Living in the Breaks

By Ocean Lover

My beautiful boy is coming home in three days and I can’t wait any
longer. I hadn’t seen him since he stepped through the security gate to
head back to college in New York four months ago. The emails and phone
calls tide me over, even the occasional IM, when he coerces me to use it,
was nice. But sound was sound, words were words, but only flesh was
flesh.

I get told by friends and strangers alike that I’m a tactile person. I
want my Alex in front of me. I want to run my hands through his short,
spiky hair. And then down his body. I love his ear lobes, his neck, his
oh-so-flat pecs, his six beautiful abdominals, his basket of plenty, his
wiry calves, and his firm, delicious posterior.

He is a moaner. He cooed, cawed, clucked, and made every other
imaginable noise when he had my talented tongue buried inside him.

I wanted to hear him moaning right now. I wanted me to be moaning right
now.

I had first seen him perhaps six years ago. We had first talked to each
other five years ago. I realized I had a softness in my heart, or was it
my mind, for him three years ago. We began this timebound relationship
eighteen months ago. I wish we could have just a single day together, a
day that would last our entire lives.

Instead, we snagged moments here and there. We had his breaks from
college, Christmas, spring, and summer. We had my occasional trips to
New York. We budgeted our time together as if we were dieters bidding a
farewell to butter. The fat times, the lean times.

He is a swimmer, a talented one. We met at the pool. I had returned to
my hometown when he was just beginning his sophomore year in high
school. I had spent my years in California neglecting my body and had
only returned to the pool in the months before my move. My first day
seeing him, my muscles weren’t moving me through the water as expertly
as I would have hoped.

He, on the other hand, moved beautifully. He was fast. He wasted no
motion in the water, no extra kicks, no cavitation. That was why I
noticed him that first high school swim team season. He had the soft
body of someone younger than what I crave. He had the words `jailbait’
engraved all over his very visible skin.

I watched him and the others on the team with some jealousy. Their speed
and facility in the water. As you watched over the weeks and months of
the season, you could see the tightening of the tone, the prominence of
the muscles, the beauty of the physical person being crafted through
effort and struggle. I think I got back into the swimming habit more to
see these beauties in the water than for any other reason.

The second season, Alex’s junior year, I started to chat with him some
mornings, maybe five times a month. “Looking good” or “Your
backstroke is looking really strong.” Inane things, safe things. I
listened to him talking with his buddies on the deck or in the shower.
Instead of the chatter about what somebody shot over the weekend or who
was trying to date who, he said things that made him sound older than he
was.

I bothered to learn his name. I bothered to follow him in the newspaper
reports of swim meets. He usually won the races he entered.

I started paying attention to his body. Between his sophomore and junior
years he had metamorphosized into a beautiful young man. Everything I
saw or heard from him I liked. I continued watching his backstroke and
the pit of jealousy was there but also something else. A fascination, a
longing.

His senior year, he was gorgeous and lost only two races all year long.
I was amazed when I read in the papers that he would be venturing off to
Columbia. I congratulated him the next time I saw him at the pool. He
gave me a shy smile and said “thank you.”

I began to wonder about him that year. I had finally begun to look like
a fit member of the human species again. The four to five sessions of
laps a week had finally had a chance to affect their magic.

I had a habit of showing up at the pool at 5.50 in the morning. The
locker room was empty still. The old men who swam laps in the morning
were already in the water; the younger generation had yet to rouse
themselves for practice.

About three weeks into the season, the picture changed. Alex began
showing up earlier for practice. I saw him three or more mornings a
week. He also wasn’t shy about showing off his intricately etched
body. I learned that year that he had been gifted in many ways, brain,
brawn, and more.

On the occasional afternoons when I would swim, I would find him and
twenty other young men in the changing room. Alex, somehow, would often
wind up standing next to me, taking his time covering up the beauty he
now possessed. Still, he read a very clear “hands off” to me.

The local paper did one more nice article on him before he graduated. I
thought then that I would miss seeing him in the mornings.

The next swim team season I was swimming better and looking better. None
of the current crop interested me much. The attractive ones were
arrogant without merit; the talented ones were wee babes and had much
more growing up to do. I found it more challenging to keep waking up
three or four mornings a week, but somehow I did.

Around Christmas time I arrived at the pool one morning and began my
laps. After the swim team hit the water, I saw something out of the
corner of my eye and thought I was having a stroke or at least a
hallucination. Alex was swimming and swimming very well. I hit the wall
and took a breather. When this phantom swimmer popped up at the wall, it
was indeed Alex. I smiled at him. He noticed and waved back. I kicked
off the wall and did a lot of laps that day.

Eventually it occurred to me he was back on vacation and swimming with
his old team to stay in good condition. I remembered that he was
swimming on the college team. He, of course, looked it.

The next morning when I saw him, I asked him how he was enjoying college.

“I love New York,” he said.

“Good way not to answer a question,” I said.

He gave me a full smile.

“Have a good swim,” I said before pushing off.

“You too,” I caught before I was underwater.

I watched him for the two weeks he was back swimming in the pool. I
didn’t miss a day. I watched his body, of course, and his technique. I
paid close attention to how he interacted with everyone around him. He
coached the younger team members, offering encouragement. He provided
the laughs when the stroke counts got long. He kept the seniors from
slacking.

