Troy Story

Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong

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"We were on a hiking trip up in the Pennines," Troy began quietly after the waitress had taken our order. The coffee shop, which was hidden away among a few takeaways and convenience stores across the road from the college, was deserted in spite of the time of day.

He asked, "I don't suppose you've been camping up there, have you?"

I shook my head, more interested in why the waitress was faffing around with the till instead of pouring our drinks. I'd been gagging for a coffee since before I'd been pulled out of Matt Strickson's godawful presentation.

"It's spectacular," the teacher went on. "An ideal place to take a beginner's group under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, these weren't normal circumstances."

I turned towards him. "How do you mean?"

"It was February half term and the weather caught us out. The forecast had been for light snow and so we'd headed out over open country, two of us instructors and a group of lads -- very remote and exposed. What we didn't know was that a storm had changed course unexpectedly and by late-afternoon we had to put the tents up as best we could in blizzards and battering winds.

"It was impossible to get our bearings and would have been extremely unwise to have tried to move away from our spot, so we just dug in and held on tight, waiting for the storm to subside. For three days and nights, the weather was ferocious and we were stuck fast -- even our mobiles couldn't get a signal the snow was so heavy.

"It was on one of those nights -- very late, long after the lads had turned in -- that it happened."

I nodded before turning again to see what the waitress was up to. She seemed to be trying to change the till roll. We were her only customers and that was her priority, was it? Changing the till roll; completely ignoring the pot of coffee sitting on the machine waiting to be poured.

"I'd hiked with Justin many times -- we were pretty good mates. We weren't too worried about what to do -- we knew the drill inside out. We had enough gas and we knew the storm would blow itself out long before the food ran out. The trouble was that we were bored as hell being stuck together for so long with only the wind howling round our tents and the empty, disorientating whiteness beyond.

"He and I had played around a bit together before that trip. It's not uncommon for guys to couple up from time to time when they're sleeping together in such close confines each night. Did you know that?"

I shook my head. "No. No, I didn't, actually."

She was making a complete pig's ear of changing the till roll. Now she was hunting around under the desk for something -- probably the instruction manual for the till. The coffee was just sitting there, stewing.

"Well, it's not like it's widespread or anything. But at the same time, it's not unusual. It's certainly not something that gets spoken about -- it's usually, at most, just a discreet fondling of each other's hard-ons under the cover of the sleeping bags after lights out."

I nodded, appreciating his openness. He obviously felt that, since I'd described my own intimate experience with Guy so frankly to him, he was able to speak to me with the same familiarity.

"I've never really thought about it," I admitted, "but I suppose it's not unexpected. I mean, the two of you have the same needs, and it would get pretty frustrating on long trips otherwise."

He smiled. "Exactly."

Then he looked around, "Where the hell is that coffee?"

"I think she was punching our order into the till and managed to break it." Now she had the back off it and was poking around in its electronic innards as if she had the slightest idea of what she was doing.

"Excuse me!" he called over to her. "Do you think we could have our coffee?"

She looked over at us and giggled. "Ooh, I'd forgotten all about that!"

She grabbed two cups from the shelf and proceeded to fill them. I was pleased that Troy was more forthright in such situations than me. I was so polite we would still have been sitting waiting come closing time.

He turned back to me, lowering the volume of his voice to prevent her from overhearing him. "Well, Justin and I had fooled around a bit together like that for a few years. Mainly just jacking each other off when we both felt horny."

I nodded, seeing for the first time something appealing about camping.

"How does that work?" I asked. "I mean, how do you let each other know that you want to... well... 'fool around a bit', as you put it?"

"Guys need to masturbate," he shrugged. "No matter who you're hiking with, some nights you're gonna hear your mate's hand thumping against his sleeping bag or feel the rhythm of him next to you when you're trying to get to sleep. Some men try to be discreet about it; others just lie there and whack themselves off without making any bones about what they're doing.

"It's pretty much bound to happen when you're with another bloke day and night. Sometimes you'll see each other taking a dump; at others you'll hear each other tossing off. It's not pleasant, but it's going to happen."

