Interrupted Escape

I came up on the bed behind the young prostitute and tugged his T-shirt up and over his head. He didn't resist me, lifting his arms up over his head as I pulled the shirt off. He had been smoking something, marijuana, I surmised, from the odor in the room, and I saw him pop a pill as I positioned myself behind him. He was listless, not reluctant in any way, just not showing any enthusiasm. This was a contrast to the Ryker of the cathedral steps, where his vitality shone out above the others there and had been what had focused me on him.

Perhaps he reasoned that this was my money so he should give over all control to me, and perhaps he was right to do so. If he were as vital and outgoing here as he'd been in the cathedral square, that might have cried me off carrying forward with a street hookup encounter that had never been in my nature. I had always had sex with men I knew from other areas of life—first with older men who pursued and bedded me and then with younger men I had some sort of authority over in other contexts.

This, despite my age and how long I had been sexually active, was my first rent-boy pickup.

From the kneeling position behind him, I massaged Ryker's bare shoulders and ran my hands down to his chest, palming his lightly muscled pecs and rubbing his nubs. He gave a combination of quiet grunts and sighs, as closely embracing him from behind, I explore his torso with my hands, moving down to his flat belly and beyond, below his waistband. He trimmed but didn't completely shave his pubes, and my fingers played in short curls there. His blond head hair had a curl in it too, and I reached up with one hand, the other buried under his waistband, the tip of the index finger pressed against the root of his cock, and released his hair to cascade down to his shoulders.

He shuddered slightly, the only indication he even was there, in the room, emotionally. But then he turned his head, his lips meeting mine, and we kissed—not hungrily but deeply, his lips opening to my invading tongue, giving over entirely to me—his surrender to letting me have my way as I wished. I was paying for this. I'm sure he could feel me between his shoulder blades, hardening up. I was big. I would tax him. There was a long way to go, though, to bringing passion out of him. So far, this was just a trick, letting me build in any heat there would be.

I unbuckled and unzipped him. "Slip them off," I whispered in his ear, and he slowly shucked his jeans and briefs. I encircled his cock with a hand as I pressed my chin on his shoulder, turning my head now and then to nuzzle my lips into the hollow of his throat as I slow stroked his cock. He did harden for me, but still there was little emotion. He did sigh a bit in response to my hand on his cock and the fingers of the other one toying with one of his nipples.

"Do you want me to come before you put it in?" he asked.

"No. I want to enjoy you a bit before you come," I said.

He gasped, tensed, and then relaxed again as I moved the hand from his chest down and around to his buttocks, finding the crease and then the hole, and then penetrating him. He reached around with his arms, cupping one of my buttocks cheeks with one hand and my balls and the root of my cock with the other.

"So gross," he murmured. I didn't need a translation to know he'd found me to be an above-average size. I wondered how many cocks he'd taken in his career on the cathedral steps. Many, I assumed, but I asked anyway.

"And have you had many men?" asked.

"Yes, many. Not many as big as you." I took that response as more or less being what I wanted to hear—but I was, in fact, big.

I continued working his body with my hands, and he lay quietly in my arms, panting a bit. He was in erection, though, so he wasn't completely playacting. I wondered if he was as lethargic and docile with all his johns as this. I wondered what the German word for "johns" was. I felt myself going a little soft again, realizing that I was as nearly detached from this as Ryker was—despite making moves that both of us should respond to with increased heat.

Perhaps feeling me flagging, Ryker turned his face to mine for another deep kiss and pressed his thumb into the piss slit of my glans and pulled on my shaft. I immediately came alive and put some passion into my kiss. He yielded but did not increase the heat from his side.

With a sigh, I got on with it. Grabbing up both pillows from the head of the bed, I moved back from him, and as I placed the pillows under the small of his back, I coaxed him to recline on them, which arched his back and pressed his shoulder blades to the mattress on my side of the pillows. Kneeling at his head, I took his head between my hands and arched it back.

