The Cruise to Heaven and Hell

There were four chairs at our table when we arrived but as soon as we sat down, the waiters had weirdly taken the other two away. Autry made some hand signal and the waiters somehow immediately understood and they brought two chairs back. Autry and his mum Dahlia sat with us.

There were no black guys at my school and not that many in Sydney. I'm not sure I should say "black" or "African American". "Black" is such a weird term. Who has ever seen anyone with black skin? Who for that matter has ever seen anyone with white skin? Anyway, Autry was the most stunningly beautiful guy I had ever seen. His skin was brown but seemed to glow. Every part of his face seemed to have been intentionally sculpted by some god to be as attractive and sexy as possible. His lips were full and sensual. He had a thin mo above them. His teeth were blindingly white and perfect and his smile melted me. I could hardly take my eyes off him. And when he spoke? OMG I think his voice alone was enough to make make me blow.

My mum and Dahlia seemed to hit it off immediately and started that amazing thing women do, having a conversation while both of them are talking simultaneously over the top of each other.

"Do you want to get a drink at the bar?" Autry asked me intimating that we'd never get a word in edgewise at the table.

"Yeah," I said. I don't think our mum's even noticed us go. Autry stopped a waiter on the way and asked him to try to interrupt our mums to take their order and then we sat at the bar. We both had to show this ID card that we had been issued when we got on the ship that proved that we were eighteen before they would serve us. Autry grabbed mine and studied it.

"Oh you're just eighteen six months?"

"Yeah," though that was clear from the date on my ID. "How old are you?"

"My nineteenth birthday is Thursday," he said flashing his smile.

"Thursday this week? That's the exact date of my mum's birthday! She's going to be forty! Maybe we can have a joint party?"

"That would be cool," he said.

We looked through the cocktail menu.

"You pick first and I'll have the same," Autry said.

"Okay, let's try this one, Blueberry Mojito for both of us," I said to the barman, only because I liked to look of it.

As we drank I told Autry my life story, pretty much what I've written above, but I left out the fact for the moment that I'm gay. It's not that ashamed of being gay or anything like that. I just liked Autry a lot and I didn't want to say anything that might push him away. I also glossed over what my mum did for a living before she won the lottery because I think that's my mum's story to tell.

Autry's story was completely unlike mine. His father had inherited his wealth. He's also inherited his father's businesses. When Autry's mother was pregnant with him, his father started having an affair with another women from his company. It ended up in a divorce when Autry was still a baby. Given the circumstances, his mother got custody obviously but also half of their wealth. He still has a relationship with his dad but he married again, not the women he had an affair with, and they've had six kids. Autry had to go to his father's house every year, alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas and put up with his nasty step-brothers and step-sisters. That was until last year when he turned eighteen and he didn't have to go anymore so he didn't. He seemed to be as close to his mum, or ma as he called her, as I was to mine. He also didn't mention if he is gay or not.

We noticed that we were talking louder and laughing a lot. We realised that the fruit in the cocktails were were only half way through drinking disguised the fact that these "Mojitos" were approximately a hundred percent rum.

Autry and his mum actually lived in Key West off the Florida coast. I though it was a little weird that they had taken the cruise because they lived in the Caribbean and Key West was actually the last stop on this cruise before it arrived in Miami. Not that weird really when you think about it. Heaps of people take cruises of the Pacific Islands that start in Sydney who actually live in Sydney so I guess it's the same thing.

My mum and Dahlia came over smiling when they saw us laughing at each other.

"Hey boys," said my mum. "We're going for a walk around the promenade deck."

When I laughed at her meaninglessly she said, "Don't drink too much Andy." The "Andy" was a deliberate dig.

"You too Autry," said Dahlia.

We watched them go and then Autry smiled at me and said, "Andy is cute."

"Hey stop it. I hate being called Andy."

Autry put his arm around my neck and pulled me closer so he could talk in my ear.

"Andy is cute, Andy is cute," he laughed.

I pushed him off also laughing. We finished our Mojitos but decided to leave the fruit based on the unproven theory that it absorbed the alcohol.

"It's my turn now," said Autry. "This one seems harmless. It only got limes in it and no paper umbrella."

I'm not sure what that meant. The cocktail he picked was Caipirinha. We had to ask the barman how to pronounce it. After we practiced it a few times I told Autry that if he calls me "Andy" then I will call him "Caipirinha".