"I get that," I cut in. "I just don't get how you end up rubbing each other."

It seemed to me quite a big leap from overhearing each other jerking off privately to unzipping both your sleeping bags and pumping away at each other's erections like a couple of horny adolescents.

"Well, it just kind of happens. In Justin's case, he was very upfront about his need for regular release. He needed to masturbate pretty much every night -- no matter what circumstances we were in and how precarious things might be. We could be perched halfway up a cliff in the middle of a hurricane and Justin would end the day with a wank! I guess he had a high sex drive and, when he was away from his missus, beating himself off was his only way of controlling it."

I chuckled. "I can relate to that."

"Obviously I needed relief too from time to time," he went on, "so some nights I'd join him. It wasn't like it was prearranged or anything -- neither of us said a word about it... in my experience, guys never do. But some nights, while his fist was making little thud-thud noises under his sleeping bag, I'd join in. And we'd lie there doing it together, faster and faster, until we both came... gasping... one after the other."

Yeah, I thought. I kind of know how it works.

"Then one night -- I forget where we were -- we were jerking off together like that in the darkness when Justin unzipped his bag a bit, reached into mine to grab my free wrist and moved my hand across right onto his hard-on. I was pretty surprised but I wrapped my fingers around him and did my best to wank him, just like I was doing to myself."

"Weren't you a bit disgusted?" I asked, remembering how I had felt many years earlier when my ex-wife's friend's husband had grabbed my own hand and put it on his wrinkled scrotum. "You know, to have your hand on another man like that?"

"No, not at all," he laughed. "I just figured he needed a bit of extra help that night and I didn't mind providing it. As I said, it's not that unusual for guys to want a bit of company from each other on a long hike, so it didn't seem weird that he'd want me to do that for him."

"But it must have felt odd, masturbating another man?"

"I suppose so -- a bit. But jerking two dicks isn't so different from jerking one -- you kind of get into the same rhythm on the two of you. I'll admit that Justin's erection felt very different to mine. Kind of shorter but much thicker -- quite a handful, actually. I think, because of our differences, I probably wasn't doing it very well -- it was my left hand too, remember -- but he seemed glad to have a different hand down there for a change and was groaning his gratification as I rubbed him."

He stopped talking as the waitress brought our coffees over on a little tray with a jug of milk and some sachets of sugar.

"Oh God, I can't remember -- did you order food?" she asked and then giggled, "Sorry, I'm just having one of those days. It's been like Picadilly Circus in here."

I glanced around, wondering if there were perhaps customers I hadn't seen lurking among the furniture, but the place was empty and showed no signs that it had been otherwise in some considerable time.

We optimistically repeated our food order, although I felt it was unlikely that anything remotely edible would ever materialise, and she trundled back off to the counter. Suddenly she turned back to us and asked, with another giggle, "I don't suppose either of you happen to know anything about how to fix tills, do you?"

We both shook our heads, and Troy muttered apologetically to me that perhaps this place had changed owners since he'd last been in.

After adding milk to our coffees, Troy went on with his story.

"It felt weird to feel him cum on my wrist -- to have his warm wetness pumping all over my hand. But apart from that -- and the yuckiness of cleaning up afterwards -- I didn't think much of it, to be honest. I certainly didn't think of it as being in any way 'gay'."

"I don't see that it was," I agreed, taking a sip of my drink which tasted unexpectedly pleasant. "It was just one friend helping out another. What's wrong with that?"

"Well, the next night," Troy went on with a nod, "or whenever it was that I next felt too horny to sleep, Justin unzipped my sleeping back and returned the favour. I hadn't asked him to -- as I said, we never spoke about it at all -- but he must have heard me quietly stroking myself and felt obliged to pay me back for what I'd done to him."

"He wanked you both off together?" I asked.

"Yeah," he nodded, "just like I had with him. And it felt good -- surprisingly good, actually. Having someone else masturbating you -- a different hand, touching you and squeezing you in ways you don't expect it to -- feels infinitely better than your own. I could almost imagine it was a woman stroking me... my wife. Of course, the sound of Justin's hand thumping away at himself under his own sleeping bag made it impossible to completely forget that it was another bloke right there next to me.