"Open to me," I whispered. Understanding my intent, he opened his mouth wide, I penetrated into his mouth cavity with my hard shaft, and to every third beat of the furious music of the Valkyries, I fucked his throat. If I'd kept on the beat of the music, I would have ruptured his throat. He opened for me and took it deep. He took it, not trying to push me away. He lifted his arms as well and cupped my buttocks, holding me in place. Beyond that, though, there was nothing from him but assent. He lay there docilely, an open vessel for my lust. Nothing else.

I didn't lose heart, though. I hadn't come into this with more than a curiosity of what options were open to me in life. I just lowered my expectations on buying it off the street. He was still a luscious young man—blond and beautiful. Tall and willowy. Willing and yielding, if not full of fire and passion. I would be expecting too much to receive that from a street whore I supposed.

He was here, I had a need, I could get it up and march to a release. I was paying to get my rocks off, and that should be enough.

I moved my body on his without losing the depth and rhythm of the face fuck, matched to the third beat of the stirring music of Wagner on the radio, which had moved now from the "Ride of the Valkyries" to other wild and invigorating sections of the Ring series. I laced a hand through his balls, took his cock in my mouth while he was sucking mine, and rolled and squeeze and distended his ball sacs as we sixty-nined to the strains of Wagner unleashed.

We were both panting, me still well ahead of him in arousal, lust, and need. I pulled away before either of us came and sat on the edge of the bed, where Ryker had been when I'd entered the room. I reached for and applied the lube and the condom to my erection while Ryker knelt beside me on the bed, getting the idea that it was time to fuck—for me to fuck him.

Again he was completely docile—I almost thought disinterested or at least aloof—and yielding to my direction as I turned him and brought him down into my lap, his bent legs encasing my hips. His hand went under us—mine were holding his narrow waist between them—held my erection in position, and with a groan, descended into my lap, skewering himself. Still using the beat of the Wagner music, although controlling the rise and the fall that was slower, bottoming at every fifth staccato beat of the music rather than attempting to fuck on the third beat, I fucked the young whore.

Leaning back from me, his hands pressed into my knees, his head flung back, and his eyes closed, Ryker took the deep penetration, at first letting me do it all, taking my pleasure as I wished, the submissive there just to submit and let me have value for my money.

As we fucked, though, the heat rose in the blond iceberg.

"Mein Gott, es ist so tief!—My God, it's so deep!" he cried out.

"Open to it. Stretch. Relax," I commanded. Then, without warning, I lashed out and slapped him across the face. He gave me a shocked, hurt look, and I slapped him again. That got to him. I felt him giving way, relaxing, expanding internally, and I sank that last inch. I had felt he was holding me away from him, his body denying me the total access he wasn't otherwise according me. But when I was in deep, moving languidly in and out, deep in is core, he gave way to me in total surrender.

He leaned forward, pressing his chest into mine, encircling my chest with one arm, and moving his other hand between us, grasping his cock and stroking. I felt him tremble, his rocking against me coming into the fifth beat of the music—and into my own melding with Wagner, having fucked to him frequently.

He turned his head to the ceiling as I buried my lips into the hollow of his throat and cried out, "Ja, Ja, Frick mich. Frick mich hart!—Yes, yes. Fuck me. Fuck me hard!"

It wasn't just me fucking him; it was the two of us in synch, becoming a smoothly moving fucking machine. I was in deep, into his soft core, which yielded to me, spongy and pulsing. His head snapped forward, our lips met and opened together, our tongues dueled, each of us hungry for the other. There for a good ten or twelve seconds we were lovers, fucking each other, at the height of shared ecstasy. He shot off up our bellies and I filled the bulb of the condom.

And that was it. A wad of euros and an hour and half departure from my river cruise, and ten or twelve seconds of transport to nirvana. A brief, if explosive, fusion of just pretend lovers. It wasn't the positions we—or, rather, I—had used. That had been hot. I could have kept it up all day with that sort of technique. The spark wasn't there. I didn't have enough of it either. Paying some stranger for it wasn't allowing me to go to that level. Well, for enough time to make it worthwhile. There for ten or twelve seconds, Ryker and I were on the beam. Just long enough, though, to know what we were missing.

Was that—engaged in every couple of weeks or so—enough for me in life going henceforth? Somehow I didn't think so.