I took a sip and it seemed okay but I had to pee.

"Wait a sec Autry, I have to pee."

"Okay, I'll come with you."

We walked, or semi-walked across the restaurant bar to the toilet. I guess the sea was rough. There were individual ceramic urinals with privacy screens between them. I went into one and Autry went into the one beside me. I just pulled out my cock and started peeing.

"Nick dick cute Andy." I looked over and Autry was looking over the privacy screen at my cock with a huge grin on his face.

"Hey pretty Caipirinha, stop it," but I then looked over at his. I was a bit shocked. I couldn't tell is he was semi-erect or it was just that big when soft.

"Wow," was all I said.

When we finished washing our hands Autry looked at me and asked,

"Hey Drew, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Yeah, I suppose so?"

He moved closer to me as if he was going to whisper something in my ear but instead he kissed me long and full on my lips. When he pulled away he just looked at me curiously. I guess I looked like a stunned mullet.

"And?" he asked.

"What?"

"I just kissed you!"

"Yeah, I did notice," I replied now smiling.

"So? Did you like it?

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And what?" My brain wasn't really working.

"Dude! Are you gay or aren't ya?"

"Yeah, I'm gay. I suppose you are too?"

"Ah well, I say I'm bi but the jury's still out. One thing's for sure, I'm gay for you cute Andy."

I just smiled at him, I didn't know what to say.

"So?" he said.

"What?" I asked again.

"Come on Andy! You like me? You wanna hang with me?"

Definitely the alcohol helped me overcome my shyness.

"Kiss me again Caipirinha and I'll tell ya."

He laughed but then got a strange look in his beautiful amazing completely black eyes like he might cry. He knew he had his answer. He put his arms around me and pulled me close and then he kissed me again. This time he didn't stop. I put my arms around his strong sexy body and held him tight and felt my erection try to unzip me.

Someone pushed open the toilet door and Autry pulled away from me suddenly. We saw it was the barman. Maybe he was wondering what we up to.

"Oh excuse me sirs," he said and backed out.

"I guess we'd better get back to those Caipirinhas Caipirinha," I said reluctantly but also slightly disappointed that he'd been apparently afraid to be seen kissing me.

"Yeah, okay okay, I'll call you Andrew Andy," he said smiling again. We went back to the bar. Our drinks were still sweating on the bar. We were going to sit there again but I noticed there was a place with a few leather sofas so I suggested we sit there. There was plenty of space but he sat right beside me and put his arm around my shoulder.

The Caipirinhas were nicer than the Mojitos but I could taste the alcohol in my Caipirinha and I knew that it must be even more lethal. I don't know why but for some reason I gave a long dissertation on the history of Meso-America and on the different ruins we would be going to see over the next few days. Autry often pulled me closer with his arm and between sips, rested his head on my shoulder. Sometimes he asked questions but mostly he just listened to me rave on. I was confused that he'd been scared to be seen kissing me but was now so openly affectionate. I overcame my shyness again and abruptly changed the subject.

"Hey Autry, did you ever have a girlfriend?"

That caused him to lift his head off my shoulder and look at me. I looked into his bottomless eyes.

"I had a few. Nothing too serious. You?"

"Well, I went to an all boys school, so unlikely," I said.

"Oooh, that must have been fun for a cute gay boy like you?"

To tell the truth, I couldn't get enough of him calling me cute.

"Nah, they were all hoity toity. I never had much to do with the guys in my class outside of school."

"'Hoity toity'? What da fuq?"

"Oh it just means they think they're better than everyone else."

"Oh, yeah I know the feeling. Try being the only black dude in a class of sixty."

"Oh no, that sounds bad, but ah so Autry, I guess you never had a boyfriend either?"

"Nah, but I've got my eye on someone," he flashed his blinding smile at me again. I smiled back. He didn't even look around now, he just kissed me.

"You wanna know something Autry?"

"What?"

"When you kissed me over there before, that's the first time I've been kissed by a guy."

"Well you wanna know somethin' else Andy?"

"Yeah?"

"Same here."

"Oh, really Autry?"

"You doubt me?"

"Well, ... you just seem so ah ... good at it," Experienced I meant. I'm not sure what I meant. "Though I guess you've kissed your girlfriends?"