"I don't know if he felt disgusted by having my stuff squirting all over his hand, but if he did he didn't let it spoil what he was doing to himself. Within seconds, he was... well --"

"On the home straight?" I suggested.

"And over the finishing line," he grinned.

"So did that become a regular thing?" I asked.

"Was it chips or salad you wanted with your baked potato?" the waitress shrieked over.

Chips with a baked potato? I almost winced.

"Definitely salad," Troy called back.

Then he went on, quieting his voice a little, "It became regular for us to help each other out, yes. It felt so much better to have someone else's hand down there... usually we'd do each other at the same time. Apart from anything, there was a practical advantage to it -- it made it quicker for us both to finish off so we could get to sleep. The more sleep you manage to get when you're on a hike, the better things tend to go."

I nodded, imagining the two of them in the tent, lying side by side with their arms reaching across one another to wank each other's cock. I thought back to the night Guy and I had masturbated together at the hotel, before he'd come over to my bed. What had most appealed to me as we'd stroked ourselves was the wonderfully sexual smell which had gradually filled the air of the room: an intensifying odour from our cocks as we jerked them -- sharp and acrid; sweat laced with testosterone. I had all but forgotten how arousing it had been until that moment but I now remembered how I had eagerly sniffed it as it had gathered in the air.

I asked Troy if he had been aroused by the same masturbatory odour when he and Justin had stroked each other's cocks in the dark.

He nodded. "A tent is pretty confined, so of course you get to smell each other up close and personal... just about as personal as it gets, to be honest. But yeah... I know what you mean about the sexy smell of two guys masturbating. It's strongly male and there's kind of a sourness to it, but there's something about which turns you on and gets your mouth watering. Justin must have found that too, because I... well... how can I put this? Let's just say I soon became aware of just how wet his mouth could feel."

I smiled and nodded at what he was alluding to. "I suppose that was rather inevitable."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Not to me. I was quite shocked when he first did it. It was black dark -- God knows where we'd pitched up -- and we were in the middle of tugging each other before we slept. Suddenly I felt this warm wetness on me, sliding up and down. At first I thought Justin must have spat on his hand, but then I felt his tongue licking at me and his teeth just lightly scraping me as he moved up and down.

"I jumped up and cried out, 'Whoa, mate! What the fuck?' but he pushed me back down and whispered that I should just enjoy it, it would be better like this."

"And I'm guessing it was?" I asked.

He grinned. "Very much so."

"Is this also pretty common between guys who climb together regularly? I mean, you said guys sometimes give each other hand jobs to help each other out -- is it normal for them to trade blow jobs too?"

He shook his head. "Some probably do, but I don't think it's 'normal', as you put it. Like I said before, such things aren't spoken about so it's difficult to know."

"Were you on hikes with other men when any of this was going on? I mean, were other guys in the tents around yours?"

He nodded and I asked, "So weren't you concerned someone would hear you? I mean a blowjob can be quite a noisy thing... all the sucking and slurping."

He chuckled and replied, "It's possible to be quite discreet about it... to work your mouth under the other guy's sleeping bag without it being too obvious what you're doing. We'd be very quiet. And if we heard someone getting out of their tents for a piss or whatever, we'd just tuck ourselves away and pretend we were sleeping."

"I assume -- when he'd finished -- that you had to return the favour?"

He nodded. "Yeah -- he didn't ask, of course, but it was kind of good manners, if you know what I mean."

I smiled, sipping at my drink.

"It wasn't actually that bad," he went on. "Have you ever given a guy a blow job?"

I nodded back, feeling inexplicably uncouth to be admitting that I was -- or at least had been -- a bloke who sucked off other men's cocks. Rimming, to me, seemed a rather noble pursuit, but it felt almost cheap to admit I was also a common cocksucker.

"Well, in that case, you know what it's like," he declared. "It doesn't taste as strong as you expect it to, and there's not a great deal of skill involved. It can be quite erotic, actually, once you get into a rhythm with your lips and tongue. The feel of it... kind of pulsating in your mouth... and oozing onto your tongue... I was surprised how arousing I found it."

