigantic erection and trimmed pubic bush.

Rob was long and thick without enhancing drugs, and he didn't usually take them. But he had tonight, and they'd held him in monstrous erection for the past three hours, during which he'd fucked Eric two times already.

As Rob came down on the bed on his knees, reached under Eric's erection, and slid two fingers into his gaping hole, the younger man groaned; spread his legs, which were bent with the heels of his feet digging into the mattress; and raised his buttocks to give Rob's hard cock a straight shot up into him as he was remounted for a third fuck. Drugs or no drugs, Eric was amazed at the stamina of this guy who was more than ten years older than he was.

Rob didn't thrust inside him, though. Pulling his fingers out of Eric's hole, he continued climbing over Eric's body until he was hovering over his torso, with his knees pushed into the mattress on either side of Eric's waist. Rob grabbed two fists full of red hair on the back of Eric's head and raised the younger man's face to him. With a moan, Eric opened his mouth wide just in time for his lips to slide up Rob's shaft. He gagged as Rob pumped his throat. It wasn't long, though, before Rob climbed off his body; ran an arm under the small of his back; flipped his smaller, slender body over; and coaxed him up on his knees and elbows.

Rob mounted Eric's hips; thrust inside him; and, as Eric reached for his own throbbing, drug-provided erection; fucked him hard and deep for the third time that night.

Eric lay there, on his back, trapped under a beefy arm thrown over his chest, and waited for the dawn. He struggled with himself in his mind on whether what he had to do to get a stash of drugs from Rob—on top of paying through the nose for them—was worth the rough fuck Rob always demanded. Eric didn't mind being fucked, and Rob was a hunk. But this through-the-night business was almost too taxing.

It almost was like the guy was having a last hurrah. He wasn't young. He was still in tip-top physical condition, but he couldn't hold that for long. He must be at least thirty, Eric thought. He must be the oldest lifeguard on the Ocean City beach. He couldn't sustain this much longer. And maybe he knew that. Maybe that was why he was such a cruel taker.

And tonight he had hinted that, in the future, the supply might also depend on Eric bringing him more business. There was a guy in the group that was hanging around Rob on the beach, the black guy, Cal, who was the only one Eric knew who wasn't already a customer. But there was something about that guy . . .

Eric would have pursued that thought if he hadn't been distracted. But Rob was awake again, and still hard. He turned Eric over on his stomach, mounted his buttocks again, and worked his cock inside for the fourth fuck of the night.

The sensation-enhancing drugs had worn off. This was going to be a raw fuck. "Oh, shit. Oh fuck. OH FUCK!" Eric cried out as the cock bottomed inside him and the rhythm of the fuck commenced.

* * * *

"How many of the stands have you picked up now?" Frank, captain of the OCBP, asked Hank when the latter entered the lifeguard station headquarters.

"They're up from the inlet up to 15th Street. Sure there's enough room for them in the warehouse?"

"There always has been," Frank answered. "You just have to pack them in tight." He was sitting at his desk, writing the reports closing out the season. It had been a good summer. Some injuries, but no drownings. And no shark attacks like were being reported elsewhere along the coast. The sharks must find the bathers up on the New Jersey beaches more to their taste, he thought, with a chuckle.

"What's funny?" Hank asked.

"Oh, nothing," Frank answered. Hank wouldn't like the joke. He was from New Jersey. "Anyone assigned to pull the trash barrels up to the dunes? There's a surf surge warning out. Storm's coming."

"Gabe is handling that. He's gotten farther up the beach than the stand pickup has gotten. That should take us the rest of the week, longer if the storm lasts for very long."

Hank was standing next to the desk and reached down and picked a paper up from Frank's in basket. "Still got Rob Styles' application for next year in your in basket, I see."

"Yes," Frank said, with a sigh. "I was hoping he wouldn't reapply. We've never let a lifeguard go that long."

"You don't think he can hack it anymore?"

"It isn't that. He's still in great shape and he could handle the job in his sleep now. That's not the real problem. I've got to let him go, and I don't know how to break it to him."

"What's the problem then? Because he's gay? Because he spikes a lot of the young guys hanging around the beach for the summer? The 'keep them out of Ocean City' campaign getting to you?"

"No, it's not that. Live and let live on that, I say. It's drugs. I think he's been pushing them. And I've gotten hints that the narcs were nosing around late in the season. I don't want the new season to open up with that over my head."

"OK, so he's got to go. You can just tell him he's too old. So, what's the problem that has this application sitting here collecting dust?"

"Mickey Bugoti's the problem. Not sure I want to tangle with him. If Styles is into drug pushing . . ."

"Ah, bad news that one. Well, let me know when you are going to lower the boom on Styles. I'll plan to be at the other end of the beach for that. And you gotta do something in the next week. The whole operation is shutting down again. He has a right to know before we're closed down."