"Yeah, that's true but if you're thinking I've ever gone further, you're wrong."

He must have read my mind. That's what I was working around to asking him.

"Yeah me neither," I said unnecessarily. Then looking at his lovely full lips and starting to feel a desire like I've never felt before I said, "this cruise is suddenly a whole lot more exciting."

"Yeah, that is a fact," he replied.

Amazingly we finished our Caipirinhas. Autry picked up the cocktail menu and handed it to me.

"Your turn."

"Oh god I'm completely off my face, but yeah, why not. We're on holiday. This one looks refreshing." I pointed to one called Yellow Bird. Autry signalled to a waiter who had been loitering around uncomfortably, wiping tables that no one had used and sometimes warily keeping an eye on us.

There were still a lot of people in the restaurant but we had this quiet corner of the bar mostly to ourselves. With it's soft dim lighting, classy jazz music playing, comfortable leather sofas and an inconceivably beautiful guy I was falling for like a meteor snuggling into me, it was a really a place like heaven must be.

"Two Yellow Birds for these two love birds please," Autry asked the waiter.

"Two Yellow Birds, right away sir," replied the waiter.

We laughed stupidly and then it was my turn to move in and kiss Autry. Nether of us cared that we were wrapped around each other when our drinks came. Clearly neither of us were drinkers and the Yellow Birds were even more intense than the other cocktails. I noticed the barman talking to an older man dressed in the cruise line uniform. He came over to speak to us.

"Good evening sirs," he said in a very cool accent.

"Hi," I said and Autry lifted his head off my chest to look at him.

"Please accept our apologies but these will be the last drinks that we will be able to serve you this evening."

"Cool," said Autry. "No worries," I said.

The guy actually bowed to us and then left and spoke to the barman. Again we laughed for no reason and then ended with more kisses and snuggling.

We were three-quarters through our Yellow Birds and half unconscious. Autry had his arm around my back and I was leaning over him, resting my head on his chest and with my arm around his body when our mum's turned up. I had my eyes closed when I heard them laughing.

"Hey this is where you boys are hiding," I heard my mum. I was a bit worried that Autry was not out to his mum, especially since he'd said he was bi earlier. I'd learnt from experience chatting online that if young guys say they're bi, it nearly always means that they're in the closet, at east about being into guys, but anyway Autry's mum Dahlia was laughing too. Even weirder, she had her arm around my mum and I got the clear impression that they'd been hanging at a bar somewhere on the ship too.

Just an aside here in case I offended any bi guys by what I said above. One of the things the gay guys in my mum's circle of friends discussed or argued about a few times was about bisexuality and bisexual "erasure". On one side of the argument are what seem like pretty compelling statistics. Half of gay men over twenty-five identified as bi when they were younger. On the Kinsey scale, nearly all men are either totally gay or totally straight. Unlike in women where bisexual women actually outnumber lesbians and where female sexuality is fluid throughout life, in men, bisexuality is rare in men over twenty-five and sexuality is pretty fixed after that age. Not only that, on dating sites open to all genders and sexualities, eighty percent of guys who identify as bi on their profiles only ever try to date other men. That's why a lot of gay men try to argue that bi guys are just confused or dishonest gays.

But I tended to side with the other side of the argument. When religious nutters try to say that gay guys choose to be gay, the main reason that we know that they are wrong is not because of all the science and statistics in our favour but because of the actual experience of our lives. I know that I didn't choose to be gay, because I know I didn't, not because some scientist or some statistician said I didn't. If I know that the actual experience of my life overrides everyone else's opinion then how can I allow my opinion to override it when a bisexual guy says he's bisexual?

Anyway, I couldn't have cared less if Autry said he was gay, bisexual or even straight as long as he was in to me. So, back to the story.

After that, things got a bit fuzzy that night. I remember Dahlia saying that we should go to bed because we'd clearly had too much to drink. I remember them making jokes and all of us laughing but I don't remember much of what it was about. I remember my mum asking me about the window of our cabin for some reason. I remember Autry and my mum helping me walk because I think I fell over but I didn't need the help. I remember my mum laughing at me and half scolding me because I didn't complain about Autry calling me Andy but I always complained when she did it.