Showing that it was just a Sunday afternoon for him, Ryker extricated himself from me and went to the bathroom. He didn't bother to close the door as he pissed in the toilet and then took a shower, not closing the curtain.

I lay back in the bed and watched him through the bathroom door. This is where, if Ryker were my lover or even my potential lover, when the heat and passion and tense fucking would begin, not where getting our rocks off ended.

When he'd dried himself off, Ryker came out of the bathroom and gave me only brief looks and thin smiles as he dressed, took the money he'd earned—not enough for a generous tip, though—he hadn't moved mountains for me or assured me that this would be a sexually fulfilling option for the next phase of my life—picked up his guitar case, and left the room. He hadn't left the sketch that I'd paid for. I was just as happy he didn't. It was amateurishly—if anatomically correctly—drawn, and I had no idea what I'd do with it if he had left it. It had done its job, though, if not any more sparklingly than it's worth as art.

The only thing he said to me after we'd fucked was, "You are so big. You fuck deep inside." He didn't say anything about me striking him. I bet he didn't even realize what had turned the tide on us finally clicking in the fuck.

I didn't know if he meant that as praise or as a criticism—or, perhaps, as an indictment, like maybe I should have paid more to fuck him that deep.

I still had an hour left of the room rent and two hours before I needed to be back on board before the raising of the gangplank and the beginning of happy hour and Horst's talk on the next day's stop in Rüdesheim. Ryker had only begun to smoke the reefer now perched on the top of the night stand, burned end hanging over an edge etched with multiple previous cigarettes only partially smoked. I lit it up, leaned back, and smoked it as I took my cock in hand and dreamed of the fuck that I could have had with an enthusiastic Ryker.

When I returned to the River Princess, the happy hour was in full swing. Entering the room, I grabbed a white wine and waded into a sea of gray and blue hair, acting the erudite and charming not old comparatively music professor. I continued that for the next five days as we steamed up the Rhine, finding that I had no trouble pulling that role off.

I didn't fuck Sean as offered—or anyone else for that matter—during this time. I was experimenting with an escape into a life of celibacy and what others would consider to be normal and proper. I was exploring the idea that I didn't need sex at all anymore—that the admiration and flirting from and with the gray and blue hairs would be fine for the rest of my life. I responded to Sean as an offered bottom and Tom and Horst as hopeful tops as the temptation I was resisting. It wasn't as if the temptation wasn't perpetually there. Sean was fucked almost constantly during the voyage—by either Tom or Horst, or, on a couple of occasions the two of them together—temptingly close to me, just beyond the thin cabin wall. I could have slept on the other bunk, across my cabin, of course. But I didn't. I welcomed the challenge and celebrated each time I was able to defend myself against the siren call from beyond the cabin wall. And I was never able to resolve, although I thought on it, whether the temptation of covering Sean or being covered by Tom was the greater of the two. Horst didn't arouse me.

By the time when, on the sixth day, the River Princess reached Volkach, in the heart of the Franconian wine and picturesque rural villages country, I believed I had found a workable option. The trip was helping me come to grips with life and an eventual contentment escape after all.

Chapter Five: Escape Interrupted

By the sixth day of the cruise up the Rhine and onto the Main, I had nearly convinced myself that I could pull this off—settle into the life of an asexual middle-aged professor, specializing in chatting at cocktail parties. There certainly were enough happy hours on board the River Princess. I would lose myself in schmoozing with another hundred and a few passengers thrown together for eight days with brief interludes of leaving the ship and delving into the treasures of the riverside communities. There always seemed to be a music aspect to these excursions and, as a German music expert, I was also called on to inform and delight, which I diligently worked at accomplishing, to the pleasure of the gray and blue hairs. Maybe I could just rent myself out to Rhine River cruise lines for the next ten years to provide commentary and atmospherics.

I was less content with the prospect of no longer being a sexual animal, but I assumed that nature would take me there at some point whether I wanted it to or not. When I thought about it, though, about escaping into celibacy at thirty-seven, the image of Tom, at fifty-seven, still having been able to make me pant and spout, floated up in my mind.