"Yes, I know," Frank said, looking down at the pile of paperwork on his desk, his eyebrows knitted. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't taken the chief job, though—that I'd stayed out on the stands."

"That still would make you only the second-oldest lifeguard, wouldn't it?" Hank asked, with a laugh. "Rob's still got you by a couple of years, doesn't he?"

"Yes, he does. And still he's in better shape than I am. I don't know how he does it."

"Maybe you should spend time fucking younger guys, like he does," Hank responded.

"Maybe so. Fucking older women doesn't seem to have kept me as toned at Rob is."

* * * *

Rob lay in bed and watched Eric, groaning, rise and hobble to the bathroom. He waited until the young redhead had come out of the bathroom and dressed in front of him. Rob always found it more erotic to watch the young men dress than undress. They moved more stiffly, reminding him of the vigor with which he had taken them. They also tended, like Eric was doing now in the early morning light filtering through the gauze curtains on the bedroom window, to give Rob a wide berth and to look at him apprehensively. It gave him a sense of power and control. There always was the fear—based more on weariness and soreness than lack of lust—that Rob would reach out for them, pull them back on the bed, and fuck them again. He hadn't done that for a couple of years, but his reputation lived on.

This also gave Rob a sense of accomplishment and sustained virility. He turned on his side and moved closer to the edge, closer to where Eric stood, dressing. And he gave a low laugh when Eric stumbled a couple of steps farther from him, with a hint of panic running across his face.

Rob felt the power. If he wanted to fuck Eric again, Eric would let him. The young redhead hadn't received what he'd come up to Rob's apartment with him the previous evening to get. Until he did, Rob knew the young man was in his power.

To test Eric Rob extended an arm beyond the side of the bed and said, "Come'her."

With a sigh, still just in his briefs and T-shirt, Eric moved to him. Rob ran his hand up through a leg hole of the briefs and grabbed Eric's cock. The young man twitched, but he didn't resist. The cock was flaccid—and probably sore, Rob reasoned—having been hard on the effects of the dopamine pills most of the night. He pushed the foreskin down the shaft with his fingers and placed a thumb on Eric's piss slit, being rewarded with a low moan but also a look of concern on the young man's face.

"You want me to fuck you again, don't you?" Rob asked.

There was a hesitation, but Eric dutifully responded with a "Yes," in a low voice. In fact, he was conflicted. Eric liked being fucked. And he liked being fucked by Rob. He liked older guys, especially tanned muscle men like Rob. But Rob fucked him like he possessed him, and each time he fucked Eric to exhaustion. When Eric was high on drugs, it was ecstasy to be fucked by Rob—the first or second time. But it wore Eric out and at some point it became too much. That point had been reached this morning, especially as the drugs wore off. Eric's ass was sore, and he knew he wouldn't leave the apartment walking a straight line.

And now Rob wanted to ream him again. Now all Eric wanted was the drugs he both paid for and earned on his back—and, for that matter, some of which both he and Rob had already used—and to go back to his hotel room, soak in the tub, and then sleep the sleep of the dead.

But then he remembered what he was going to ask Rob. Not that this was the best time. He felt his dick engorging despite himself. He began to pant lightly as Rob rubbed his precum around on his cock helmet. Maybe he was up for another fuck by this voracious hunk after all.

Rob was just toying with Eric, though. When he felt Eric relax, his cock harden, and heard the low pants, Rob knew he could have Eric again if he wanted to. If he could manage it. But he wouldn't do that. What he was trying to hide from Eric was that he was exhausted too—and stiff and sore. This had been coming on so slowly over the years that he had taken a long time to become aware of the evidence that he was aging. He still could get it up almost on command—especially with some help from some poppers—but his body didn't have the "never stop" stamina it once had. His muscles and joints complained and didn't let him forget when he overused them.

Maybe that's why he took them hard like he did Eric last night. He had no idea when that ability would desert him, and he lived in fear that it would do so suddenly—and increasingly he feared that it would happen soon.

But he liked his life the way it was. He didn't want to grow up—or grow old. And he was only thirty-two.

Rob pulled his hand out of the leg hole of Eric's briefs and reached around and gave the young man a slap on the rump. "Got things to do today or else I'd fuck you again until you screamed."

Maybe it was just the drugs, but Eric thought Rob had already fucked him last night until he screamed.

"Well, uh, the stash you're selling me. Could you get it and then I'll be on my way?"

Was that relief Rob heard in the young man's voice. Irritation set in. They once jumped at the opportunity to squeal from his fucking, no matter how many times he poked them in quick succession. And the mention of drugs—the suspicion that that was all Eric had come for.