I woke up in the night and I immediately knew that I was going to throw up. I got out of bed but I was completely disoriented. I saw the window but there were the lights of a city out there. I knew the toilet was at the opposite end of the cabin but I usually slept in the single bed about half way along and now I was in the double.

The cabin we had was a large class but it was still very compact. It was long and narrow. There was a large window and a balcony on one end. There was a table and chairs there but straight after that was the double bed and the main wardrobe on the other side. After that was the single bed that also served as a sofa and on the other side was the television and desk area. After that was the small kitchen and then the shower and toilet in a room beside the door out into the corridor.

Everything was the opposite way around and I kept bumping into things as I tried to get to the toilet. I finally got there, knelt in front of it and threw my guts up. A minute later to my great surprise Autry came in.

"Are you okay Andy?"

He looked into the toilet and immediately he threw up into the basin. He was worse than me. I suddenly realised that I was completely naked. It wasn't unusual for me to sleep naked but I had been sleeping in boxers on the cruise because the cabin door opened straight out into the corridor, or passageway as they called it on the ship. Autry at least was wearing white boxers. I couldn't help admiring his beautiful brown muscular body inside his sexy white boxers between bouts of throwing up.

It dawned on me that the reason I was so disoriented in the cabin was that it wasn't mine. I was in Autry and Dahlia's cabin. Theirs was the same class of cabin but on the other side of the ship so it was a mirror image. Also theirs was on the port side of the ship so they had a view of the Mexican coastline as we sailed south. That's why I could see city lights out the window where from my cabin we could only ever see the ocean. I vaguely remembered a discussion about me swapping cabins last night so that the "boys could be together". Weirdly not because I could share a bed with the sexiest and sweetest guy on the planet but so that I could get a better view from the balcony on the port side.

Autry splashed water on his face and then washed his mouth out with water from the basin. He knelt down beside me and washed my face with a damp face washer and then got me a glass of water. I drank some but I immediate threw up again.

"Just wash your mouth out Andy, don't swallow it."

I did as he asked and I felt better. He helped me back to the cabin. I saw that we'd both been sleeping together in the double bed, me naked. Everything was still swirling around and I knew I was still very very drunk. Autry helped me back into bed and then he rolled me onto my side and spooned me from behind. I felt his cock was hard and pressing against my bum. I pushed back into him and he held me tighter and kissed my neck and my cheek. I tried to resist it but I fell asleep in his arms.

I woke in the morning by the rising sunlight coming in from the window. Autry had rolled into his back and was softly snoring. I rolled over to watch him. I got an instant erection and remembered that I'm naked. I moved closer to him and kissed him while he slept. I moved closer and closer to his lips. He stopped snoring but was still acting like he was sleeping. When I kissed his lips he couldn't stop himself from smiling and he opened his eyes.

"Hello cute Andy," he said.

"Hello sweet Autry," I said. I didn't care that he called me Andy. I couldn't give a damn what he called me as long as he talked to me like that. He put his arms around me and pulled me to him. We kissed again but not like before. Now we really went for it. His tongue poked into my mouth and I sucked on it. I could feel his cock swelled up like a lump of wood pressing against my thigh and mine was so hard it was aching.

I boldly pushed my hand down into his boxers and grabbed his cock while we were still pashing. He went crazy when I squeezed his hot fat cock in my hand. He started breathing heavily and pushed me off him and rolled me onto my back. He pushed the sheet and the doona off me and then laid on me and kissed me wildly. He grabbed my cock and started working his way down my body with his tongue and lips. I knew the direction he was heading. It wasn't long before he'd reached my cock. He looked up at me and smiled. It was a hungry sexy smile. He looked desperate. I don't know if he was trying to ask permission but I just opened my mouth and breathed heavily when I saw my naked body, my throbbing erection and this beautiful hot boy's mouth only inches away from it.

He just started sucking my cock. I could hardly believe that this was happening to me. So many times this was my fantasy. I moaned so loudly that I might have woken the whole boat. Autry pulled his boxers down while her was sucking me over his beautiful brown bum and released his cock. I was helpless. I wanted to return the pleasure he was giving me somehow but he just started fapping himself while he sucked me off. I knew I wasn't going to last long. He rubbed his hand along the bottom of my thigh. Somehow that made me know that I wanted him to fuck me in my arse but it wasn't going to be now. I opened my thighs and I gave one push into his mouth but I was well past anything stopping my orgasm.