I realized that I watched this kid more closely than most of my work
colleagues. I cared more for him than I cared to admit. I was a bit
frightened as I tended to keep myself on a short leash when it came to
fantasies. I like to touch things, not dream them. At least that was
what I wanted to believe.

I saw him again in the summer. The times he was in the pool matched up
with my own, even though the high school teams weren’t in the water.
His Speedo was smaller than at Christmas and, if anything, his basket was
larger.

I traded in my baggy style suit and bought a Speedo, nothing as small as
what Alex wore. The next time he saw me in the pool he gave me a wave
and a smile. When we were both on the wall, he asked, “How’s the new
suit?”

“I keep fearing it’ll come undone.”

“Wouldn’t want that. Keep it laced up tight.” He smiled again and
pushed off. He did brutal regimens in the pool and he was still a lot
faster than me. I guess that explains why I didn’t swim in college.

I loved his sense of humor. I couldn’t quite be sure that he was as
interested in me as I was in him, but that day stands in my mind. The
tipping point, the day he really began laying his cards on the table.

You might ask me, Mr. Tactile, if all of my love life were made of brief
moments in the pool. Of course not, I was just twenty-four then and a
very selective shopper in the boy-mart we call the local university
campus. But, while the touching was very good, there was something that
led me to sever from each of the locally grown selections in the produce
aisle.

This other selection, locally grown but now with an imported feel, was
the most intriguing item in the entire store stock. Of course, he was
still marked `Out of Stock.’

The next summer Alex finally made his intentions known. We began
chatting more than normal. He caught me as I was heading out one morning
and asked me for a ride to his summer job. Of course, I said yes. From
there we began to meet outside the pool, the movies, hiking in the
mountains, and the rest. One day when we were biking outside the town, I
knew he had something he wanted to say.

When we stopped for a moment to hydrate ourselves, I said, “Spit it
out.”

“The water, what?”

“No, whatever’s on your mind.” He looked at me for a moment.

“Might as well. I like you,” he said.

“And I like you,” I said. Very original. I was such a deep thinker
that day.

“I like you a lot. A physical liking. Actually, you’ve got me hard in
these damn biking shorts.”

“It’s a good look on you.”

“Asshole,” he said. And with that we were dating. We were swapping
blowjobs after we made it back to my apartment and showered. I like him
a lot, but I don’t know if I would have liked the taste of his sweat.

“You have a dick that just doesn’t end,” I said, wiping the remains
from the corners of my mouth. “Tasty, though.”

“Less talk,” he said, as he dove onto my boxer clad groin.

We had only a few weeks before he had to return to college. We spent
considerable time in bed learning each others likes. We found we didn’t
really have a lot of dislikes. I call Alex an omnisexual.

“As long as it’s with you,” he said.

“Saccharine nitwit,” I said and laughed.

I introduced him to anal the old fashioned way, I had him fuck me. He
loved it. I introduced him to rimming one afternoon in the shower. I’m
still surprised none of the neighbors complained. When it was his turn
to experience penetration, I knew we were very compatible. He gobbled me
up and wasn’t eager to return my favorite little person at the end of
the experience.

I told him about my past. He blanched when we got down to sheer
numbers. Hey, count in the dozens, not hundreds, gutter dweller. Alex
owned up to losing his cherry in his freshman year of college. He had a
number of good `friends,’ some swimmers, and loved to play.

“Do we want to keep this going when you go back,” I asked, not
expecting a `yes.’

“I do.”

“Are we going to do the open relationship style of dating,” I asked.

“Will that work?”

“You have some good friends and you’re going to get horny,” I said,
grabbing him and rubbing.

“Do you want to have a serious talk or is this your style of foreplay,”
he asked, breathing a bit harder than normal.

“Whichever.”

He blocked my hand. “I want to get this settled before we have our
fun.”

“We’ll keep dating and can see other people, but nothing more than
mutual masturbation. Your mouth and asshole belong to me.”

He nodded. “Just as long as I am now the proud owner of your ass and
lips.”

The sophomore year apart was hard, in many ways. I stopped sampling the
local wares completely. I lobbied for more business trips to New York.
I read every email where Alex detailed how he had jerked off this
teammate or friend. We even tried cybering, but I burst out laughing
more than once. My boy is beautiful, brainy, and very kinky when he’s
three thousand miles away from me.

The last thing we did together before I put him on a plane was make him
moan. It’ll be the first thing when he returns, too. His parents and I
have an agreement. I get to pick him up and drop him off at the
airport. I have to turn him over so he can see his sister and two
brothers for a couple of days, but the rest of the time, he stays with
me.

My tongue is already itching. Living for these brief windows of
opportunity has taught me all kinds of patience. And it gives me time to
plot and plan. Alex wrote me a particularly steamy email about what he
and the champion butterfly specialist on his team got up to last
weekend. I’m planning to have a great welcome back party for him.

Or I could just send him this story and let the suspense do the work. No
matter what happens, I’ll be a very happy man in three days that seem
much shorter now that my mind and other body parts are in the right state
of excitement.