"It has a certain appeal," I conceded, "but it wouldn't be something I would seek out."

"Treat the head of the penis like you would the clitoris on a woman," he advised. "It's the male equivalent so it responds in the same way. Don't be afraid to be quite rough with it and really pummel the back of the head with your tongue -- right in the fold where it splits into two."

The kitchen door swung open with a thud.

"When I said 'salad'," the waitress called through it, "I've only actually got a tomato. Is that okay?"

Troy looked irritated but nodded.

She added, as if she was offering a rare culinary treat, "I can slice it up for you, if you like?"

"Sounds delightful," he said curtly and the door swung closed again.

"So is that how you discovered rimming?" I asked. "Did your mouth head a little too far south in the dark?"

"Actually, no," he replied. "In any case, we didn't trade blowjobs that often. It would only happen occasionally when Justin was struggling to get aroused from just my hand. I'd notice that he'd be kind of semi-hard when I was masturbating him and I'd anticipate he was likely to want something more that night. On such occasions, he'd lean over and take me in his mouth -- finish me off that way -- and then I'd repay him by doing the same to him, which is obviously what he wanted."

"Did you swallow each other's semen?" I asked.

I saw him recoil a little and wondered if the question was a step too personal. But he recovered himself and leaned forward, taking a drink of his coffee before obliging me with an answer.

"We did, yes. Mainly, I think, because it was less messy. Tissues are a bit of a luxury on a hike or climb, so it seemed easier just to swallow whatever he produced. Which wasn't very much, to be honest -- I sometimes wondered how he'd managed to have so many kids. He did the same to me, sucking and swallowing everything I discharged."

I nodded, smiling a little to show him my appreciation at his frankness.

"I gather it's high in protein," I observed.

He smiled and took another drink of his coffee.

When he'd replaced his cup on the table, I asked him, "So how did you end up rimming Justin?"

"That happened on the trip up to the Pennines. The one where we ended up holed up our tents for three nights. It was boring being cooped up together, but at the same time it was hugely stressful. The tension of not knowing when the storm was going to break, of trying to think of things we could do to keep the lads from getting on each other's nerves... of just being trapped like that in the middle of nowhere barely able to get from tent to tent without getting disorientated by the blizzards.

"I think it was the building sense of uncertainly that did it. One night I found, like Justin had before me, that a hand job wasn't enough. I don't know what it was -- maybe I was feeling lonely, scared, isolated -- I don't know. I just knew I needed more than a hand down there. I needed something a bit more intense... passionate, even."

"So you started sucking him?"

"No. I didn't want that. It was black dark and snowing and as windy as hell and, for some reason, I just wanted to feel a body next to me, to wrap my arms around someone. I wanted... well... I wanted to make love, I suppose.

"I lay there in the dark, desperate for my wife... for the feel of a woman. But all I had was Justin, so -- perhaps inevitably my feelings of longing became directed towards him. What I was contemplating wouldn't be like making love, I knew that, but we'd be joined together... I could hold him... and it might just make a passable substitute. It would be dirty and messy, and I didn't know how we'd behave around each other afterwards, but he was all I had available..."

I nodded. "So you asked him if you could use his backside?"

He nodded back. "Not in such terms, of course. I can't remember how I phrased it, to be honest. But I must have whispered that I wanted more than just foreplay and asked if he'd mind turning over for me... if he'd pull his underwear down at the back. Whatever I said, my meaning was pretty clear."

I took a sip from my coffee, enrapt by the thought of them holed up together: two instructors slyly coupling up with so many other guys in the tents around them; brought to such a state of desperation by sheer boredom and apprehension.

After putting my cup back down, I asked, "And he agreed?"

Troy smiled. "Readily. I was surprised at how readily, actually. I wondered if maybe it had been something he had been wanting too... not to have me on top of him, of course, but for me to ask for it so he could then have his turn on me."

"Okay," I acknowledged, struggling to see how a secretive bout of buggery between two men in a dark tent could end up with one of them licking the other's arse. "So how did you end up rimming him?"