By the sixth day, when we were leaving Volkach, the elements intervened to change the direction of my life. Some on board had noticed the problem as soon as we steamed away from the town after winery tours there and told us they had later in evening as we were gathering to be entertained by a young guitar player in the Rhine Lady lounge. There was a slight pinging sound coming from the engine room. There perhaps was a little hesitation in the ride against the current as well. But I, at least, noticed nothing that evening.

What I did notice was that the young musician who had come on board at Volkach to entertain us that night was a beautiful young man, having all of the attributes of what I had looked for in a submissive—when I was looking for one, which I told myself no longer was the case. My body hadn't gotten the message, though, and it reacted in sexual ways from the first moment I saw the young man settling at the front of the lounge to begin his guitar set. In a slight panic, I looked around at the nearby gray and blue hairs to see if anyone noticed, but it didn't seem they had. I'd worn trousers with enough "give" in them to hide my arousal.

He wasn't tall, and he was a little more muscular and looking like a man of the fields than the music college students I usually focused on, but he was "oh my gosh" handsome in a shy sort of way, with matching smile, up there under the spotlight. And he was blond, his hair bound into a ponytail this night, just aching for me to release the band and, in my imagination, his inhibitions at the same time. And his eyes were a pale blue. His fingers on the guitar were long and sensuous, his lips full and kissable.

To top everything off he played magnificent music on the guitar, the first song he played was a fast and intricate Spanish flamenco after Horst introduced him as twenty-two-year-old Axel Weiss off his father's dairy farm near Munich, spending a summer playing on the cruise boats on this section of the river and conducting private tours in the Bavaria area when he could. He captured the audience immediately. He certainly had me. He went from there to going through a repertoire of classic guitar songs, pop, and German folk songs. To top everything off, he took some requests, able to manage whatever anyone asked for.

"Do you know any Wagner?" one of the gray hairs sitting near me asked. I wanted to lean over and tell her that wasn't likely, as Wagner was hardly appropriate for guitar, but she went on to say, "We have a German music expert with us, a professor at an American music college. The two of you really should get together." She turned to me and beamed and everyone else in the audience did as well. I like to think she wasn't purposely acting as a matchmaker.

That took the wind out of my sails and before I could think of anything to say, the young man started playing the familiar wedding march song on the guitar. Laughter erupted all over the lounge, the passengers enjoying what they thought was a little "no, Wagner isn't appropriate for guitar" joke.

But then Weiss spoke up. "No, I'm not trying to be funny, am I, professor? Are you out there? Ah, that's you? But you're much too young and handsome to be a college professor," he said, which made me go a little harder. "You must know that tune, professor. Can you tell your fellow passengers what it is?"

"It's the 'Bridal Chorus' from Wagner's opera Lohengrin," I called out. And he had me there. He'd remembered his Wagner better than I had.

"There you go. The handsome man is a musical genius too. And how about this one, professor?" He moved into the strains of Wagner's tune for the "Ride of the Valkyries," played in a haunting, new, very evocative way. I called out the tune.

"Brilliant. You're a very impressive man."

"I think it's more you who is brilliant and impressive," I responded. "I only can identify Wagner music and give the background on it. You can play it—and you can play it in such an evocative way."

"Evocative? Perhaps we can talk more of that later," the young man responded, causing my heart to go 'thunk.' And then he finished up with a couple of songs and we broke up for drinks.

"Axel can stay around for a while for anyone who would like to talk with him about his music," Horst said as the entertainment transitioned into yet another bar fest.

As the guitarist talked with others, I caught him looking at me from time to time. I caught him and Horst talking while they both were looking in my direction. Was Horst into matchmaking again, I wondered. And if he was, did that mean that the handsome young guitarist was gay?

I got the impression Axel wanted to chat with me, and that kept me in the lounge. Most nights I had disappeared right after the entertainment was over or didn't show up for it at all. Eventually, I felt like we were working our way toward each other. But then Horst intervened, with Tom and Sean in tow, and he was introducing Axel to the couple in my neighboring cabin. The conversation appeared intimate to me, probably colored by what I knew of Horst and Tom, but quite possibly verified by the hand Tom put on the musician's arm and that Axel didn't shrink from.